President Faunce Believes the Spirit of Perpetual Peace Is Lurking in
Public Schools.
Since the majority of evils spring from ignorance, education is the
surest safeguard of virtue. It is a strong perversity that continues
against a real understanding of the truth.
If war is an evil—moral, economic—as both economists and moralists
generally admit, the hope of universal peace rests upon education. For
that reason the suggestions made by President H. P. Faunce, of Brown
University, in a speech at New Haven, carry the greater weight. He said:
No great movement is permanent until placed on an educational basis.
Whatever enters the public mind through the schools enters as sunshine
and rain into the fiber of the oak. A world-wide movement is now in
progress, having as its object not the reformation of human nature,
not the disbanding of all armies and navies, but simply the
establishment of a better means than war for the settling of the
disputes that must occur as long as the nations endure.
Already great results have been accomplished. Arbitration has been
substituted for war in the majority of the cases. War is now the
exception, not the rule, in case of international quarrel. It is not
true that “in time of peace we must prepare for war,” but rather that
in time of peace, we must prepare to make war impossible.
There is a growing appreciation throughout the world of the
irrationality and futility of war. We have come to realize that the
simultaneous discharge of pistols at fifty paces is no more likely to
establish justice than the tossing of pennies or the throwing of the
dice.
When the duelist became absurd, dueling was dead. The time is surely
coming when the international duel will seem, in the face of
international opinion, an utterly stupid way of settling differences.
What can we do in the public schools? We can inculcate the broad
principle that rational men, when they differ, should appeal to reason
and not to force. Already our schoolboys do this in athletics. They
are accustomed to accept the decisions of umpires and referees without
whining or complaint. The athletic field is a direct training for
arbitration on a large scale.
We can teach in our schools that peace hath her victories no less
renowned than war. We are learning to exalt a new type of heroism—the
heroism of the social settlement of the city missionary, of the men
and women who are devoting their lives to the uplifting of social
conditions in the heart of our great cities. This newer heroism must
be taught in our public schools.
We can inculcate the brotherhood of man in every class in our schools,
and in every study that is taught. We can show that racial antagonisms
are baseless and brutal. Each of the various races makes its own
contribution to modern civilization. The last address of John Hay was
an appeal for this point of view; for earnest endeavor on the part of
all men and women in responsible positions to inculcate the method of
arbitration as a substitute for the utilities of war.