Chapter 3

Not the least interesting feature of the orations is the combination of idealism and practicality, which they reveal in the minds of the contestants. Truly, these young men "have hitched their wagon to a star," the star of universal good will.

To show the wide range of subjects chosen, and therefore the scope and many-sidedness of the peace question, the following list of titles already used is given here. They are also given as suggestions to future writers of orations, for there is no objection to choosing subjects previously used. Even if there is some duplication of thought, it makes little difference, since the contests are seldom held twice in the same place. Included in the list are some titles that show variations in the way of stating the same thing, and these variations should be suggestive to future writers of orations.

PARTIAL LIST OF SUBJECTS

America the Exemplar of Peace America and the World's Peace America's Mission in the Peace Movement America's Mission to Mankind America's Obligation The Arbiter of the World Arbitration _versus_ War The Challenge of Thor The Conflict of War and Peace A Congress of Nations The Cost of Militarism The Cost of Peace The Crucial Parallelism The Dawn of Peace The Dawn of Universal Peace Democracy and Peace Diplomacy and Peace Disillusionment The Dominant Ideal The End; and the Means The Evolution of a Higher Patriotism The Evolution of Justice The Evolution of Law The Evolution of National Greatness as a World Peacemaker The Evolution of World Peace The Fallacy of the Economics of War The Federation of the World Forces of War and Peace The Foundations From Chaos to Harmony From History's Pages--Peace Fruits of War and Fruits of Peace Government and International Peace The Growing Sentiment The Growth of the Peace Movement Honor Satisfied The Ideal of the Century Idealism and the Peace Movement Immigration and Peace The Inefficiency of War Instead of War--What? International Arbitration International Justice and World Peace International Peace International Peace and the Prince of Peace Justice and Peace Justice by War or Peace The Keynote of the Twentieth Century The Lasting Wound The Law of Peace The Message of the Andes Military Selection and its Effect on National Life Modern Battlefields A Nation's Opportunity The New Anglo-Saxon The New Brotherhood The New Corner Stone The New Era The New Nobility The New Patriotism The Next Step The Panama Canal The Passing of War The Pathway to Peace Patriotism and Peace Peace and Armaments Peace and the Evolution of Conscience Peace and the Fortification of the Panama Canal Peace and Public Opinion Peace Inevitable Peace is our Passion Peace on Earth Peace, our Great Ideal The Philosophy of Universal Peace Physical and Psychical Aspects of War A Plea for International Peace A Plea for Peace Popular Fallacies about War Popular Government and Peace Popular Sentiment and Purer Citizenship: The Right Road to Peace The Power of International Tolerance The Prince of Peace Progress toward Justice The Proposed Court of Arbitral Justice The Rationality of Peace The Real Power The Redemption of Patriotism The Regaining of the World's Lost Legacy Right or Might The Significance of the Hague Conferences The Rightful Ruler A Simple Method of Forwarding Universal Peace The Solving Principles of Federation Sovereignty in Arbitration Statesmanship _versus_ Battleship Thor or Christ Ungrateful America The United States and Universal Peace The United States of the World Universal Peace and the Brotherhood of Man The Unnecessary Evil A Vision of a Conquest War and Christianity War--The Demoralizer War and its Elimination War and the Laboring Man War and the Man War for Profit War--Universal Brotherhood--Peace The Warrior's Protest against War The Waste of War--The Wealth of Peace The Way of Peace What, from Vengeance? World Federation The World Organization

_Acknowledgments._ The Intercollegiate Peace Association is greatly indebted to many state and city peace societies for coöperation and assistance. They have materially strengthened our work and made possible the enlargement of the field of our activities. To their secretaries we are deeply indebted. The fullest coöperation of the peace societies, each assisting and supplementing the work of others wherever possible, will bring the most fruitful and the most speedy results, and the fact that we have received such coöperation indicates a full appreciation of the value of the work being done in these contests. We wish also to express our gratitude to the many individual contributors of prizes, especially to the Misses Seabury, for their interest, encouragement, and generosity, because without their assistance our association could not have survived. To the Misses Seabury we are also under obligation for lending their rights over the texts of orations for this publication. For the subvention from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace we thank the American Peace Society, through whose agency it comes to us. For the publication of this volume we are deeply grateful to the World Peace Foundation, without whose coöperation the book could not have been published. To Edwin D. Mead and Denys P. Myers the editor owes his sincere thanks for suggestions and corrections of the manuscript. We trust that the volume will be amply justified by the good that it will do.

