Part 21

In twenty-seven years we never had a strike, never a serious discontent with any number of our employees, and we retain to this day the loyal good will of those who bought us out. The factory is still known as the Mills Woven Cartridge Belt Company, and my portrait is in the office with a legend telling of the foundation of the factory. Every article they make, now hundreds in number, is labelled and catalogued with my name.

Mr. Frank R. Batchelder, the present manager and sole controller, engaged in service with us in a subordinate capacity twenty years ago. He has made a fortune, which he has faithfully and honestly earned. He is very able and competent and as long as he lives will maintain the name of the factory in all its worth and integrity.

It has been my good fortune during most of my efforts to associate myself with young men, like Orndorff and Batchelder, of happy, sociable temperaments, able and industrious. I shall always remember them for the earnest, faithful and assiduous manner in which they forwarded my interests and at the same time afforded me a happy association with them socially.

Many connected with these factories at home and abroad are making more out of them than ever I made, but I have no envy. I received more than I expected or deserved, and am perfectly content. I enjoy the reputation more than the money.

To the day of her death, Nannie felt the same gratitude. In fact, it was she who first suggested that I had made enough, and that it was time to stop.

THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

On Saturday, May 27, 1916, Nannie and I attended by invitation, the national meeting in Washington of the League to Enforce Peace. Made an honorary vice-president and member of the executive committee, I attended its monthly meetings in New York. Officials of the society asked me to aid it by public speeches or written articles, and the editor of the New York _Evening Mail_ requested my views on the League for publication. I referred a copy of my letter to the _Mail_, to the President, Mr. Taft, and Dr. Lowell, chairman of the executive committee. It was approved by them for publication over my name as a member of the League, although of course not as an expression of the League itself; President Taft suggested that I send a copy to Secretary Short for publication by the League as a part of its literature, which I did.

After making changes suggested by Dr. Lowell, the article which follows was published by the _Mail_:

November 28, 1916.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING MAIL:

SIR: Your favor has just reached me.

You ask my opinion "as to what should be done at once or in the near future, and what steps should be taken by the League to Enforce Peace to help the national government create an atmosphere wherein the voice of the American people may be heard and heeded."

To the first I answer--Nothing. There are at present, counting Greece, seventeen of the most powerful and civilized nations of the world engaged in the most causeless, vengeful and barbarous of all wars known to history.

There are perhaps actively engaged twenty-five or thirty millions of the most destructive soldiers that ever trod the earth, representing perhaps five hundred millions of the earth's best civilization, whose judgment has "fled to brutish beasts," and nothing this nation or its people can do will change its course or affect its termination one iota.

In fact, we have no remedies for our wrongs, more than a bystander in a street fight, and must bide our time, meanwhile playing the Good Samaritan under difficulties as best we can, leaving the various roads to the various Jerichos devastated and unpoliced.

The art and science of war has so enhanced the means of defense and taken the pomp and circumstance from war that all the world in arms can not again conquer and abjectly subjugate an enlightened, homogeneous and loyal people of fifty millions. This war can be settled only by exhaustion of many years and a truce of perhaps a year to compose many compromises.

We have an example in our own civil war, where England, France and Austria sought to intervene, to their own mortification and regret, and where we (but one nation then as contrasted now with seventeen) were as vengeful as the present combatants; but we were all patriots, and when there came a Lincoln, a Grant and a Lee we learned to know each other better, as in due time these hundreds of millions of the very best, most civilized and most patriotic people of the world will learn to know each other better when they have developed (as they will develop) their Lincolns, Grants and Lees, "with charity for all and malice toward none."

They have "taken many captives home" (perhaps near four millions each in fair proportion), but they can not as of old by slavery "their general coffers fill"; on the contrary, their care and keep will be a great expense and burden. Meanwhile the captives will be learning the language of their foes and earnestly preaching their country's cause and their own patriotism--none entirely without reason.

Our people and nation have much mixed up the preparedness frenzy--appropriating hundreds of millions for the best arms and munitions--paying little heed to the "man behind" them, who also should be the best. They, however, insult his intelligence by offering him $15 a month, while he knows that the nation employs as many policemen as it does soldiers, and pays (the lower grades) from $75 to $100 per month, and as many letter-carriers at similar rates. The soldier is as well worthy of his hire. Statistics show the soldier's pay to be about 14 per cent of the cost of our great wars.

