Part 6

1. One of the most important is the prejudice from _belief in its necessity_. When War is called a necessity, it is meant, of course, that its object can be attained in no other way. Now I think it has already appeared, with distinctness approaching demonstration, that the professed object of War, which is justice between nations, is in no respect promoted by War,--that force is not justice, nor in any way conducive to justice,--that the eagles of victory are the emblems of successful force only, and not of established right. Justice is obtained solely by the exercise of reason and judgment; but these are silent in the din of arms. Justice is without passion; but War lets loose all the worst passions, while "Chance, high arbiter, more embroils the fray." The age is gone when a nation within the enchanted circle of civilization could make war upon its neighbors for any declared purpose of booty or vengeance. It does "nought in hate, but all in _honor_." Such is the present rule. Professions of tenderness mingle with the first mutterings of strife. As if conscience-struck at the criminal abyss into which they are plunging, each of the great litigants seeks to fix upon the other some charge of hostile aggression, or to set up the excuse of defending some asserted right, some Texas, some Oregon. Each, like Pontius Pilate, vainly washes its hands of innocent blood, and straightway allows a crime at which the whole heavens are darkened, and two kindred countries are severed, as the vail of the Temple was rent in twain.

Proper modes for the determination of international disputes are Negotiation, Mediation, Arbitration, and a Congress of Nations,--all practicable, and calculated to secure peaceful justice. Under existing Law of Nations these may be employed at any time. _But the very law sanctioning War may be changed_, as regards two or more nations by treaty between them, and as regards the body of nations by general consent. If nations can agree in solemn provisions of International Law to establish War as Arbiter of Justice, they can also agree to abolish this arbitrament, and to establish peaceful substitutes,--precisely as similar substitutes are established by Municipal Law to determine controversies among individuals. A system of Arbitration may be instituted, or a Congress of Nations, charged with the high duty of organizing an _Ultimate Tribunal_, instead of "these battles." To do this, the will only is required.

Let it not be said, then, that war is a _necessity_; and may our country aspire to the glory of taking the lead in disowning the barbarous system of LYNCH LAW among nations, while it proclaims peaceful _substitutes_! Such a glory, unlike the earthly fame of battle, will be immortal as the stars, dropping perpetual light upon the souls of men.

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2. Another prejudice is founded on _the practice of nations_, past and present. There is no crime or enormity in morals which may not find the support of human example, often on an extended scale. But it will not be urged in our day that we are to look for a standard of duty in the conduct of vain, fallible, mistaken man. Not by any subtile alchemy can man transmute Wrong into Right. Because War is according to the practice of the world, it does not follow that it is right. For ages the world worshipped false gods,--not less false because all bowed before them. At this moment the prevailing numbers of mankind are heathen; but heathenism is not therefore true. Once it was the practice of nations to slaughter prisoners of war; but the Spirit of War recoils now from this bloody sacrifice. By a perverse morality in Sparta, theft, instead of being a crime, was, like War, dignified into an art and accomplishment; like War, it was admitted into the system of youthful education; and, like War, it was illustrated by an instance of unconquerable firmness, barbaric counterfeit of virtue. The Spartan youth, with the stolen fox beneath his robe eating into his bowels, is an example of fortitude not unlike that so often admired in the soldier. Other illustrations crowd upon the mind; but I will not dwell upon them. We turn with disgust from Spartan cruelty and the wolves of Taygetus,--from the awful cannibalism of the Feejee Islands,--from the profane rites of innumerable savages,--from the crushing Juggernaut,--from the Hindoo widow on her funeral pyre,--from the Indian dancing at the stake; but had not all these, like War, the sanction of established usage?

