BY
JOHN EDWARD OSTER
At present the question that is most prominent before the world is that
of peace. Almost everybody whom we meet has some opinion regarding this
question which he is ready to express. How has this opinion been formed?
It is certainly true that very, very few have thought carefully over
this question, or have studied it in a fair unbiased manner. There are
wide differences of opinion, and without the slightest doubt there are
very good and legitimate reasons for these wide differences. They arise
chiefly, perhaps, because of different local circumstances affecting
educational conditions, or the conditions of influential classes of
society, and a thousand and one other reasons, which may carry more or
less weight.
Practically every family has members who were more than once directly
affected by the absence of peace—war, and have wished for peace, or
without knowing it, had the pacifist spirit. Almost every person is
likely to feel a sense of deep injury under the pressure of an unpleasant
burden, and naturally thinks the issue or whatever it is must be fought
out with iron and blood. An opinion of some kind is there, which is
made up mostly of sentiment, based upon a somewhat erroneous knowledge
of some few facts in the situation. No matter which side of the fence
individuals are on, they have gained their ideas mostly from newspapers,
or from chance talks here and there, with men whom they believe, in
most instances to be much better informed than themselves, consequently
they are using the same source of information in most instances, and
conviction is simply deepened by a constant repetition of the thought.
Again, most people form their opinions and judgments without due
examination; they have a leaning toward one side of the question from
other considerations than those belonging to it; and many have an
unreasonable predilection toward the militaristic idea thinking that the
pacifist stands for weakness and possesses cowardly spirit. The minds of
many are biased on account of the vigorous propaganda carried out by the
militarists in the form of large armaments, and international tangles,
war scares and many other things which make international peace appear as
an utter impossibility.
It has been said that the first and most practical step in obtaining
what one wants in this world, is wanting it. Naturally a person would
think that the next step would be expressing what one wants, but usually
consists in wanting it still more and more until one can well express
it. This is particularly true when the thing a person wants is something
which concerns the whole world, for here all these other individuals who
must be asked perhaps have but a very slight interest in what one wants.
Until a large number desire a thing strong enough, and wish for it hard
enough to say it, and get it outside of themselves, and perhaps make it
contagious so that the thought will be catching to every person exposed
to it, nothing happens at all.
Every man who, in some public place, like a book, paints the picture of
his heart’s desire, and who throws forth as upon a screen where all men
may see them his most immediate and pressing ideals, performs a very
important service to humanity. If a man’s sole interest were to find out
what all men living in the world to-day, need and want most, and what
is necessary for their welfare, the best and only way for him to do it,
would be for him to write clearly, and quite definitely so that we could
all compare notes, on exactly what he wanted himself.
The thing that the populations of the earth want and need as a whole in
this darkness and din of the world is safety and security in the pursuits
of life, liberty, and happiness. Too many persons, with a pugnacious
tenacity, cling to the idea that world peace is an idle and futile dream.
Even so, nothing is more visionary, than trying to run a world without
dreams, especially an economic world such as the one we live on. It is
because even bad dreams are better on this foot stool than having no
dreams at all, that so called bad people are in a wholesale measure
allowed to run it. The one factor in economics to be reckoned with in
the final and practical sense, is the desire to do right. An ideal to be
sure, but at some time or other, it was an ideal that aroused the wrong
passions, and now it is only another corrective ideal that will arouse
the right passion. The next step by our political economists is the
statement of a shrewd, dogged, realizable ideal, and that is _universal
peace between nations_.
The great upheavals which precede changes of civilization, such as the
fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation of the Arabian Empire, seem
at first sight determined more especially by political transformations,
foreign invasions, or the annihilation and overthrow of dynasties. A more
attentive study of these events shows that behind their apparent causes,
the real cause, as a rule, is seen to be, a modification in the opinions
of the populations. The true historical upheavals are not those which
compel astonishment by their spectacularity, and impetuous violence, and
vehemence. The only important changes whence the renewal of civilization
is a resultant, affects ideas, opinions and beliefs.
