CAN LAW BE SUBSTITUTED FOR WAR?
I am a peace advocate--that is to say, I am one who advocates an active
campaign in the cause of peace, employing the best means and instruments
for the accomplishment of practical results.
Unfortunately, a wide difference of opinion exists in the ranks of those
who style themselves peace advocates as to how the war against war can
best be fought. That difference of opinion is as to whether we should
arm for the fray, or disarm for it. Shall we go into the fight with
sword and buckler, and with armor on, prepared to return blow with
stronger blow; or shall we go into the fight with bared breasts, and,
when we receive a blow upon one cheek turn the other cheek also, and let
both our eyes be blackened and our nose be skinned in order to shame our
antagonist, by giving him an object lesson of the horrors of war?
Ernst Haeckel has said there is nothing constant but change. He might
have said also that there is a no more consistent thing in its constancy
than human inconsistency.
That other great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, declared that, as he grew
older, the more and more he realized the extent to which mankind is
governed by irrationality.
Josh Billings said, "It is not so much the ignorance of men that makes
them ridiculous as what they know that is not so."
The complex problems of ethics, eugenics, economics, and human dynamics,
which enter into all questions and problems of peace and war, are like
so many Chinese puzzles to the ordinary mind.
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of minds--the ratiocinative and
the irrational; in other words, the logical and the illogical. The
logical mind proceeds scientifically from sure premises to just
conclusions, taking no direction and traveling no faster and no farther
in any direction than warranted and justified by ascertained fact. The
irrational or illogical mind, on the contrary, is unable to discriminate
between belief and knowledge, between facts and fancies. Consequently,
this type of mind proceeds from guess to conclusion, with the result
that final judgment is necessarily distorted, warped, and swerved from
truth just in proportion as the basic guess is incorrect or false.
There is a no more momentous problem before the world today than that of
international jurisprudence, especially with respect to the maintenance
of peace where practicable, and the control of wars, when wars are
inevitable or necessary; and there is no subject of such moment more
fruitful of irrationalism.
In the light of practical common-sense, there is nothing funnier in the
writings of Mark Twain than the inconsistent prating of our peace
sophists. It is as though they let not their right-hand brain know what
their left-hand brain is doing. They are usually brimmed and primed with
sacrificial sentimentality and over-soul. Their delicatessen natures
shrink from contact with the stern, man-making realities of life. They
are the disciples of soft stuff. The mush and moonshine of maudlin
sentimentalism are their element. They possess no powers of
discrimination between the actual and the erroneous. The guise of fact
is no recommendation to them unless it fits into their scheme. An error
is far more welcome if it comes in a garmenture that conforms with their
ideals. They put their union label on what we receive by the grace of
God, but they fail to recognize and appreciate that they cannot
comprehend the infinite; that what to them seems disorder and confusion
in the world may be the most perfect order in the eye of God. They
cannot understand how infinite wisdom, infinite justice, and infinite
mercy should have created a warring world; consequently, they have set
themselves the task of repairing the faults of creation and of
recreating the world to suit their own ideas as to what infinite wisdom
and mercy ought to be.
When one of these peace sophists gets into a fight, however, he promptly
prays to God to help him whip the other fellow. The pacific
sentimentalist is usually a most arrant coward. In time of war, the
cowardly sentimental pacifists are the loudest in appeals to Almighty
God to fight on their side and to lead their army to victory--that same
army which in time of peace they have done everything in their power to
disarm and disband.
Recently, when speaking at a church, I was asked the question, "How long
is it going to take to make might right?" I asked my interrogator this
question: "If, at the creation, you had been consulted and your advice
asked as to whether or not a world should be made in which all life
should feed on other life, and half of the animal creation should be
made prey for the other half; whether everything should be made tooth
and nail, claw and scale, hunter and hunted, terror and blood, strife
and war; whether or not the cat should train for the hunt by torturing
the little bird--how would you have replied to God?" My querist did not
answer me, but went home to think it over.
I do not purpose to make any apology for Infinite Wisdom. My pacifist
friends are doing that constantly. It is my humble opinion that the
Creator did the best He could for us, and that we ought to be thankful
and grateful.
