BY
WINTER RUSSELL
The war state stands before us to-day proud and unafraid. It is however
self-conscious. To use the figures and similes of Carlisle in his
“Characteristics” like Doctor Kitchener, it has a good system. It is not
like the Indian war state that knew no other kind of state and therefore
didn’t realize that it had a system nor was it like Countryman and “had
no system.” The war state to-day has a system and it glories in it. Its
rules are God’s laws and man’s vices and crimes are its virtues. It knows
its purposes which it says are divine.
Those purposes are first to secure order within, second to make war
without. It might almost say that its purpose is to make war without. In
no sense of the word does it make war without so that it can keep order
within. Its purpose therefore is to make war for it keeps order within
so it can better make war without. It might almost say, in fact, it does
say that if it did not make war it would have no right to exist. If it
doesn’t make war better than another it has no right to exist. It makes
war that it may grow, that it may develop, that it may progress, that
it may enlarge itself. It ceases from war for the time being only that
it may prepare to make war again. War is its health, its vocation. Its
provisional peace is its novitiate, its apprenticeship, its years of
training. Should it cease to grow and enlarge itself, it would thereby
cease to be healthy and true to its main purpose.
An axiom with many people is that the truth or falsity of many if not
all contentions can be found by magnifying them or trying to make them
universal. If the contention of the world state is valid this axiom would
seem to have found its Waterloo, for it is obvious that if the perfect
war state is ever achieved it must constantly grow, it must extend its
boundaries continuously. When the war state shall have reached its zenith
it will fall into the inevitable decay and degeneration that comes
with peace, unless it should divide the World state up into tiny and
imperfect war states and begin over again the centuries which were spent
in warfare, to see from which centre of the globe the new war state shall
spread itself. For it is apparent that since war is necessary, a world of
peace would almost be worse than no world at all.
If wars cannot come with the inevitableness with which astute ministers
try to clothe them they must be consciously and openly caused merely for
the sake of having war.
It may be said and it indeed often is that such a conclusion is
impossible, that no constantly growing war state can evolve. War’s
spokesmen say that power too widespread places the beneficent uses of
conflict beyond the reach of the majority of such a state and malign
peace causes inner decay. Eternal bloodshed it would appear is the price
of national health. And several hostile war states must forever rock
progress in its crimson cradle.
This presents to us the other horn of the logical dilemma. All states
owe it to themselves and to the world to become thoroughly militarized.
Hatred and rivalry must be constantly cherished. Socialism’s dream of an
international brotherhood that has beguiled the hearts of many who fear
most of its other principles is indeed only a dream to be dispelled when
the State’s real function is exercised.
Iron, hinting its own scarcity, must be primarily used for Busy Berthas,
submarines and breast piercers. Motor trucks which it was hoped were to
be the disseminators of food and strength are to become the swift germs
of international disease.
Much of the ever-growing spring of inventive geniuses must be turned from
its natural channel of construction to flow through the ways of death
and destruction. The works we glory in in times of peace must become the
enemies of life. Ships that float upon the bosom of the air deal their
horrible and flaming shafts. The dove-like aeroplane becomes the eye of
the army dragon.
War states shall build this commerce but to destroy it as children knock
down their toy houses. Philanthropists shall attempt to soften and heal
the sore spots of society but to see the nations’ statesmen tear and rend
the living flesh, leaving ulcers that cannot close for years.
The war state of course has satisfactory reasons for making war for
growth and development. It must make war to spread its civilization
and destroy other civilizations. There could be no concert or symphony
of civilizations properly speaking. Civilizations serve their purposes
only as they die and pass away. The myriads of philanthropists, social
workers, statesmen and jurists in various states that have not received
the gospel of war are not building for all time. They are building
primarily to render more glorious the victory of the war state. Artists
that create, architects that build are only making structures whose rôle
in man’s history is to be noble ruins.
Physicians and scientists shall study man’s body, make warfare upon his
unseen enemies, plan and plot the life of health, spend years in study
and research, that they may save a few from the plagues of typhoid, of
pneumonia, consumption and the other afflictions of man’s body only to
see man’s latest death dealing toy destroy in seconds the healthful
tissues it has taken years to build. They shall see their systems of
sanitation and hygiene fall like a phantom castle in the air. Disorder,
rapine and lust shall spread more disease than health boards could
cure or prevent in a decade, and last of all they shall find themselves
marshalled and arrayed as one of the brigades in the cohorts of death.