The landmarks of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes
of human opinion, and the reason these great memorable events are so
rare, is, because there is nothing so stable in a race, as the inherited
groundwork, and fundamental foundation of its opinions. The present
epoch, without a doubt, is one of these critical times, in which the
opinion of mankind, is undergoing a great transformation.
There are two fundamental factors at the bottom of this transformation.
The first, caused by the wholesale destruction of life and property,
which shakes to pieces the political and social beliefs in which all
the elements of our civilization are rooted. The second is the creation
of entirely new conditions of existence of thought as the result of
multitudinous scientific, modern, and industrial discoveries. The
opinions of the past, although half destroyed, being still very powerful,
as the present state of militarism proves, and the opinions which are to
replace them, being still in a process of transformation, the present age
represents a period of transition and political confusion.
As yet, we cannot say exactly what will be evolved some day from this
necessarily somewhat chaotic period. What will be the fundamental ideas
on which the societies that are to succeed our own, will be built up?
At present, there is no manner of knowing. It is perfectly clear, that
the societies of the future will have to reckon with a new power, and
that power is public opinion. On the ruins of so many ideas formerly
considered beyond discussion, and now either dead or dying, of so many
sources of authority that successive revolutions have destroyed, this
power, which alone has arisen in their stead seems soon destined to
absorb the others. While practically all of our ancient beliefs are
tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving
way, one by one, the power of public opinion is the only force that is
growing, and of which the prestige is steadily and continually on the
increase. The age we are about to enter, will, in truth, be governed by
public opinion.
Less than a century ago the traditional policy of European States and the
rivalries of sovereigns were the principal factors that shaped events,
consequently the opinion of the masses did not count, and was scarcely
noticed. To-day the opposite state of affairs predominates, and it is
the traditions which used to obtain in politics, and the individual
tendencies and rivalries of rulers, which are counting for less and less;
while, on the contrary, the voice of the people has become preponderant.
It is this voice that dictates their conduct to rulers, whose endeavor it
is, to take notice of its utterances.
Practically all the world’s masters, all the founders of religions or
empires, the apostles of all beliefs, eminent statesmen, and in a more
modest sphere, the mere chiefs of small groups of men have always been
unconscious psychologists, possessed of an instinctive and often very
scientific knowledge of the character of public opinion. It was mostly
this accurate knowledge that enabled them so easily to establish their
complete mastery as was so often done.
Napoleon had a marvellous insight into the public opinion of the country
over which he reigned, but he, at times, completely misunderstood it,
and overshot the mark, and as a rule completely misunderstood the public
opinion of other nations. It was because he misunderstood it that he
engaged in Spain, and notably in Russia, in conflicts in which his power
received blows, which were destined within a brief period of time to ruin
it. Neither did the most subtle advisers of Napoleon understand public
opinion, as they should have done, for Talleyrand wrote him, that: “Spain
would receive his soldiers as Liberators.” The real truth of the matter
was, that it received them as beasts of prey. A slight acquaintance with
public opinion in that case would have easily foreseen this reception.
Public opinion rules and is practically as unattackable as our religious
ideas were in the Middle Ages. Imagine a modern free thinker translated
into those days of the Middle Ages. Can you think that, after having
ascertained the sovereign power of the religious opinion that was then
in force, that he would have been tempted to attack it? Having fallen
into the hands of a judge disposed to have him burned at the stake, under
the imputation of having concluded a pact with the Devil, or of having
participated in the Witches’ Sabbath, would it have occurred to him to
dispute the existence of the Devil or of the Witches’ Sabbath? It were as
wise to oppose a cyclone with discussion as public opinion, which is a
slow growth and gradually comes from within, or, in other words, is the
product of education.
As a consequence of the slowness of the movement of the psychological
characteristics of races, great stability and fixity, which prevents the
overthrow of the equilibrium of races, and their works, is the result.