I believe with Pope, that:
"_Spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear--whatever is, is right._"
I realize that the most perfect order is confusion to the mind that is
not constituted to comprehend it.
I know that the macrocosmic mechanism moves with mathematical
exactitude, and that we, in comparison, are mighty only in our
arrogance; that, in fact, we are but microscopic specks in the drift of
worlds.
Nature seems to care little for individuals, but very much for races and
species; little indeed for a person, very much for a people.
The terms right and wrong, good and bad, are entirely relative. Right
for an individual may not be so for a large aggregation of individuals.
The welfare of a nation or a people may not be the welfare of the world,
and God has His eye on the world.
_The wrong are weak, the right are strong.
This mean the two terms right and wrong;
And truth sought out to any length,
Finds all wrong weakness, all right strength._
FORMATIVE STRIFE
Primeval man found himself thrust into an environment where all animal
life fed on other life, and half the animal creation was prey for the
other half. He was one of the hunted. Yet, with less strength but
greater cunning, he was destined to master all. Man's supremacy has been
developed by warfare of wit, craft, and cunning, versus brute force.
Primitive man found himself "up a tree" in both the actual and the
metaphoric sense. His teeth and claws were no match for those of the
leopard and the sabre-toothed tiger. He had no recourse but flight until
stern necessity taught him to wield a club.
Then he climbed down from his abode in trees, and began the conquest of
the earth. The club made man a traveler. His forays with that weapon
taught him to walk and fight upon his hind legs, and gave him his erect
carriage. But he had to travel a long and thorny pathway indeed, armed
only with a club, before he invented the stone hatchet and spear of
sharpened flint or bone. It was a far-flung span across the gulf of time
from the tree-home to the cave in the hill, his new abiding-place.
The bow and arrow, which enabled him to kill at long range, were his
next weapon, and were the greatest invention of all time.
The protection of the heart with the left arm and shield, with the right
arm free to wield the sword or hurl the javelin, made man right-handed.
Armed with the bow and arrow, spear and shield, man was equipped still
better for travel; and ever since travel has been widening out the sky
and broadening man's mental horizon.
The fighting spirit widened the acquaintance of different peoples, and
the terrible menace of some savage common enemy forced different tribes
to unite and build up nations. Union against danger is the best
instructor of self-government, and the best guarantee of internal good
behavior.
It is generally recognized that man is a product of his environment;
that he is in body and mind the sum of his own and ancestral
experiences; that he is omnivorous; that he drinks water and breathes
air; and yet, many persons fail to recognize the inevitable concomitant
conclusion that he is also of necessity a warring animal, and that the
formative influences of the fierce struggle for existence have made him
what he is. His life is a series of reactions to environing stimuli; and
he is actuated and shaped by those stimuli, and just as those stimuli
have been necessary to his growth, so they are still necessary to his
continued growth, and even to his very existence. In other words, the
formative influences that have made and sustained man are still
necessary to his maintenance. The character of the strife may be
changed, and is already largely changed, from war to business. But the
intensity of the struggle cannot be alleviated one whit, because it is
impossible, in the nature of things, to maintain man's strength of
character in any other way. He could live a little longer without strife
than without food or air or water, but the absence of strife would be as
fatal to him in the end as would be the absence of food, air, or water.
The struggle for existence has always been a business proposition with
man, and business today is a struggle for existence as intense and
merciless as the struggle in war.
In olden times, piracy and war for plunder were the principal business
of mankind. Today, business is a warfare, and though it may be
law-abiding, still the weak go down under it and suffer and die under it
as surely as they did in old-time wars. The relation of strength to
weakness remains unchanged, and the reward for strength and the penalty
for weakness are as great as they ever were.
There now exists, as always, the same intensity of incentive of all
classes to strive for something more and something better than they
have. Though the condition of all classes has improved, the struggle of
individual with individual is as great, the strife of class with class
is as intense as ever.
The ownership of one's earnings, with freedom to apply and enjoy them,
was the greatest prize ever offered to stimulate the working genius of
this world, and the results during the past hundred and fifty years have
been phenomenal.
The world has progressed more within that time in those things which
tend to complete living than it had previously progressed in all the
ages that had dragged their slow length along since the world thawed out
of the ancient ice.