The students of sociology and of economic reform will plan and contrive
systems of life that shall create and preserve the rights and property of
all only to see them swept away as the tidal wave sweeps away a city in
its ruthless coming on. Education realizing as it does that its purpose
is not only to instruct but to nourish and tutor the soul, to win the
mind to love and inspiring thoughts, sees its gentle years made worse
than wasted by the hours of passion and hatred that lengthen into weeks,
months and years of war. It sees its histories made hateful and horrid
with the tales of grief and death. Seeking in some small way to assist
the church in its work of winning love for one’s neighbor, it has to
place upon its shelves the stories that engender hate and fear. Not the
good things that our neighbors have done us but the ill that we have done
to them and they have done to us are made the subject of story and glory.
Art is conscripted to herald forth the might, majesty and mystery of
hell, caparisoned in all the trappings of death’s glitter and brandishing
the latest implement of pain. Poetry’s sweet notes become rasping and
strident as they reiterate the tales that should only be told or sung by
the furies and witches of Hades.
Two thousand years ago we were told that no man could serve two masters
and yet the apologists of war tell us with astounding frankness that the
morals of the state and of the individual not only can but should be
different. Man can at the behest of state, wound, maim, tear, and kill,
he may commit rape, robbery, arson and murder and yet be virtuous. He can
do this and still be expected to go back to his home and be as noble and
loved a rational creature as he was before. While he is doing this and
spreading misery, those whom he has left behind for a time or forever are
also ennobled and inspired and those to whom he comes, whose villages
are crushed by shot and shell and rendered a flaming sacrifice on the
altar of war, are taught the power of godlike soldiers. The time will
come, however, when we shall realize that man cannot serve not only God
and Mammon but he cannot serve God and Mars. Who knows but we are simply
awaiting the scientist who shall show the unerring and uninterrupted
flood from the horrors of war to the criminal years of peace. The seeds
that we sow in the years of hatred and pain bring forth the fruit that
fill our prisons and render our normal life so fretful and feverish.
The war state tells its people to forgive and forget, to coöperate, to
sacrifice, to be unselfish and yet it says to its people: “You as a unit
shall not coöperate, you shall fight, you shall not forgive and forget,
you shall cherish revenge and nourish the passion to retaliate. You shall
not as a people make sacrifices, you shall take from others and make
others sacrifice.” Either Mars or God, must and will at length prevail.
The world cannot forever serve them both.
The war state is to its neighbor as the robber is to the unprepared
banker. The war state says: “You have had years to prepare for war and
you have not prepared. You have put your strength to the uses and arts
of peace, you have developed the mind and the spirit of your people and
since you have neglected its iron body you must render tribute unto me.”
So a robber might say to a bank president: “You have had time to build
your vault of steel and install your burglar alarms yet you have not
prepared and I have come with my revolver and lantern to deprive you of
your well earned gain. I shall deprive you even of the earnings of the
poor that have been entrusted to you, for might makes right and force is
the power that rules the world.” The pugilist might as well say to the
college president: “You have had years to develop your muscles, and to
perfect yourself in the art of fisticuff and self-defense and you have
neglected it, therefore I shall assume your position and if you like
it not I shall give you a knockout blow and drag you from your college
office.”
A world of harmony, a world that shall in truth know the music of the
spheres will not be known until it becomes a world of forgiveness, of
international coöperation and sacrifice. As difficult as it was and long
as it took, the modest forgiveness that has marked the relations of the
North and South and the wholeness that has blessed that forgiveness and
coöperation is an unquestionable witness to the virtue and necessity of
applying to peoples and states the same virtues and the same ethics that
we apply one to another. We have got to limit not only the war state but
the war man. We have got to realize that not only as individuals but as
states, we are all members one of another. Nationalism is in its best
sense, a virtue just as individualism is in its best sense a virtue. The
individual should give to the world the best that is in him and so should
the state, but no more can a state give it by making war than can a man
by being an enemy of his fellows.
Much of the nationalism that we hear about is worse than useless
because it engenders hatred and nourishes pride. Who to-day thinks that
Hayne’s ideal was higher than Webster’s? What is there in being a South
Carolinian, or of the State of Massachusetts, so important as being a
citizen of the United States or what is there about being a citizen of
the United States so glorious as being a brother of all mankind?