Often is it said that we need not be wiser than our fathers. Rather strive to excel our fathers. What in them was good imitate; but do not bind ourselves, as in chains of Fate, by their imperfect example. In all modesty be it said, we have lived to little purpose, if we are not wiser than the generations that have gone before. It is the exalted distinction of man that he is progressive,--that his reason is not merely the reason of a single human being, but that of the whole human race, in all ages from which knowledge has descended, in all lands from which it has been borne away. We are the heirs to an inheritance grandly accumulating from generation to generation, with the superadded products of other lands. The child at his mother's knee is now taught the orbits of the heavenly bodies,

"Where worlds on worlds compose one Universe,"

the nature of this globe, the character of the tribes by which it is covered, and the geography of countries, to an extent far beyond the ken of the most learned in other days. It is true, therefore, that antiquity is the real infancy of man. Then is he immature, ignorant, wayward, selfish, childish, finding his chief happiness in lowest pleasures, unconscious of the higher. The animal reigns supreme, and he seeks contest, war, blood. Already he has lived through infancy and childhood. Reason and the kindlier virtues, repudiating and abhorring force, now bear sway. The time has come for temperance, moderation, peace. We are the true ancients. The single lock on the battered forehead of old Time is thinner now than when our fathers attempted to grasp it; the hour-glass has been turned often since; the scythe is heavier laden with the work of death.

Let us not, then, take for a lamp to our feet the feeble taper that glimmers from the sepulchre of the Past. Rather hail that ever-burning light above, in whose beams is the brightness of noonday.

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3. There is a topic which I approach with diffidence, but in the spirit of frankness. It is the influence which War, though condemned by Christ, has derived from the _Christian Church_. When Constantine, on one of his marches, at the head of his army, beheld the luminous trophy of the cross in the sky, right above the meridian sun, inscribed with the words, _By this conquer_, had his soul been penetrated by the true spirit of Him whose precious symbol it was, he would have found no inspiration to the spear and the sword. He would have received the lesson of self-sacrifice as from the lips of the Saviour, and learned that by no earthly weapon of battle can true victory be won. The pride of conquest would have been rebuked, and the bawble sceptre have fallen from his hands. _By this conquer_: by patience, suffering, forgiveness of evil, by all those virtues of which the cross is the affecting token, _conquer_, and the victory shall be greater than any in the annals of Roman conquest; it may not yet find a place in the records of man, but it will appear in the register of everlasting life.

The Christian Church, after the early centuries, failed to discern the peculiar spiritual beauty of the faith it professed. Like Constantine, it found new incentive to War in the religion of Peace; and such is its character, even in our own day. The Pope of Rome, the asserted head of the Church, Vicegerent of Christ upon earth, whose seal is a fisherman, on whose banner is a Lamb before the Holy Cross, assumed the command of armies, mingling the thunders of Battle with the thunders of the Vatican. The dagger projecting from the sacred vestments of De Retz, while still an archbishop, was justly derided by the Parisian crowd as "the Archbishop's breviary." We read of mitred prelates in armor of proof, and seem still to catch the clink of the golden spurs of bishops in the streets of Cologne. The sword of knighthood was consecrated by the Church, and priests were expert masters in military exercises. I have seen at the gates of the Papal Palace in Rome a constant guard of Swiss soldiers; I have seen, too, in our own streets, a show as incongruous and inconsistent,--the pastor of a Christian church swelling the pomp of a military parade. And some have heard, within a few short weeks, in a Christian pulpit, from the lips of an eminent Christian divine, a sermon, where we are encouraged to _serve the God of Battles, and, as citizen soldiers, fight for Peace_:[56] a sentiment in unhappy harmony with the profane language of the British peer, who, in addressing the House of Lords, said, "_The best road to Peace, my Lords, is War_, and that in the manner we are taught to worship our Creator, namely, by carrying it on with all our souls, with all our minds, with all our hearts, and with all our strength,"[57]--but finding small support in a religion that expressly enjoins, when one cheek is smitten, to turn the other, and which we hear with pain from a minister of Christian truth,--alas! thus made inferior to that of the heathen who _preferred the unjustest peace to the justest war_.[58]

[56] Discourse before the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, by A.H. Vinton.

[57] Earl of Abingdon, May 30, 1794: Hansard, Parl. Hist., XXXI. 680.