Only in the long run, and by slow hereditary accumulations, is it
possible for the psychological and the anatomical elements of the human
species to be transformed. The evolution of civilization depends wholly
on these transformations.
Public opinion is often made by prominent factors, such as wants, the
struggle for life, the action of certain surroundings, the progress of
industry and the sciences, education facilities, wars, etc. Ideas do
not become public opinion, until, as the consequence of a very slow
elaboration, they have descended from the mobile regions of thought,
to that stable, and unconscious region of the sentiments, in which the
motives of our intentions are elaborated. They then become elements
of character and begin to influence conduct. It is this line up of
unconscious ideas, that give us character. The idea of international
Peace, has been at work for several generations, and on account of the
slowness of our mental transformations, many generations of men are
needed to secure the triumph of new ideas, and many generations are
necessary to cause old ideas to disappear. During the Middle Ages, there
were two principal ideas: Religious and feudal. Its arts, literature and
whole conception of life were derived from these ideas, until the time of
the Renaissance when they began to change; and also the conception of
life, the arts and literature underwent an entire transformation.
No matter what the nature of the ideas may be, whether scientific,
artistic, philosophic, or religious, the mechanism of its propagation
remains identically the same. With International Peace, it is the same,
and must first be adopted, as has been done, by a small number of
apostles, the intensity of whose faith and the authority of whose names
give great prestige. As soon as these apostles succeed in convincing
a small circle of adepts and thus form new apostles, the new idea
enters into the domain of discussion, where it first arouses universal
opposition, because it necessarily clashes with much that is very old
and well established. The apostles who defend it are naturally greatly
excited by the opposition, which causes them to defend the new idea
with energy and diligence. The new idea becomes more and more a subject
of discussion, and of course is entirely accepted by the one side and
entirely rejected by the other side, with almost as much vehemence. These
impassioned debates help the progress of the idea very materially, and it
keeps going and going, and the new generations who find it controverted
tend to adopt it merely because it is a progressive measure, and because
young people, always eager to be independent, find wholesale opposition
to old ideas to be the most accessible form of originality.
Consequently, the new idea continues to gain in strength, and finally
it does not need any more support, and spreads everywhere by the mere
effect of imitation, acting with contagion, a faculty with which humans
are very heavily endowed. Just as soon as the mechanism of contagion
intervenes, the idea enters on the phase which necessarily signifies
ultimate success, and it then becomes public opinion, and takes on a
penetrating and subtle force, which spreads it progressively among
all intellects, creating simultaneously a sort of special receptive
atmosphere or a general manner of thinking. Like the fine dust of the
prairie, which penetrates everywhere, it finds its way into the interior
of all the conceptions, and all the productions of an epoch, and the idea
and its consequences, then form part of that compact stock of hereditary
commonplaces loaded on us by education. Thus the idea has triumphed, and
has entered the domain of public opinion, where it has nothing to fear.
The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is a fine
example of the reception accorded an idea by public opinion as I have
illustrated above. For seventy years the apostles of the political
doctrine that the direct election of United States Senators by the people
is best for them, kept hammering away with their arguments, until it was
finally adopted as an amendment to the Constitution. The object of most
arguments are at first abhorred, finally endured, and eventually embraced.
The idea of International Peace like the Seventeenth Amendment, has
practically run its prescribed course for adoption. It has reached
the point where progress is rapid. Of the various ideas which guide a
civilization, some rest confined with the upper grades of the nation,
while others go deep down among the population. As a rule they arrive
there much deformed, but, when they do arrive there, the power they exert
over primitive minds incapable of much reasoning is wonderfully large.
Under such conditions the idea represents something that is practically
invincible, and its efforts are hurled forward with violence analagous
to a stream that has overflown its banks. There are always hundreds of
thousands of men in a nation of the larger sort who are ready to risk
their lives to defend an idea as soon as this idea has actually convinced
or subjugated them.
International Peace has been talked and discussed for so many years,
that the time is now ripe for it to be inaugurated as part of the
international law of the world.