EGO-FANATIC GOOD INTENTIONS AND
THEIR RELATION TO NATIONAL
DEFENSE
"If you will study history you will find that freedom, when it has been
destroyed, has always been destroyed by those who shelter themselves
under the cover of its forms, and who speak its language with
unparalleled eloquence and vigor."--_Lord Salisbury._
There is a no more consistent thing in its constancy than human
inconsistency.
Many of those who are most pretentious about the virtue of a meek and
lowly spirit manifest characteristics the exact opposite of their
self-vaunted pretensions. Often the most enthusiastic and devout workers
for a principle are themselves, when put to trial, most pronounced
violators of that principle.
Some years ago, while on ship for England, I formed the acquaintance of
Sir William Wyndeer, of Australia. He told me that there was a famous
woman pacifist on board, who wanted to meet me. She was a notorious
militant moral reformer--the Carrie Nation of England. I went with him
to where she was sitting on the deck in a steamerchair, and, on being
introduced, sat down beside her.
She opened the conversation with the remark: "Do you know that men like
you ought to be hanged; that hanging is too good for you; that men like
you, who invent and make explosives and guns to kill people, ought to be
killed with them yourselves? That would give you a dose of your own
medicine."
I replied by asking her what she thought of the Armenian atrocities,
which were at that time being perpetrated.
"What do I think of them?" she answered. "I think just this--that, if I
were the Queen of England, I would put an end to that business pretty
quick."
"How would you do it?" I asked.
"Why," she responded, "I would go there with an army, and exterminate
those beastly Turks."
"If you were to do that," said I, "surely you would need some of the
tools for killing people, like those you blame me for inventing, would
you not?"--She would not speak to me after that.
In the Dark Ages, they who were responsible for inflicting upon heretics
the most exquisite tortures, were the foremost good-intentionists of
their time. They believed they were following the teachings of Christ,
and applying them in their business and social relations. Their aim was
to practise what they preached: "Love one another," "Love thy neighbor
as thyself," "On earth peace, good will toward men."
So imbued were they with what they conceived to be divine principles
that it was self-evident to them that there was no excuse for any one
holding any other opinion than theirs, and that any one who held a
different opinion was an enemy of God and man, and should be punished
accordingly. They called difference from their opinion heresy, which was
branded as the most heinous of all crimes. Those good-intentionists of
the Torquemada type racked, flayed, and burned, with a meek and lowly
spirit, for the love of God. The horror of St. Bartholomew was to them
merely a frolic of brotherly love.
Advocates of disarmament, non-resistance, and the subversion of the
military spirit are themselves most militant creatures. They fail to see
that, if retiring, non-resistant pacifism is the best policy for a
nation to adopt in order to get what it wants, they themselves should
adopt such pacifism to get what they want. While they decry every manner
of aggression, still they undertake to enforce their doctrines by most
aggressive practices.
Never in all human history has any person or class of persons attempted
to proselyte others to a doctrine of mildness, meekness, self-sacrifice,
and lowly-spiritedness without attempting to enforce the doctrine. In
so doing, the practice has been the exact opposite of the preachment.
Robespierre and Marat notably exemplified this truth. Before the French
Revolution, Robespierre was noted as a pacifist of the most pretentious
cheek-turning type, and Marat was a pacific moralist dyed in the wool.
When raised to dictatorial power, however, Robespierre became the
wickedest and most venomous of all the fanged monsters of cruelty in the
history of mankind; while bloody Marat, clothed with authority, used
murder as the sole means of reform. The actions of Robespierre and Marat
were the exact opposite of their code for the conduct of others.
The advocates of non-resistance may be perfectly conscientious. It is
not to be doubted for one moment that the majority of them are actuated
by the best intentions and the kindliest of motives. Torquemada
sincerely hoped to do a great good by torturing heretics in the Spanish
Inquisition. He is notable among those who have paved broad highways of
Hell with good intentions.
The hyper-sentimental pacifists are today actively engaged in paving a
broad highway through this country, over which the hell of war is
invited by them.