[58] "_Vel iniquissimam pacem justissimo bello anteferrem_" are the words of Cicero. (Epist. A. Cæcinæ: Epp. ad Diversos, VI. 6.) Only eight days after Franklin had placed his name to the treaty of peace which acknowledged the independence of his country, he wrote to a friend, "May we never see another war! for, in my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace." (Letter to Josiah Quincy: Works, ed. Sparks, Vol. X. p. 11.) It is with sincere regret that I seem, by a particular allusion, to depart for a moment from so great a theme; but the person and the theme here become united. I cannot refrain from the effort to tear this iron branch of War from the golden tree of Christian Truth, even though a voice come forth from the breaking bough.

Well may we marvel that now, in an age of civilization, the God of Battles should be invoked. "_Deo imperante_, QUEM ADESSE BELLANTIBUS CREDUNT," are the appropriate words of surprise in which Tacitus describes a similar delusion of the ancient Germans.[59] The polite Roman did not think God present with fighting men. This ancient superstition must have lost something of its hold even in Germany; for, at a recent period, her most renowned captain,--whose false glory procured for him the title of Great,--Frederick of Prussia, declared, with commendable frankness, that he always found the God of Battles on the side of the strongest regiments; and when it was proposed to place on his banner, soon to flout the sky of Silesia, the inscription, _For_ GOD _and Country_, he rejected the first word, declaring it not proper to introduce the name of the Deity in the quarrels of men. By this elevated sentiment the warrior monarch may be remembered, when his fame of battle has passed away.

[59] De Moribus German., Cap. 7.

The French priest of Mars, who proclaimed the "divinity" of War, rivals the ancient Germans in faith that God is the tutelary guardian of battle, and he finds a new title, which he says "shines" on all the pages of Scripture, being none other than _God of Armies_.[60] Never was greater mistake. No theology, no theodicy, has ever attributed to God this title. God is God of Heaven, God of Hosts, the Living God, and he is God of Peace,--so called by St. Paul, saying, "Now the God of Peace be with you all,"[61] and again, "The God of Peace shall bruise Satan shortly,"[62]--but God of Armies he is not, as he is not God of Battles.[63] The title, whether of Armies or of Hosts, thus invoked for War, has an opposite import, even angelic,--the armies named being simply, according to authorities Ecclesiastical and Rabbinical, the hosts of angels standing about the throne. Who, then, is God of Battles? It is Mars,--man-slaying, blood-polluted, city-smiting Mars![64] It is not He who binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades and looses the bands of Orion, who causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good, who distils the oil of gladness upon every upright heart, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,--the Fountain of Mercy and Goodness, the God of Justice and Love. Mars is not the God of Christians; he is not Our Father in Heaven; to him can ascend no prayers of Christian thanksgiving, no words of Christian worship, no pealing anthem to swell the note of praise.

[60] Joseph de Maistre, Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Tom. II. p. 27.

[61] Romans, xv. 33.

[62] Ibid., xvi. 20.

[63] A volume so common as Cruden's Concordance shows the audacity of the martial claim.

[64] Iliad, V. 31.

And yet Christ and Mars are still brought into fellowship, even interchanging pulpits. What a picture of contrasts! A national ship of the line now floats in this harbor. Many of you have pressed its deck, and observed with admiration the completeness which prevails in all its parts,--its lithe masts and complex network of ropes,--its thick wooden walls, within which are more than the soldiers of Ulysses,--its strong defences, and its numerous dread and rude-throated engines of War. There, each Sabbath, amidst this armament of blood, while the wave comes gently plashing against the frowning sides, from a pulpit supported by a cannon, in repose now, but ready to awake its dormant thunder charged with death, a Christian preacher addresses officers and crew. May his instructions carry strength and succor to their souls! But, in such a place, those highest words of the Master he professes, "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "Resist not evil," must, like Macbeth's "Amen," stick in the throat.