Preparedness will be complete when the private's pay is $50 on entrance and graded upward. This would be less expensive than to "make his trade the trade of all" by universal conscription. Desertions, recruiting stations, guard-houses and courts martial will virtually disappear. The very best and most intelligent single men in the country will qualify and each captain will have a long waiting list of men who will need little training or discipline. We shall have a democratic army from which intelligent and efficient officers can be raised.

There is no such tangible thing as "international law." All real laws are "rules of action" entered into and agreed upon by communities of individual rational and soul-possessing human beings, where each individual surrenders some of his natural rights that greater good may come to the greater number, and where there is a latent police force (subject to call) with a moral environment of its soul-possessing members sufficient to make the call and enforce its mandates.

Without these two elements of the individual human conscience there is no community on earth so civilized and righteously inclined as to be able to conduct in peace and order a prayer-meeting, a bank, a fair or a public game, but with these two elements well developed, what is known as a "gentleman's agreement" could be carried out by the righteous soul-consciousness of public sentiment.

So-called international law has no such elements. Its rules are generally established by powerful nations in great wars who, in dire disaster, for self-preservation disregard and violate previously accepted rules to suit their success and also proclaim new rules not hitherto known or accepted, enforcing them to serve the same ends as far as they have the power, thus establishing precedents, leaving the wronged of the world no remedy against such might-made laws save the might-made remedy of war, and so so-called international law is created, the individual rational soul-possessing human being having no voice in its creation, repeal or enforcement.

These "precedents" are without the two essential elements, "latent police force" and "soulful moral environment," to compel observance. Hence there is no such tangible thing as "international law."

Perhaps the League to Enforce Peace would be in a better position at the close of this war to present its scheme had we adhered to the contribution of General Jackson to so-called international law. In 1818, when General Jackson with a punitive expedition after Creek Indians captured Pensacola, then under Spanish sovereignty, he arrested two British subjects, Ambrister and Arbuthnot (one a British army officer), and tried and executed them for selling arms to the Creek Indians.

This was accepted by England, then the ruling power of the world, and her predecessor, Spain, and approved by the United States.

In this present war it is obvious to all, combatants as well as neutrals, that we are luxuriously feasting on the blood and tears of all the combatants, and to some extent the neutrals. For a long time custom has approved this. Now envy and jealousy on the part of some and a conviction on the part of many that it is unrighteous, is bringing to bear upon us a widespread prejudice which will continue to increase in a progressive ratio until the war ends.

This may impair our efficiency as an advocate of a league to enforce peace.

Now, as to "what steps should be taken by the League to Enforce Peace." I know that it realizes the magnitude of its undertaking; but owing to the great international communication, general intelligence, and common interest of the people of the world, with the opportune conditions we shall have at the termination of the war--perhaps no greater an undertaking than that devolving upon Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and their associates of the convention of the thirteen former free and independent colonies, then thirteen free and independent states.

Their problem was then much as ours is today. That is to say, to form a community of individual states after the methods and manners of the communities of individual men above described, wherein each individual state was to surrender some of its minor natural rights for the greater good of the greater number.

There was then, as there are now, great misgivings and doubts even among ourselves. The rest of the world held, through the despotism of custom, the false doctrine that war was the natural state of man. Academic lawyers and diplomats held, as they do now, that there were "state's rights" and "non-justiciable interstate cases" more potent than the rights of human beings. So that outside America the scheme was ridiculed as visionary and impracticable.

Our people and the colonies (then states) had become so abhorrent of the devastation, blood and tears of a seven years' war that they decided, through the wise men of this convention, that the states would surrender to the general good the few rights "without remedies" they might have and, so to speak, charge them to "profit and loss."

This wise convention surprised the world with a constitution of "league of states" so perfect in all its detail of "legislation," "adjudication" and "execution" (reducing the loss of rights without remedy to the minimum) that for 128 years (with one regrettable exception) the nation had played the Good Samaritan for the natural afflictions of pestilence, flood and famine to all its people of the thirteen states (gradually increased to forty-eight), meanwhile preventing the unnatural afflictions of war and keeping open and well policed all the roads to all the Jerichos within them. In the case of the exception, the force provided proved sufficient and effective to restore order and contentment.

To a rational mind giving the matter reasonable study it is hard to conceive a conclusion other than that similar results may be accomplished with a similar league of the nations of the world.

ANSON MILLS.

While there were some forty-six members of the executive committee, it was difficult to get a legal quorum of fifteen and there were never more than twenty members present, almost all from New York City or New England. It was in fact a close North Atlantic seaboard corporation.