But human agencies, like all agencies in nature, are essentially
rhythmical. In order to accumulate the necessary energy and enthusiasm
to go far enough in the right direction, we inevitably go too far, and,
when the pendulum returns, it swings to the other extreme.
It is important to realize the great truth that freedom ends when it
aims beyond the spirit which strives for the greatest good to the
greatest number.
According to Herbert Spencer, the criminal classes are composed of those
who have been pushed out of the race in the struggle for existence under
modern conditions. They were normal components of society in the past,
when all men were soldiers and all soldiers were bandits, and the
principal business of mankind was piracy and war for plunder.
There being no longer the ever-present opportunity to join in an
inter-tribal or an international war for robbery, the soldier-bandit
now makes war upon society.
All of the Huns and Vandals in our midst are today armed with the
short-sword of the ballot. How important it is then that they should be
taught to know and to understand that in the use of this weapon their
work should be formative and not deformative; that it should be
constructive and not destructive!
SUBSTITUTION OF LAW FOR WAR
The poet's words, "The parliament of man, the federation of the world,"
have become a very familiar quotation in recent years. Anciently all
wisdom was taught in poesy, and we have never yet quite freed ourselves
from the age-long habitude of receiving as unimpeachable wisdom whatever
may be said in verse.
To the common mind, a statement in didactic verse has the proselyting
power of Holy Writ. Now, this line of Tennyson, "The parliament of man,
the federation of the world," points us toward a Utopia, without hope of
actual attainment.
There is at the present time a growing good intention to put an end to
wars by international conciliation and arbitration; in short, to
substitute law for war. We must, however, keep strongly in mind the
interdependence of law and force, and the consequent interdependence of
international law and armaments. Conciliation must not be confounded
with arbitration, and persuasion must not be confounded with law.
Law has been aptly designated "codified custom." Actually, law is an
attempt to construct experience into prophecy. We are able to judge of
the sufficiency of new laws only by the sufficiency of laws in past
practice.
The error is very common, to confound as having the same meaning terms
of quite opposite meanings--for example, it is a very common error to
confound society with government, and civilization with enlightenment.
Society is an order of things by virtue of which we are able to
co-operate with one another and to enjoy mutuality of possessions which
gives them their only value; while government is an order of things for
the purpose of protecting society.
The world has arrived at great enlightenment, and has attained some
degree of civilization. Self-interest is becoming more and more
altruistic, and altruism is becoming more and more profitable. We are
not so barbarous as we used to be, but we still slaughter one another to
adjust international differences. This cannot be esteemed civil
procedure. Enlightenment may be very uncivil, and civility may not be
enlightenment.
The great problem yet remains of uniting under practical laws the
nations of the earth into a family of nations.
This is not a work for dreamers or sentimentalists; but is purely a
business proposition, which can be effected only to the extent that the
best interests of all the contracting parties are thereby secured.
When will arbitration be able to realize the Utopian dreams of the
pacifists? General Homer Lea answers the question once for all in the
following expressive terms:
* * * * *
"_Only when arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime
and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and
nations. Thence will International Arbitration come of its own accord as
the natural outgrowth of national evolution through the individual. As
nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his
crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the
basis of individual impulse, so long will they control the acts of
nations._
"_When, therefore, the merchant arbitrates with the customer he is about
to cheat; when trusts arbitrate with the people they are about to
fleece; when the bulls and bears arbitrate with the lambs they are about
to shear; when the thief arbitrates with the man he is about to rob, or
the murderer with his victim, and so on throughout the category of
crime, then will communities be able to dispense with laws, and
international thievery and deception, shearing and murder, resort to
arbitration._"
* * * * *
The men who control our city and state politics and make and enforce our
city and state laws all over the country are not always honest, but, on
the contrary, they are often notoriously corrupt, notwithstanding the
fact that they have much stronger incentives to be honest here than they
would have in dealing with foreign nations and strange peoples. What,
therefore, are we to expect of their integrity and their honesty in the
settlement of international disputes and in the enactment and execution
of international laws?
What an enormous field for graft it will be when some weaker nation
tries to get its rights at the coming international tribunal!
