The League of Nations may only be a first step in the direction of
permanent peace, yet not a few persons seem doubtful of its utility.
However, the league may be the lesser evil as compared with the old
regime, which appears to have resulted in total failure after a very
long and fair trial.
Whatever be the ultimate outcome of the league and of the problems to be
solved, the one encouraging thing is that all the people are thinking
seriously on the subject and longing for some way to stop war. It may be
true that lasting peace can only be secured when both people and leaders
(sometimes the people lead the leaders) realize the necessity of peace
and the senselessness of war. But to reach such a happy realization of
the truth what are we, the people, to do now? Already the discussions of
the league (pro and con) have fertilized the soil; the minds of the
people are open as never before; and now is the supreme moment to sow
peace seeds. The sooner, more thoroughly, and wider they are scattered,
the better. In this way we may be able to so impress peace ideas upon
everyone, as to avoid the terrible necessity of a future war, in which
both sides become exhausted, as in the Thirty Years' War, which would be
a much more horrible war than the present war.
To escape such a catastrophe and make a league of nations or any kind of
peace arrangements endure is preeminently an educational problem, and
consists mainly in repeatedly filling the minds of the people, old and
young, everywhere with fundamental peace conceptions. Shall we not begin
at once and persist in doing this until political wars become as
impossible in the future as religious wars are now?
SUGGESTIONS OF THE PEACE TREATY OF WESTPHALIA FOR THE LEAGUE OF
NATIONS.[1]
The conference of nations that has taken place around the peace table at
Paris is doubtless the most important of any in history. One reason is
the fact that the plan the conference has decided to carry out will
necessarily concern most all countries of the world. For railroads,
steamships, aeroplanes, telegraphs, telephones, and wireless telegraphy,
as never before, have made communication between nations so easy, quick,
and direct that distance is almost eliminated, enabling the whole world
to think, reason, and act at the same time, and to be influenced as one
human solidarity.
There seems to be a strong desire in all lands that the peace conference
will make future wars not only improbable but practically impossible.
But how can this be done? For years countless peace plans and theories
have been proposed filling volumes of books, but they are mainly of a
speculative nature. Since theoretical grounds have proved inadequate, is
there then any experience in the history of the world which can be made
a basis for permanent peace? Is there, for instance, any kind of war
that has resulted in doing away with itself permanently? The answer
would point to the Thirty Years' War, closing with the peace of
Westphalia (1648), which seems to have put an end to all religious wars.
How, then, does it happen that the peace treaty of Westphalia, of all
the treaties in the world, is the only one that has succeeded in
stopping all religious wars? We are certainly dealing here with a
phenomenal fact in history. The writer has been unable to find any
discussion of this phase of the matter. It would therefore seem of
interest and importance, especially at the present time, to make a brief
anthropological study of the Thirty Years' War which led to such an
exceptional and successful treaty.