STEPHEN F. WESTON _Executive Secretary_

SUPPLEMENT

_The Contests of 1914._ This volume was projected to be published before the Lake Mohonk Conference in May, but it was decided to include the five orations given in the national contest of 1914, and so make the volume complete for the year of issue. The last five orations, then, are the winning ones in the group contests of 1914, contesting for place in the national contest at Mohonk Lake, May 16, 1914. They are the picked orations of over four hundred and fifty prepared in one hundred and twenty colleges and universities, representing twenty-two states. The fifteen orations in the volume are the winning orations out of more than sixteen hundred and fifty written by the student body of the country in the past eight years.

In 1914 six additional states took part in the contests, making twenty-two organized into five groups. The Pacific coast and Southern groups were added during the year to the three groups organized in 1913. Three of the groups held their contests on May 1--the North Atlantic at the College of the City of New York, the Central at Western Reserve University, and the Western at Des Moines College. The Southern Group held its contest at Vanderbilt University on May 10. On the Pacific coast only Oregon was ready, and the winner of her state contest was permitted to represent the group in the national contest. Utah and California are planning to enter the contests of 1915. Virginia, West Virginia, and South Carolina are organizing, and a sixth group will then be formed--the South Atlantic Group.

S. F. W.

THE CONFLICT OF WAR AND PEACE

By PAUL SMITH, DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana

First Prize Oration in the National Contest held at the University of Cincinnati, May 17, 1907

THE CONFLICT OF WAR AND PEACE

The past ages have witnessed a long conflict between two opposing principles--the principle of might and the principle of right. The first instituted the duel between equals and condemned the impotent to slavery; the second ordained the courts of civil justice and signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The principle of might licensed despotism and degraded the many in the service of the few; the principle of right proclaimed democracy and consecrated the few to the service of the many. Thus in the realm of the individual and of the state the diviner conception has won its triumphs, and to-day force is tolerated only as it serves the cause of justice. But in the larger international sphere the advocates of might prolong the ancient cry for war; the disciples of right protest in a gentler demand for peace.

The partisans of war urge four capital reasons in behalf of their principle: personal glory, moral education, class interest, and national egoism.

We have as a heritage of our military past, not a sense of the grim tragedy of war, but traditions which award the highest meed of personal glory to the warrior. The roster of the world's heroes contains two classes of names--great soldiers and great altruists. Poet and orator and populace unite to do honor to him who was not afraid to fight and to die for his home, his king, his liberty, his country, his convictions. Bravery has ever won its laurel crown, for an instinct within us applauds physical courage and aggressiveness. And the gilded uniform and clanking sword, the drumbeat and the bugle call, the camp fire and the "far-flung battle line," stand as the most dramatic expressions of a deep sentiment, primitive and thrilling.

Akin to this martial hero worship is the argument that success in war gives training for the higher contests of peace. Out of the war of 1776 the nation took George Washington for President; out of the Mexican War, Zachary Taylor; out of the Civil War, General Grant; out of the Spanish War, Theodore Roosevelt. The badge of the Grand Army of the Republic is a certificate of merit. The cross of the Legion of Honor opens the door to social and political and business prosperity. Battle is regarded as a supreme test of sturdy manhood, and the harsh discipline of the camp as education for the finer arts of the council. War creates a heroism which later devotes itself to spiritual ends.

Moreover, say the advocates, the interests of class require force for their conservation. The hereditary nobility of Europe was founded by military process for military purposes, and, with the passing of war, loses its warrant for existence. On the other hand, it is claimed that the under classes may come into the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, common to all humanity, only by means of the sword. Witness the peasantry of Russia! Even in America so great a prophet as Henry Ward Beecher foresaw a tragic day when the bivouac of capital would be set against the camp of labor. And lesser seers are not lacking who freely predict, even for our democratic land, a desperate rebellion of a proletariat of poverty against an aristocracy of wealth.

Finally, the demands of national egoism are urged in behalf of war. For example, Japan needs new territory for her growing millions and must assume the conqueror's rôle. Or France goes mad with the lust of empire and goes forth untamed until the day of Waterloo. Or Great Britain must have new markets; and, falsely reasoning that trade follows the flag, and the flag follows the bayonet, she seizes a realm upon which the sun may never set. Or the interests of white men and yellow men, of black men or red men, clash; and then the cannon must be the final test, might must make right, and the strongest must survive. The greed of territorial aggrandizement, the spirit of national adventure, the longing for commercial supremacy, the honor of a country, the pride of racial achievement--each is urged to justify the necessity for bloodshed and carnage. Such are the arguments of the advocates of war.