Our laws are now notoriously inadequate with respect to theft, burglary,
highway robbery, and municipal-government graft. The amount of money
loss to the people of this country through the failure of our laws to
suppress these iniquities is enough to support a standing army of half a
million men, build four battleships a year, and place us on such a
defensive footing as absolutely to preclude all danger of war with any
foreign power.
Has human nature improved so much lately that special privilege will no
longer result from special power? Has the human race progressed so much
lately that privilege and oppression will not follow power; wealth and
luxury follow privilege; and degeneracy and disorganization follow
wealth and luxury?
The race has certainly not so altered that men do not grow old and die;
and nations, like men, have their youth, their middle age, their
decrepitude and death.
Periodically, some religio-pathological sect will announce the
conclusion of an understanding with the Great Reaper, whereby, through
certain incantations or breathing exercises, death may be indefinitely
postponed; but they, like other mortals, keep on dying.
Those good men who are the leaders in the present peace movement must
realize the fact that the carrying out of their project will devolve,
not upon them--not upon the philanthropist, the sentimentalist, and the
humanitarian--but upon the politician.
The actual procedure of the Hague congresses enables us to forecast
exactly this result. The judicial bench of that court was a
bargain-counter, over which political advantage was bartered for
political advantage. It was no real love of peace that dominated those
tribunals: only the powerful nations spoke or were heard. No protection
was suggested for the weaker nations, who, presumably, would be most
benefited by international arbitration. They were quite out of the
running.
International arbitration will ultimately become a political machine.
Nothing can prevent it, and there is no reason to believe that those
politicians who will have control of the international arbitration
machine will be any more honest than other machine politicians.
ALL LAW MUST BE BACKED BY FORCE
It is a popular belief that when the paradoxical conciliatory legal
persuasion in the form of arbitration goes into effect, we shall no
longer require any armaments, but may forge our swords into plow-shares
and spears into pruning-hooks, disband our armies, and return the
soldiers to the shops and farms.
We are prone to forget that law is as much a representative of the
requisite power behind it for its enforcement as a paper dollar is a
representative of the requisite gold available for its redemption. A
well-known orator came very near becoming President through a popular
misconception as to the interdependence of gold and paper money, and he
failed to get the Presidency because of a public awakening to the error.
We are prone to forget, furthermore, that it is the respect for power
behind law that makes possible its enforcement. Any law to adjust
international differences by arbitration will simply be an embodiment
of the collective wisdom of allied Powers in the exercise of force, and
a force that is representative of their banded armies and navies.
International law is static military force. War is the dynamic form of
the same force. I believe in international arbitration for all it is
worth. It is a good thing to push along. It will unquestionably lessen
the frequency of wars, but many wars are sure to come in spite of it,
and because of it.
NON-JUSTICIABLE DIFFERENCES
There are ills of national bodies politic that can be cured only by the
sword. Insurmountable differences between various nations and races of
men are always sure to arise, as impossible to arbitrate as the
differences between the herbivora and the carnivora.
The existence of the carnivora depends upon the sacrifice of the
herbivora. Their interests are, from their very nature, antagonistic,
and their differences are, by consequence, insurmountable, and not
justiciable. The harmony of nature depends upon inharmony between the
meat-eaters and the vegetable-eaters, and the harmony of modern progress
has likewise depended in large measure upon formative inharmony between
peoples.
Such radical differences and such concomitant radical diversity of
interests exist among the various races of men that the task of
harmonizing their interests, aims, and activities will be about as great
as would be that of bleaching their skins to a uniform color.
It is a practical impossibility to enact international laws that will
make the welfare of each nation the concern of all, with no
subordination of any one to the welfare of another. Will arbitration be
able to place all peoples upon a plane of equality? Will it be able to
secure to all, even the meanest, equal rights to enjoyment of property,
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Will arbitration be able to make the Anglo-Saxon, the Teuton, the
African, and the Oriental meet one another on common ground, and share
and share alike, live and let live, when their interests come into
collision?
If arbitration cannot do this--if arbitration does not do this--if it
does not treat all with strict impartiality, then those who are
ill-treated are going to rebel, and wars will still come.