Devotion to the end justified the means to such a well-meaning fanatic
as Torquemada. The same was doubtless true of Catherine de' Medici, who
mothered the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The bloody Duke of Alva,
Executioner Extraordinary to Philip II of Spain, who undertook the task
of killing the entire population of the Netherlands, because their
religious opinion differed from the Spanish brand, could not have been
so enthusiastically devoted to the monstrous villainy had he not been
inspired by what was to his mind the best of intentions.
It is remarkable what an influence a very little thing may sometimes
have in shaping the policy of a people or the fate of a nation.
Religious sects have been formed upon the various interpretations of a
single phrase; a difference of opinion about the meaning of a word has
set them at one another's throats.
Millions upon millions of dollars have been spent in the United States
in peace propagandism, and eloquent lungs have hoarsed themselves to
defeat Congressional appropriations for defense, simply because the
phrase, _preparation for war_, has been used instead of the phrase,
_preparation against war_.
An organization of American women, under the head, Woman's Peace Party,
has lately been created. The main resolution adopted by the organization
is the following:
* * * * *
"_Resolved:_
"_That we dencunce with all the earnestness of which we are capable the
concerted attempt now being made to force this country into still
further preparedness for war. We desire to make a solemn appeal to the
higher attributes of our common humanity to help us unmask this menace
to our civilization._"
* * * * *
They have made the grave mistake of using the expression for _war_ in
place of the expression _against war_.
The pacifist propagandists, the army and navy men, and all their friends
and supporters, are alike agreed that it is wise to make efficient
preparations _against_ war. None of us wants war, but when we, who
believe in armaments, speak of them as preparations _for_ war, then the
pacifists are in immediate disagreement with us. Let us, therefore, in
future substitute the phrase _against war_ for the phrase _for war_.
Among the organizers of this so-called party are women of national
prominence. They are sincere in their purpose, their aim is high. They
are emulating the dictum of Emerson, for they have hitched their wagon
to a star--Dr. David Starr--(never mind the Jordan). They solemnly make
this pledge:
"_We do hereby band ourselves together to demand that war should be
abolished._"
It is well to note that they have used the word _should_ instead of
_shall_.
The greatest difficulty in teaching truth is to remove the bias of false
learning; for a firm conviction, once established in the mind, gives the
mind a fixed set in a certain direction. This is strongly exemplified by
the fact that persons who have been proselyted to a certain religious
creed can seldom be made to change their faith.
We are what our opinions are. Our opinion shapes our destiny to its own
bent. In short, a man is absolutely at the mercy of his opinion.
We have very little to do, however, with the shaping of our own opinion.
That is mostly shaped by others. We go to church to have our opinion
bent, or its present bent stiffened. We attend a lecture and get a new
kink put into our opinion; we converse with our friends, and they dent
our opinion; we read books and newspapers, learn something, and are
swerved in the direction of our learning, especially in the direction of
public opinion. Always and always, while we think that we are shaping
our own opinion, we are having it shaped by others.
The estimable ladies of the Woman's Peace Party are merely parading like
sandwich men, disporting a legend written on a board by the man higher
up, with whom they believe it is most creditable to agree.
At the present time, the false teachings of the peace-propagandists have
so proselyted public opinion that every public speaker, aspiring to
popular favor, finds it easy, even with a weakling voice and a halting
speech, to get his audience with him, and to win a reputation for
eloquence and wisdom by prating the bromidial spielings of the
peace-propagandists.
A great many men and women in this country hold the same false opinion
that the ladies of the Woman's Peace Party hold. Possibly something
besides the humiliation of this country by war may lead them into the
light of understanding. War, however, will do it, and by their able
co-operation with the forces of the future enemies of the country, they
are hastening the advent of that war.
If we were to disarm, as these ladies advise, war would come upon us
with consternate suddenness. Then, when they saw the desolation and the
waste; saw their homes in flames; when they saw innocent citizens
clumped in open spaces and shot down with machine-guns; when they saw
little children, lean as shadows, starving everywhere; when they
encountered insult and maltreatment at every turn; then all their
womanhood would revolt and rise up with an altered mind.