Believing we could not organize national sentiment in favor of the League's program with so sectional a representation, I moved that the next meeting be held at Kansas City, or some other central location, to obtain a better representation of the sentiments of the whole people. I was refused a vote, but the motion was referred to the committee on management, which smothered it.

At the meetings I attended never more than fifty minutes were devoted to the discussion of an intelligent propaganda solely in the interests of the League, but there was much discussion by a few as to inducing the President, Congress, or both, to intervene in the European war. The efforts a few of us made to declare the League an organization formed to maintain a neutral attitude regarding the European war, so that when peace should come the society might have greater opportunity to carry its righteous propaganda successfully to both victors and vanquished, were uniformly referred to the Committee on Management and never heard of again.

When the United States declared war the few members of the committee present declared the League not neutral but belligerent. My view, expressed in a letter to the Secretary, was that since our Government had accepted the gage of "Trial by Combat" it was the first duty of every American to put forth every energy to attain success, postponing nobler aspirations until flags of truce should be flying from both friends and foes. To that end I suggested we postpone our next meeting until victors and vanquished alike be so prostrated with wretchedness, poverty and shame for their cruelties and barbarities, that they would lend more willing ears to the propaganda we had so much at heart. This course not being taken, I notified the Secretary, that by participating in the war as an organization, the League had in my opinion so destroyed its capacity for good that my further attendance at the Executive Committee meetings could serve no useful purpose. My resignation was accepted.

In my opinion, the League made two serious errors: First, in Article III of its constitution where it excepted "non-justiciable" cases from the control of the proposed league. It is unsafe to devise any law or rule of action which permits of too numerous or too ill-defined exceptions. If criminal law exempted non-justiciable questions from the jurisdiction of courts, no criminal, even the most heartless murderer, could be convicted. The ingenuity of lawyers could always prove some non-justiciable element entered into the crime. The same would be true of nations. Those most powerful and best prepared for war would assume greater latitude in defining what was justiciable and would show less punctiliousness in endeavoring to establish their definition than nations smaller and less well prepared. Statesmen and diplomats working in secret would easily show any question about to lead to war as "non-justiciable" and not to be presented to the international court set up by a league composed of many nations too weak to be respected by the powerful.

The second mistake was to yield, as an organization, to the allurements of "Trial by Combat," and to endeavor, as a league, to induce our nation to intervene in the present war. Members might take this course as individuals, but, when they made it the act of a league for _peace_ they stultified the league, and in my opinion, destroyed any great power for usefulness the league might have in the future.

TRIAL BY COMBAT

PERSONAL TRIAL BY COMBAT

I hope to show a close analogy between the personal trial by combat legalized throughout Europe for many hundreds of years (now legal nowhere, practically abandoned in all civilized countries), and international trial by combat, still existing throughout the world. Describing conditions before the middle ages, George Nielson, in his "Trial by Combat," says:

"=Nothing was too high for it, nothing too low. It would establish the virtue of a queen, test the veracity of a witness, or re argue the decision of a judge; it would hang a traitor, a murderer, or a thief; it would settle a disputed point of succession, give a widow her dower, or prove a questioned charter. From such high arguments as these, it descended with equal ease to discuss debts of every kind and of whatever amount, and a French monarch earned a title as a reformer when he disallowed it where the principal sum in plea was under five sous.="

This legalized method of trial was used prior to any historical record, but Gundobald, King of Burgundy, in 501, established the law permanently in his kingdom, where it was continued for over eleven hundred years. Replying to the remonstrances of one of his bishops, he said: "=Is it not true that the event both of national wars and private combats is directed by the judgment of God? And does not Providence award the victory to the juster cause?="

Of a later period, Nielson says:

"=When the fourteenth century began, the duel had ceased to be in any real sense a living proper part of law. On the continent and in the British Isles it was alive a thousand years and more after the enactment of Gundobald.="

The incident of David and Goliath was quoted by some as a divine authorization of trial by combat.

Throughout Europe, England, and even America, it was a personal privilege of men of honor, until the middle of the nineteenth century, when, to the great honor of America, be it said, the good sense, intelligence and courageous action of the American people caused its abolition.

Some claimed the unlegalized continuance of it to be necessary because of the non-justiciable questions of honor raised between disputants; also this method of trial was not available to common people, but only to what were known as gentlemen and so-called men of honor.

Until the first part of the 19th century judges on the bench, lawyers in court, and other public functionaries, supposed to belong to that small class of people "of honor" wore swords, wigs and knee breeches when officiating, after the manner of barons, squires and knights errant of the mediæval ages.