Between nations no sentimental consideration exists or is possible,
sufficiently effectual to exert more than the merest microscopic
influence as a deterrent of war. Self-interest always has been, and
always will be, the deciding factor in the settlement of international
disputes. War uncloaks international hypocrisy, and the people are seen
in their true character.
The attitude of the warlike and powerful nations in the past toward the
weaker nations has been very similar to that of the carnivora toward the
herbivora.
International arbitration may somewhat lessen the burden of armaments,
but the time will be long before it can lift the burden. The orators who
plead at the International Tribunal will speak in the voice of the
deep-throated guns behind them; their persuasion will be that of cold
steel, and neither brotherly love nor international sympathy will be
their guide, but self-interest, and no demands will be relinquished
except from policy in their observance of such rights of others as are
warded by the frowning ramparts of opposing force.
Unless all the nations of the world join in the pact, then arbitration
will simply be an alliance for the benefit of the allies themselves as
against all others. There will be nothing new in such an arrangement.
The Six Nations of New York did the same thing; they formed a federation
and settled their differences by arbitration, and it was a good thing
for the Six Nations; but it was not a good thing for the neighboring
Indian tribes.
We Americans expect to get all we want any way, either with or without
arbitration. If we expected that the Chinese would be forced upon us,
or our rights and privileges curtailed in the Orient, we should not
think of joining in an arbitration pact for a minute.
There will always be the warfare of commerce for the markets of the
world, and it will be tempered with avarice, not mercy; and commercial
warfare will become more and more severe as the nations grow, and as
competition, with want and hunger behind it, gets keen as the sword-edge
with the crowding of people into the narrow world.
UNCHANGING HUMAN NATURE
Human nature is the same today as it was in the ante-rebellion days of
human slavery. It is the same as it was when Napoleon, with the
will-o'-the-wisp of personal and national glory held before the eyes of
emotional and impressionable Frenchmen, led them to wreck for him the
monarchies of Europe. Human nature is the same today as it was in
Caesar's time, when he massacred two hundred and fifty thousand
Germans--men, women, and children--in a day, in cold blood, while
negotiations for peace were pending, and entered in his diary the simple
statement, "Caesar's legions killed them all." Human nature is the same
today as it was in the cruel old times, when war was the chief business
of mankind, and populations sold as slaves were among the most
profitable plunder. Yes, human nature is the same as it has always
been. Education and Christian teaching have made pity and sympathy more
familiar to the human heart, but avarice and the old fighting spirit are
kept in leash only by the dominance of necessity and circumstances,
which the institutions of civilization impose upon the individual.
The following is quoted from "Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain,"
by the late Professor J. A. Cramb:
* * * * *
"_War may change its shape, the struggle here intensifying it, there
abating it; it may be uplifted by ever loftier purposes and nobler
causes. But cease? How shall it cease?_
"_Indeed, in the light of history, universal peace appears less as a
dream than as a nightmare, which shall be realized only when the ice has
crept to the heart of the sun, and the stars, left black and trackless,
start from their orbits._"
* * * * *
Max Mueller has told us that the roots of some of our words are older
than the Egyptian Pyramids. Far older still are the essential traits of
human nature. The human nature of today will be the human nature of
tomorrow, and the human nature of tomorrow will be in all essential
respects the same as it was in ancient Rome, Persia, and Egypt, and even
in the palmy days of sea-sunk Atlantis.
The best of us are at heart barbarians under a thin veneer of
civilization, and it is as natural for us to revert to barbarous war as
for the hog to return to his wallow.
If we were able to apply to the upbuilding of our Army and Navy the
money that goes to political graft throughout the country, and the money
that has been squandered, and is still being squandered through our
notorious vote-purchasing pensions, we could place ourselves upon a war
footing that would be an absolute guarantee of permanent peace. It is
not, therefore, very encouraging, to enlarge this failing system of
laws, in order to save an annual expenditure certainly less than what
the defects of our laws now cost the country.
Even though international wars may be prevented by a court of
arbitration, can rebellion and civil war be prevented, and ought they
always to be prevented?