To balance these, the advocates of peace plead four greater considerations: against personal glory, the economic cost of militarism; against the moral education of war, the higher heroism of peace; against class interests, the sanctity of human life; and against national egoism, the deeper spirit of national altruism.

A single modern battleship costs more than the combined value of the property and endowment of all the colleges of a certain great state. Two thirds of the money passing through the treasury of the Republic goes to the support of the military system. Computing two hundred dollars a year as the average loss to society occasioned by the withdrawal of each soldier and sailor from productive toil, and adding this sum to the war budgets of the nations for the past fifty years, we obtain a total of billions, beyond the reach of all imagination. The money which armies, navies, wars, and pensions have cost the world in fifty years would have installed in China a system of education equal to that of the United States; would have transformed the arid deserts of India into a modern Eden by irrigation; would have laid railways from Cape Town to the remotest corner of Africa; would have dug the Panama Canal; and, in addition, would have sent a translation of the Bible, of Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, and Dante to every family on the globe. In a word, the wealth spent on wars in the last half century would have transformed life for a majority of human beings. The stoppage of this waste will shorten the hours of labor, reduce pauperism, elevate the peasantry of Europe, lighten taxation, and work an economic revolution.

The argument for moral education mistakes national gratitude to warriors for tribute to the training of the camp. But grant that war develops the combative qualities, the argument forgets a darker moral phase. It forgets the moral wrecks which are the sad products of war; it forgets the effect of the loss of the refining influence of womanhood upon the soldier; it forgets the debasement of sinking men to the physical type of life. And the argument assumes that peace has no "equivalent for war," declared by a famous educator to be the greatest need of the age. Courage and endurance are as necessary in social reforms as in carnal battle. To wrestle against principalities and powers and rulers of the world-darkness calls forth the maximum powers of manhood. Wendell Phillips stands in the ranks of heroes as high as Philip Sheridan. The moral loss from war transcends the moral gain.

Yet war levies toll more tragic than any toll of dollars, more appalling than any moral cost. A famous painting reveals the world's conquerors, Xerxes, Cæsar, Alexander, Napoleon, and a lesser host, mounted proudly on battle steeds, caparisoned with gorgeous trappings; but the field through which they march is paved with naked, mutilated corpses, the ghastly price of glory. The trenches at Port Arthur were filled level-full with the bodies of self-sacrificed martyrs, and upon this gruesome slope the final charges were made. Stripped of all sentiment, war is organized and wholesale murder, a savage and awful paradox which proclaims the shallowness of civilization. Said General Sherman: "Only those who have never heard a shot, only those who have never heard the shrieks of the wounded nor the groans of the dying, can cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation." God grant the world may soon heed the Voice, sounding down from the solemnity of Sinai, laying the divine command upon each man and each nation: "Thou shalt not kill!"

There yet remains the ethical argument for peace. Will any one say that the supreme duty of altruism is binding upon men as individuals, and not binding upon the same men acting conjointly as a nation? When the people and the statesmen of one nation are able to put themselves in the places of the statesmen and of the people of another nation; when there is a common will to do international justice rather than to despise the weaker country; when not selfish interest alone, but the greatest good of the greatest number, becomes the driving impulse of humanity; when the thrill of fraternity crosses geographical lines and pauses not on the shores of the seas--then war will be impossible, the energies of the world will turn to the constructive arts, and from the midst of contentment unshadowed by hunger, from prosperity unmenaced by want, in the peaceful spirit of the Christ, the world will sing:

"The crest and crowning of all good, life's final star is brotherhood; For it will bring again to Earth her long-lost Poesy and Mirth; Will send new light on every face, a kingly power upon the race. And till it come, we men are slaves, and travel downward to dust of graves. Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: blind creeds and kings have had their day. Break the dead branches from the path: our hope is in the aftermath. Our hope is in heroic men, star-led to build the world again. To this Event the ages ran: Make way for Brotherhood--make way for man."

All great reforms have begun with "star-led" men and have moved from individuals to groups and from groups to the nation. In every distinct advance of the race prophetic persons have anticipated the trend of the ages and have adopted new codes for themselves; the higher morality has spread by agitation to include a larger group, and finally it has become the policy of the nation. Thus slavery went, and political equality came.

And thus war must go and peace must come. First, we find protest against the killing of individuals by individuals. The duel fell into disrepute and at last was forbidden by law. The carrying of weapons became unfashionable and at length was made a crime. With the growth of the moral sense, mutual trust took the place of armed neutrality. The present situation is ready for the larger application of these principles. The argument which abolished the carrying of weapons must frown upon excessive national armaments. As the individual duel was superseded by personal arbitration, so the national duel must be superseded by national arbitration. The reason that maintains the civil court for the settlement of individuals' disputes calls for a higher court for the settlement of national disputes. Not alone among men, not alone within states, but among the nations, right, not might, must rule; not force, but justice; and written as the world's supreme mandate, as the highest human law from which there may be no appeal, must be the unshaken law of national righteousness.

