CHARLES E. BEALS
Secretary Chicago Peace Society
The biennial gathering of the pacifist clans in the Fourth American
Peace Congress at St. Louis, May 1-3, enabled those who attended the
previous congresses (at New York in 1907, at Chicago in 1909 and at
Baltimore in 1911) to gauge the direction and speed of the movement.
Like its predecessors, the St. Louis congress was initiated by
the American Peace Society, which has been the national peace
organization in the United States since 1828. Unlike any of its
predecessors, the Fourth American Peace Congress was financed
entirely by the local commercial association. The New York Congress
had Mr. Carnegie for its god-father. The Chicago congress received
material assistance from the Chicago Association of Commerce. The St.
Louis congress was the first one the expenses of which were entirely
underwritten by business men through a business men’s organization.
This precedent will render easier the organization of future
congresses.
In one respect the St. Louis congress was unique—in the official
participation of Latin-American governments. This is not saying that
this was the first congress in which ambassadors have taken part.
Earl Grey, then governor general of Canada, Ambassador Bryce and
the Mexican ambassador were notable figures at New York. Count von
Bernstorff, the German ambassador, and diplomatic representatives
of other nations were present at Chicago, and Minister Wu Ting
Fang was the most picturesque and popular visitor at the latter
congress. Indeed the international session of the Chicago Congress
may perhaps be reckoned as the most thoroughly international of the
four congresses. At Baltimore a French senator and a Belgian senator
were conspicuous figures. But the St. Louis congress was the first in
which the ambassadors and ministers of the Latin-American nations sat
as official delegates representing their respective governments. And
the frank, honest, kindly message delivered by the Peruvian minister
was welcomed by all lovers of truth and international justice. In
fact the congress insisted that he should repeat his address at
another session.
The two addresses most warmly applauded were those of Dr. Thomas E.
Green and Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, both of Chicago. Dr. Green, a wide
traveler and popular Chautauqua lecturer, spoke in place of Secretary
of State Bryan, and his address was a piece of oratory of the sort
seldom heard in this scientific age.
Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones discussed the psychology of heroism. The
writer recalls riding with Mr. Jones in Washington in 1909, when we
were corralling speakers for the Chicago congress. Mr. Jones burst
out: “I want some one to discuss the psychology of war. There will
be plenty of discussion of international law and of the economic,
moral and educational aspects of the peace problem.” Then and there
the subject of Armaments as Irritants was assigned to the veteran
social worker and militant pulpiteer. And his presentation of this
subject before the Chicago congress (using the homely barnyard figure
of de-horning cattle) was one of the most delightful and valuable
contributions to that congress. At St. Louis he followed up this
psychological investigation with his survey of heroisms. So human,
so true to life, so morally prophetic, so shot through and through
with first hand information gained in four years of service in the
Civil War, so illumined with poetry and ripe literary culture was
this address, that again and again the speaker was forced to bow in
response to the prolonged applause.
There were not lacking men who “spoke by the book,” men who had
participated in the Hague Conferences, senators and representatives,
authors of books on international problems—men like former
Vice-President Fairbanks, Dr. James Brown Scott, Senator Burton
(president of the American Peace Society), Congressman Bartholdt
(president of the congress), Congressman Ainey, Dr. Benjamin F.
Trueblood (for over a score of years secretary of the American Peace
Society), Prof. Paul S. Reinsch, Prof. W. I. Hull, Dean W. P. Rogers;
the United States commissioner of education, Dr. Claxton; college
presidents like David Starr Jordan, C. F. Thwing, S. C. Mitchell, A.
Ross Hill, Laura Drake Gill, Frank L. McVey, Booker T. Washington,
and others; business men like Andrew Carnegie, Leroy A. Goddard, J.
G. Schmidlapp and Eugene Levering; the secretaries and directors
of various peace offices from Bunker Hill to the Golden Gate; the
official head of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Mrs.
Pennypacker, and her predecessor, Mrs. Phillip N. Moore, under whose
administration was created the peace department of the women’s clubs.
British America was represented by such distinguished men as Hon.
Benjamin Russell, justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, and
John Lewis, editor of the _Toronto Star_.
In connection with the congress inter-collegiate oratorical contests
were conducted, the coming Hundred Years of Peace Celebration
described, special church services held, and social courtesies
bestowed through receptions and dinners.
Should one ask what is the most characteristic feature of the peace
movement in 1913, perhaps it might truly be said that pacifism more
and more is being formulated into a science. The organized peace
movement began ninety-eight years ago purely as a moral reform. It is
no less a moral reform today. But it has accumulated a vast amount of
historic, economic, juridical, biological and general sociological
data.
When one considers the movement of the human animal from the day of
the man whose bones recently were dug up from the Sussex gravels;
when one measures the progress of human beings from cave-dwelling to
Universal Postal Unions and Hague Conferences and Courts; when one
notes the marked decrease in the number of wars, the total abolition
of private war, the almost revolutionary mitigation of war practices
(so that today one finds it comparatively comfortable to “get his
living by being killed”); when one remembers that the world is
beginning to think in economic terms; when one examines the beginning
already made towards the substitution of judicial procedure for fist
law; when one counts up the half hundred things actually being done
officially by governments acting internationally; when one perceives
that the man animal is specializing in two things—rational thinking
and morality—then one can easily believe that, having so progressed
from jungleism towards internationalism, the race probably will not
stop now and here.
Direction and distance are prophetic. Only by some unforeseen
and catastrophic and utter extinction of the human species can
man escape his blessed and inevitable and rapidly approaching
terrestrial destiny of organized pacifism and world-wide scientific
and industrial co-operation. The tiny mountain rill of pacifism
has become an ocean-seeking river, on whose mighty current the
war-afflicted human race is being borne on towards the ocean of a
real civilization.