JUSTIFIABLE WARS
When the unjust laws of an iniquitous government make existence
intolerable for the great mass of the people of a country or of a
colonial possession; "when in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary" for a people to throw off the yoke of oppression, as we did
in our War of the Revolution, or as the French people did in the French
Revolution, or as the great Chinese people have lately done by their
rebellion against the domination of an intolerable savage Manchu
monarchy, then war is the only remedy, and freedom can then plead only
with the sword.
I quote the following from Theodore Roosevelt's "America and the World
War":
* * * * *
"_In 1864 there were in the North some hundreds of thousands of men who
praised peace as the supreme end, as a good more important than all
other goods, and who denounced war as the worst of all evils. These men
one and all assailed and denounced Abraham Lincoln, and all voted
against him for President. Moreover, at that time there were many
individuals in England and France who said it was the duty of those two
nations to mediate between the North and the South, so as to stop the
terrible loss of life and destruction of property which attended our
Civil War; and they asserted that any Americans who in such event
refused to accept their mediation and to stop the war would thereby show
themselves the enemies of peace. Nevertheless, Abraham Lincoln and the
men back of him by their attitude prevented all such effort at
mediation, declaring that they would regard it as an unfriendly act to
the United States. Looking back from a distance of fifty years, we can
now see clearly that Abraham Lincoln and his supporters were right. Such
mediation would have been a hostile act, not only to the United States
but to humanity. The men who clamored for unrighteous peace fifty years
ago this fall were the enemies of mankind._"
* * * * *
Those who are oppressed by the superincumbent weight of society, and
labor for mere existence, with no hope of freedom from poverty, are
slaves as much as were those made bondsmen in old-time wars. It matters
little whether the wolf at the door be a creature of sociological
conditions, or a creature of war. The evil is no less real.
James Russell Lowell, in his admirable poem on France and the French
Revolution, said about the most expressive, the most potential, and
altogether the best thing that has ever been said illustrative of the
uncontrollable massiveness of the popular will, which, under the
stimulus of patriotism or the smart or burden of accumulated wrongs, can
stampede a nation into war:
"_As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches
Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow,
Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches
And the blind havoc leaps unwarned below,
So grew and gathered through the silent years
The madness of a People, wrong by wrong.
There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears,
No strength in suffering;--but the Past was strong:
The brute despair of trampled centuries
Leapt up with one hoarse yell and snapt its bands,
Groped for its rights with horny, callous hands,
And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes._"
The justification of war depends entirely upon the conditions which
produce it. In short, war is justifiable only when it is a remedy for
evils greater than the evils of the war. War is sometimes a very bitter
remedy; nevertheless, there are diseases much worse than the remedy. The
horrors of the French Revolution, bad as they were, remedied a condition
still more horrible, for the condition of the French common people,
"bowed by the weight of centuries," had become so abject that life was
intolerable; no change could be for the worse. Under such circumstances
there is no fear of death; the fear of death is only fear of the loss of
life through love of life. When existence is intolerable, and there is
no hope in the heart for better things, life, having no value, is not
much loved, and death has no terrors.
In spite of all the bloodshed of the reign of terror, in spite of all
who fell under the leadership of Napoleon, the French people were
benefited by the Revolution a thousand-fold more than they were injured
by it.
If arbitration could prevent such wars, which are man's God-given
privilege that a people may secure its inalienable rights, then
arbitration, in that respect, would be an iniquitous thing.
War, at best, is a horrible business. It is a reversion to the brute
force of primitive savagery, and is never justifiable except in the
extremity of last resort. But we must appreciate and acknowledge the
fact that the horrors of war, the sacrifice of treasure, the sacrifice
of life, are no arguments whatever against war when inalienable human
rights are at stake that must be fought for, and that are worth the
sacrifice.
There are at times objects and obligations which are worth the
sacrifice. To prevent war in such cases would be a disgrace and a crime.
As Admiral Mahan says, "Even the material evils of war are less than the
moral evil of compliance with wrong."
CHRISTIANITY AND WAR
In 1901, the editor of _The Christian Herald_ requested me to write an
article in answer to the following question: "Is it consistent for a
loyal Christian, who believes that war is contrary to the teachings of
the Prince of Peace, to engage in the manufacture of material designed
exclusively for the purpose of war?"
In my reply, I pointed out that the great majority of Christians
throughout the world, while they hate war, are often called upon
themselves to become warriors and to fight for their doctrine of peace.