Like the light that descended from Heaven on Saul of Tarsus, the light
of the truth would descend on those ladies through the smoke of their
burning homes--that armed preparedness against such a dread eventuality
as war is the supreme of virtue, and its neglect the worst of crimes.
By their help that war is very likely to come, and if it does come, we
shall find them, as the women of England, ministering angels in the
hospitals of the wounded. We shall find them at the recruiting stations,
urging enlistment. We shall find them fitting out their sons, husbands,
and brothers for the front. We shall find them, as in England, training
in the use of arms as a last emergency reserve. We shall find them, as
in England, doing police duty, that the city guardians may go to the
front. As the women of Carthage cut the hair from their heads to make
bow-strings, so these very women of the Peace Party, as the women of
England are doing, as the women of Germany are doing, will sacrifice
their jewelry, and all their most precious possessions, to supply the
sinews of war.
It is a mistake to suppose that, because men bear arms in war, they are
the chief sufferers in war, or make the chief sacrifices. The sexes
suffer equally, for to win victory they make mutual and equal
sacrifices, and in defeat they suffer mutually every conceivable and
every inconceivable laceration of body, pride, and honor.
The supposition is erroneous that woman is less brave or less militant
in war than man. In times of peace, when her help is not needed in the
sterner affairs of life, she may be as gentle as a dove and as kind as a
purring kitten; but, when her help is needed in stern affairs, she is
never found wanting. When the cubs are in danger, "the female of the
species is more deadly than the male."
The abject condition of Belgian women and children since the German
invasion is merely typical of what women and children must inevitably
suffer at the hands of invaders. It matters not whether a country be
invaded by Germans, Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or by Americans. The stern
exigencies of war require that the invaders shall bend every energy and
employ every resource to the attainment of the main purpose--victory.
The invaders themselves are compelled to make extreme sacrifices, and to
bear extreme suffering and privation, and are not in a mood to take on
more burden or to suffer extra privations, and, above all, to risk
success, in order to alleviate the suffering of the enemy's women and
children. Sympathy and mercy, however, do often lead them to be far
kinder than would best suit the demands of stern necessity.
It was when Sherman found himself compelled to drive out the civil
inhabitants of Atlanta, to prepare for his march to the sea, that in
reply to protests on behalf of the women and children, he made his
world-famous declaration, "War is hell; and we cannot civilize it or
refine it."
The supreme duty of a nation is to safeguard its people from such a
crisis and such a calamity. It is useless to lament the miseries of our
women and children, after we have, through neglect of national
defenses, brought the calamities of war upon them.
With strange inconsistency, the women of the Woman's Peace Party, though
they bemoan the lot of the poor women and children of Belgium, are by
their own acts inviting the same calamity to fall upon themselves and on
their children.
Herbert Spencer observed that individual life is a tendency to establish
an equilibrium between internal and external forces. This observation
applies also to the life of social organizations, except that, when
applied to nations, it should be differently stated, as follows--the
life of a nation is the tendency to establish an equilibrium between
internal forces, and also between those forces and external forces.
Opposing forces separately tend toward instability of equilibrium, but
collectively, by operating against one another, they tend to the
establishment of an equilibrium. Individual action in a group of
individuals tends to heterogeneity, aggregated action to homogeneity.
One of the mainsprings of progress is the pertinacity of enthusiasts and
faddists. Even the self-appointed ego-fanatic moral reformers are often
useful, because they tend to throw society out of balance. This rouses
the great mass of the people to inquiry and raises them to a broader
understanding, with the result that, in the end, pernicious
propagandists, who have overshot the mark, are brought back nearer the
mark, and the sane mass of the people brought nearer the mark. A fanatic
reformer sometimes injects dynamic force into a static condition. It
seems to be a rational assumption, therefore, that, in all things where
organized feminist fanaticism of both men and women is today working
evil, the great body of sane and normal men and women ought to exert
their united influence to the full as a stabilizer, or equilibrator of
the social organization.