As examples of personal trial by combat, I select the four most famous duels fought in America during the fore part of the last century:

Burr-Hamilton, 1804; Baron-Decatur, 1820; Graves-Cilley, 1838, and Terry-Broderick, 1859.

Burr, Baron, Graves and Terry were the challengers, and all were skilled professional duellists, and each killed his antagonist.

At the time of their duel, Burr and Hamilton were among the foremost men of the country, Burr being Vice-President, and Hamilton perhaps the most influential politician. Burr was forty-eight and Hamilton forty-seven, conspicuous and able from boyhood. They served together on General Washington's staff when mere youths, although Washington soon found it necessary to relieve Burr. He retained Hamilton, and later made him one of his cabinet.

Though both were from New York, they headed opposite political parties. Hamilton's influence defeated Burr's appointment as brigadier general in 1789, and also his hope of securing a foreign mission. When Burr and Jefferson were candidates for the Presidency in 1800, Hamilton threw his influence against Burr and Jefferson was elected.

During these fifteen years of political rivalry Hamilton said many severe things of Burr. Rendered desperate by his successive disappointments, Burr forced a quarrel on "a trivial bit of hearsay" in a letter of a Dr. Cooper. This went the rounds of the press, stating Hamilton had said he had a "despicable" opinion of Burr. Burr sent his friend Van Ness with a letter demanding Hamilton admit or deny having expressed such an opinion. Hamilton declined to submit to such a vague and sweeping inquiry, while stating his readiness to avow or disavow any specific statement, closing his letter with the formula used by those who expected to accept a challenge if tendered. After further correspondence Burr sent Hamilton a formal challenge, which was accepted. Hamilton wrote a statement for publication after the meeting, announcing his religious and moral opposition to duelling. He stated he had no malice toward Burr, and accepted the challenge only because of the imperious custom which would destroy his public usefulness if he declined. He added that he did not wish to kill Burr, and intended to reserve his first fire in the hope that it would induce a reconciliation. If it did not, he might perhaps reserve his second fire. This declaration, of course, was unknown to the public or to Burr. In a note to his wife and six children he beseeched their forgiveness, declaring he was forced to accept by public sentiment.

They met at Weehawken, N. J., July 11, 1804. At the signal Burr fired, Hamilton sprang convulsively upon his toes, reeled--at which moment he involuntarily discharged his pistol--and then fell forward upon his face and remained motionless. His ball rustled the branches seven feet above the head of his antagonist and four feet wide of him. Hearing it, Burr looked up to see it had severed a twig. Seeing Hamilton falling, he advanced with a manner and gesture expressive of regret, but, urged from the field by his friends, without speaking he turned about and withdrew.

Public indignation in New York became violent. The grand jury found a true bill against Burr and the Vice-President of the United States fled the jurisdiction of his State.

During his remaining thirty-two years, he gradually lost the confidence of his countrymen. With no hope of achieving former ambitions, he formed the ill-fated expedition in the West known as Burr's Conspiracy, planning to abandon or dismember his own country and make a conquest in Mexico. He died in 1836 at the age of eighty, despised throughout the United States.

_Baron and Decatur_

Baron and Decatur were both advocates of the duello.

While in command of the U. S. Frigate Chesapeake off Hampton Roads, in time of peace, Baron was hailed by Captain S. P. Humphreys, commanding the British Frigate Leopard, and ordered to lie to and deliver over alleged deserters on board the Chesapeake. His brother officers accused him of failing to make preparations to defend his frigate when he was attacked and compelled to surrender to Captain Humphreys.

Baron called for a court of inquiry. Decatur was a member of the subsequent court martial, although junior to Baron. Before the court martial was sworn, Decatur advised Baron that he felt prejudiced against him and feared he could not do him justice, suggesting Baron exercise his right to object to being tried by him. Baron declined, and Decatur reluctantly sat on the court, which suspended Baron for five years. This he took much to heart, making frequent applications for reinstatement. One of these applications passed through Decatur's hands. When he could not recommend Baron's reinstatement, Baron took offense and threatened a challenge. Decatur replied that he felt no animosity toward Baron, but had made his endorsement through a conscientious conviction of duty. He hoped Baron would not resort to extremes, but, if he did, would feel bound to accommodate him. Baron responded with a formal challenge, which Decatur accepted.

Just before they were placed in position, Baron remarked, "Commodore Decatur, I hope when we meet in another world we will be better friends."

Decatur promptly replied, "I have never been your enemy."