The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage was chosen to reply to my article, which he
did by agreeing with all I had said.
According to the annals of history, wars have almost invariably been
caused by one party attempting to rob another party, or one people
another people. On such occasions, it is self-evident that the blame for
the wars rested with the robbers. Those who fought in defense of their
lives and property, although actual participants in warfare, were
guiltless.
Of course, the attempt to rob and plunder has sometimes been mutual, and
both participants have been aggressors, as were Napoleon and Alexander
in the Russian war. In the great majority of cases, however, one side
has been on the aggressive, and the other on the defensive.
When an officer of the law catches an evil-doer in the act, and is
attacked by him, if, in making an arrest, the officer is compelled to
draw his own revolver and shoot the malefactor, he does a justifiable
act. We have here war in miniature, and it may be taken as a type of all
wars. While we are free to grant that wars are wrong, yet the wrong
rests entirely with the offenders, instead of with the defenders, of
human right.
Housebreaking is wrong, yet the brave knight who, in mediaeval times,
breached a castle wall to free some prisoner unjustly held, did a wholly
commendable act. Similarly, one nation which raises an army to free from
bondage slaves held by another nation, does an equally commendable act,
and the blame for the war rests with those who hold the slaves.
War is an ugly and an awful thing, while some peace theories are very
beautiful, and they are quite safe in times of peace; but when, in the
past, slaves had to be freed, then the true Christians took down their
old swords and shouldered their old guns, and went to the front. If we
read the inscriptions on the monuments erected to the memory of those
who died in our great Civil War, we find it was an army of Christians
who fell.
War is often a necessity. It cannot always be avoided, and, when it
comes, we want the best tools we can get with which to fight. It is
criminal negligence for a nation not to be prepared against war. It is
criminal negligence for a great nation not to be abreast of the times in
arms and equipment.
Often at the bayonet's point, trade and civilization and even
Christianity, have been forced upon the savage, and upon exclusive and
unwarlike peoples, and now Christianity, civilization, and militarism,
sisters of strange relation, hand in hand, embrace the world.
In "Sartor Resartus" Carlyle says:
"_The first ground handful of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal drove Monk
Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling. What will the last do?_"
His own answer is that it will
"... _achieve the final undisputed prostration of force under thought,
of animal courage under spiritual_."
Again Carlyle says, in the same work:
* * * * *
"_Such I hold to be the genuine use of gunpowder: that it makes all men
alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more
mind, though all but no body whatever, then canst thou kill me first,
and art the taller. Hereby, at last is the Goliath powerless and the
David resistless; savage animalism is nothing, inventive spiritualism is
all_."
* * * * *
What does the Bible say about Christ's mission of peace?
* * * * *
"_And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good will toward men" (Luke II: 13, 14)._
"_And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest ... to
guide our feet into the way of peace" (Luke I: 76, 79)._
"_And his name shall be called ... The Prince of Peace" (Is. IX: 6)._
* * * * *
I hold that there is nothing whatever in the foregoing quotations
inconsistent with warring for the right. From the nature of things, war
is often the price of peace, and justice can only be enforced by the
sword. In the great American Rebellion it was the voice of guns alone
that could command the emancipation of the slaves.
An apostle of the Prince of Peace may often best serve his Master by
becoming a good soldier. The Christian armies that turned back and drove
out of Europe the invading Moors rendered their Master better service
than had they, in order to escape war, fled before the advancing hosts
of Islam.
Should China and India become really aroused and advance during the next
twenty-five years as rapidly as has Japan during a like period in the
past, and should the great "Yellow Peril" rise in its might, and
threaten the Christian World, is there a single soldier of the Cross now
enlisted in the cause of Peace who would not then buckle on his
cartridge-belt, shoulder his gun, and go and fight in the defense of his
religion and his home?
I must confess my belief that, if invasion were threatened on the
Atlantic Coast, some of the pacifists I have met would not buckle on the
cartridge-belt, but would, on the contrary, gird up their loins, take
the advice of Horace Greeley, and go West.
Let us again quote from the Scriptures:
* * * * *
"_The Lord is a man of war_" (_Ex. XV: 3_).