It will not be doubted that this strange and unblessed conjunction of the Church with War has no little influence in blinding the world to the truth, too slowly recognized, that the whole custom of war _is contrary to Christianity_.

Individual interests mingle with prevailing errors, and are so far concerned in maintaining them that military men yield reluctantly to this truth. Like lawyers, as described by Voltaire, they are "conservators of ancient barbarous usages." But that these usages should obtain countenance in the Church is one of those anomalies which make us feel the weakness of our nature, if not the elevation of Christian truth. To uphold the Arbitrament of War requires no more than to uphold the Trial by Battle; for the two are identical, except in proportion. One is a giant, the other a pygmy. Long ago the Church condemned the pygmy, and this Christian judgment now awaits extension to the giant. Meanwhile it is perpetual testimony; nor should it be forgotten, that, for some time after the Apostles, when the message of peace and good-will was first received, many yielded to it so completely as to reject arms of all kinds. Such was the voice of Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, and Origen, while Augustine pleads always for Peace. Gibbon coldly recounts, how Maximilian, a youthful recruit from Africa, refused to serve, insisting that his conscience would not permit him to embrace the profession of soldier, and then how Marcellus the Centurion, on the day of a public festival, threw away his belt, his arms, and the ensigns of command, exclaiming with a loud voice, that he would obey none but Jesus Christ, the Eternal King.[65] Martyrdom ensued, and the Church has inscribed their names on its everlasting rolls, thus forever commemorating their testimony. These are early examples, not without successors. But Mars, so potent, especially in Rome, was not easily dislodged, and down to this day holds his place at Christian altars.

"Thee to defend the Moloch priest prefers The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd, That Deity, accomplice Deity, In the fierce jealousy of wakened wrath, Will go forth with our armies and our fleets To scatter the red ruin on their foes! O, blasphemy! to mingle fiendish deeds With blessedness!"[66]

[65] Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. XVI. Vol. I. p. 680.

[66] Coleridge, Religious Musings, written Christmas Eve, 1794.

One of the beautiful pictures adorning the dome of a church in Home, by that master of Art, whose immortal colors speak as with the voice of a poet, the Divine Raphael, represents Mars in the attitude of War, with a drawn sword uplifted and ready to strike, while an unarmed angel from behind, with gentle, but irresistible force, arrests and holds the descending hand. Such is the true image of Christian duty; nor can I readily perceive any difference in principle between those ministers of the Gospel who themselves gird on the sword, as in the olden time, and those others, unarmed, and in customary suit of solemn black, who lend the sanction of their presence to the martial array, or to any form of preparation for War. The drummer, who pleaded that he did not fight, was held more responsible for the battle than the soldier,--as it was the sound of his drum that inflamed the flagging courage of the troops.

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4. From prejudices engendered by the Church I pass to prejudices engendered by the army itself, having their immediate origin in military life, but unfortunately diffusing themselves throughout the community, in widening, though less apparent circles. I allude directly to what is called _the Point of Honor_, early child of Chivalry, living representative of its barbarism.[67] It is difficult to define what is so evanescent, so impalpable, so chimerical, so unreal, and yet which exercises such fiendish power over many men, and controls the intercourse of nations. As a little water, fallen into the crevice of a rock, under the congelation of winter, swells till it bursts the thick and stony fibres, so a word or slender act, dropping into the heart of man, under the hardening influence of this pernicious sentiment, dilates till it rends in pieces the sacred depository of human affection, and the demons Hate and Strife are left to rage. The musing Hamlet saw this sentiment in its strange and unnatural potency, when his soul pictured to his contemplations an

"army of such mass and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince,... Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, _Even for an egg-shell_";

and when, again, giving to the sentiment its strongest and most popular expression, he exclaims,--

"Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, _But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, When honor's at the stake_."