Tennyson's words were accounted a poet's fancy when he wrote:

Till the war drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

Yet the present year[1] will witness the fulfillment of that prophecy. Disarmament and arbitration will be considered this summer, not by agitators, not by theorists, nor yet prophetically by poets; but in June, at the invitation of our own President,[2] an actual international conference will assemble, a Parliament of the World, composed of official representatives of every nation of the globe. Thus we see the foregleams of an approaching day. The time is not far distant when war will glide into the grim shadows of a scarce-remembered past, when battles will pass into the oblivion of forgotten horrors. Then will society realize its dreams of a kingdom of heaven upon earth, where the barbaric lure of fighting will be lost; where no class lines may exist save those freely acknowledged by a common justice; where national egoism maintains no armies for conquest and no navies for aggrandizement; where economic resources are devoted, not to mutual physical destruction, but to splendid spiritual enlargement; where "every nation that shall lift again its hand against a brother, on its forehead will wear forevermore the curse of Cain"; and where, in the realization of a vast, racial brotherhood, is fulfilled the prophetic angel's song, "Peace on earth, good-will to men." Ruskin, the modern bard of peace, has sung:

Put off, put off your mail, ye kings, and beat your brands to dust-- A surer grasp your hands must know, your hearts a better trust; Nay, bend aback the lance's point, and break the helmet bar-- A noise is in the morning winds, but not the noise of war! Among the grassy mountain paths the glittering troops increase-- They come, they come!--how fair their feet,--they come that publish peace.

[1] The Hague Conference of 1907 is referred to.

[2] By the courtesy of President Roosevelt the official call for the Second Hague Conference was issued by the Emperor of Russia. Forty-four nations were represented.--_Editor._

THE UNITED STATES AND UNIVERSAL PEACE

By GLENN PORTER WISHARD, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

First Prize Oration in the National Contest held at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, May 15, 1908

THE UNITED STATES AND UNIVERSAL PEACE

Political and religious reforms move slowly. We change our beliefs and at the same time hold fast to old customs. Farsighted public opinion has declared war to be unchristian; sound statesmanship has stamped it as unjust; the march of events has, in a majority of cases, proved it to be unnecessary--and yet we continue to build mammoth engines of destruction as if war were inevitable. Truly, the millennium is not at hand, nor is war a thing of the past; but whereas war was once the rule, now it is the exception. This is an age of peace; controversies once decided by force are now settled by arbitration. Europe, once the scene of continuous bloodshed, has not been plundered by conquering armies for more than a generation, while the United States has enjoyed a century of peace marred by only five years of foreign war. The four notable conflicts of the last decade have been between great and small powers, and have been confined to the outposts of civilization; while during the same period more than one hundred disputes have been settled by peaceful means. The willingness to arbitrate has been manifest; the means have been provided; the Permanent International Court, established by the Hague Conference in 1899, actually lives, and has already adjudicated four important controversies.[1] But arbitration, you say, will never succeed because the decisions cannot be enforced. You forget that already some two hundred and fifty disputes have been settled by this method, and in not one instance has the losing power refused to abide by the decision.

[1] From October 14, 1902, the date of the first decision, up to the end of 1913, the Permanent Court has rendered thirteen decisions settling international differences.--_Editor._

Yesterday the man who advocated universal peace was called a dreamer; to-day throughout the world organized public opinion demands the abolition of war. Yesterday we erected statues to those who died for their country; to-day we eulogize those who live for humanity. Yesterday we bowed our heads to the god of war; to-day we lift our hands to the Prince of Peace.

I do not mean to say that we have entered the Utopian age, for the present international situation is a peculiar one, since we are at the same time blessed with peace and cursed with militarism. This is not an age of war, yet we are burdened by great and ever-increasing armaments; the mad race for naval supremacy continues, while the relative strength of the powers remains practically the same; the intense and useless rivalry of the nations goes on until, according to the great Russian economist, Jean de Bloch, it means "slow destruction in time of peace by swift destruction in the event of war." In Europe to-day millions are being robbed of the necessaries of life, millions more are suffering the pangs of abject poverty in order to support this so-called "armed peace." Note the condition in our own country. Last year we expended on our army, navy, and pensions sixty-seven per cent of our total receipts. Think of it! In a time of profound peace more than two thirds of our entire expenditures are charged to the account of war.