"_The Lord of Hosts is his name_" (_Is. LI: 15_).
"_Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and
my fingers to fight" (Ps. CXLIV: 1)._
* * * * *
It is evident that the modern Christian misunderstands Christ's true
mission, for he said:
* * * * *
"_Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send
peace, but a sword" (Matt. X: 34)._
"_I am come to send fire on the earth" (Luke XII: 49)._
"_And he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one ...
for the things concerning me have an end" (Luke XXII: 36, 37)._
* * * * *
St. Paul said:
* * * * *
"_For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that
which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain; for he
is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth
evil" (Rom. XIII: 4)._
* * * * *
Dr. Lyman Abbott, who is one of the best of America's big men, and one
of the biggest of America's best men, has the following to say about
war:
* * * * *
"_I am not, therefore, one of those who think that war is always wrong.
I cannot think that Jesus Christ Himself inculcated the doctrine that
force never could be used--He who, when He saw the traders in the
Temple, did not wait to argue with them nor to appeal to their
conscience, for He knew that they had neither reason nor conscience, but
drove them out with a whip of small cords, driving the cattle before Him
and overturning the tables of the money-changers and letting the money
roll upon the floor. I am not afraid to follow Him with whatsoever force
it may be necessary for righteousness to put on, when unrighteousness
has armed herself to commit wrong. I cannot think all war is wrong. If I
did, I should not want to look upon a Bunker Hill Monument, for it would
be a monument to our shame; I should want never to speak the name of
Gettysburg, for my lips would blister and my cheeks would blush; I
should want to bury in the grave of oblivion the names of Washington and
Grant._"
* * * * *
There can be but one interpretation of Christian duty and but one
interpretation of true peace. Without justice, the mere absence of war
does not constitute peace to the Christian. Neither to the Christian is
warfare waged in the interest of justice incompatible with the peace
principles which underlie his religious faith. Therefore, the true
interpretation of peace is absence of war, where justice reigns, and the
true Christian mission is to see that justice be done, for without it
there can be no righteous peace. Such peace as can reign with injustice
becomes the abettor of injustice.
While I believe in international conciliation and arbitration, peace and
good will, I do not believe in unlimited arbitration. I do not believe
that arbitration can ever be a universal panacea with which all evils
can be cured without resort to firearms. There are times when throats
have to be cut, and when God is on the side of the executioner.
When a nation persists perennially in war, it can only be brought to
peace by some other nation which will meet it on the battlefield.
Christ established the dictum that they who take the sword shall perish
by the sword. War begets war. The sword brings the sword. As Napoleon
said about sparing murderers and abolishing capital punishment, "_Que
messieurs les assassins commencent_."
We want to put a stop to wars to save life. I wonder why it is that we
are not equally anxious to prevent loss of life from other causes
besides war. Why are we not equally interested in preventing the
tremendous loss of life from easily preventable railroad disasters? An
international movement for safety equipment and sanitation, with an
enlistment of effort and money equal to that being devoted to this great
peace movement would save many more lives every year than the annual
loss in the Napoleonic wars.
Dr. Strong, President of the American Institute of Social Service,
stated at a dinner several years ago, that the number of persons killed
and wounded every year in the United States alone by railroad accidents,
steamship accidents, workshop accidents, accidents in the streets, and
other accidents--all very largely due to preventable causes--amounts to
more than 500,000. In the Japanese-Russian war a total of 333,786 men
were killed and wounded on both sides, not counting the losses in naval
battles. During the same period in the United States alone the great
army of American laborers engaged in manufacturing and building
operations suffered a loss of 425,000 killed and injured; 92,000 more
were therefore killed and injured in our industries in one year than
during that entire war.
I wonder why it is that we are not as enthusiastic in this
social-service work as we are in attacking the problem of war. Is it
that there is more glory and more that appeals to the martial
imagination in attacking war and warriors than there is in the prosaic,
tame, and glamourless enterprise of simply saving human life in peaceful
pursuits for the mere sake of saving it? Is it the old war spirit in the
breasts of the peace men that moves them? Are they fighters, too? In
attacking war, do they feel that they are somehow identified with the
pomp and circumstance of glorious war?