[67] The _Point of Honor_ has a literature of its own, illustrated by many volumes, some idea of which may be obtained in Brunet, "Manuel du Libraire," Tom. VI. col. 1636-1638, under the head of _Chevalerie au Moyen Age, comprenant les Tournois, les Combats Singuliers_, etc. One of these has a title much in advance of the age in which it appeared: "Chrestienne Confutation du Point d'Honneur sur lequel la Noblesse fonde aujourd'hui ses Querelles et Monomachies," par Christ. de Chiffontaine, Paris, 1579.

And when is honor at stake? This inquiry opens again the argument with which I commenced, and with which I hope to close. Honor can be at stake only where justice and beneficence are at stake; it can never depend on egg-shell or straw; it can never depend on any hasty word of anger or folly, not even if followed by vulgar violence. True honor appears in the dignity of the human soul, in that highest moral and intellectual excellence which is the nearest approach to qualities we reverence as attributes of God. Our community frowns with indignation upon the profaneness of the duel, having its rise in this irrational _point of_ _honor_. Are you aware that you indulge the same sentiment on a gigantic scale, when you recognize this very point of honor as a proper apology for War? We have already seen that justice is in no respect promoted by War. Is True Honor promoted where justice is not?

The very word Honor, as used by the world, fails to express any elevated sentiment. How immeasurably below the sentiment of Duty! It is a word of easy virtue, that has been prostituted to the most opposite characters and transactions. From the field of Pavia, where France suffered one of the worst reverses in her annals, the defeated king writes to his mother, "All is lost, except _honor_." At a later day, the renowned French cook, Vatel, in a paroxysm of grief and mortification at the failure of two dishes for the table, exclaims, "I have lost my _honor_!" and stabs himself to the heart.[68] Montesquieu, whose writings are constellations of epigrams, calls honor a prejudice only, which he places in direct contrast with virtue,--the former being the animating principle of monarchy, and the latter the animating principle of a republic; but he reveals the inferiority of honor, as a principle, when he adds, that, in a well-governed monarchy, almost everybody is a good citizen, while it is rare to meet a really good man.[69] The man of honor is not the man of virtue. By an instinct pointing to the truth, we do not apply this term to the high columnar qualities which sustain and decorate life,--parental affection, justice, benevolence, the attributes of God. He would seem to borrow a feebler phrase, showing a slight appreciation of the distinctive character to whom reverence is accorded, who should speak of father, mother, judge, angel, or finally of God, as _persons of honor_. In such sacred connections, we feel, beyond the force of any argument, the mundane character of the sentiment which plays such a part in history and even in common life.

[68] The death of the culinary martyr is described by Madame de Sévigné with the accustomed coldness and brilliancy of her fashionable pen (Lettres L. and LI., Tom. I. pp. 164, 165). It was attributed, she says, _to the high sense of honor he had after his own way_. Tributes multiply. A French vaudeville associates his name with that of this brilliant writer, saying, "Madame de Sévigné and Vatel are the people who _honored_ the age of Louis XIV." The _Almanach des Gourmands_, in the Epistle Dedicatory of its concluding volume, addresses the venerable shade of the heroic cook: "You have proved that the _fanaticism of honor_ can exist in the kitchen as well as the camp." Berchoux commemorates the dying exclamation in _La Gastronomie_, Chant III.:--

"_Je suis perdu d'honneur_, deux rôtis ont manqué."

[69] Esprit des Lois, Liv. III. ch. 3-7.

The rule of honor is founded in the imagined necessity of resenting by force a supposed injury, whether of word or act.[70] Admit the injury received, seeming to sully the character; is it wiped away by any force, and descent to the brutal level of its author? "Could I wipe your blood from my conscience as easily as this insult from my face," said a Marshal of France, greater on this occasion than on any field of fame, "I would lay you dead at my feet." Plato, reporting the angelic wisdom of Socrates, declares, in one of those beautiful dialogues shining with stellar light across the ages, that _to do a wrong is more shameful than to receive a wrong_.[71] And this benign sentiment commends itself alike to the Christian, who is bid to render good for evil, and to the enlightened soul of man. But who confessing its truth will resort to force on any point of _honor_?