Chapter 5

In the worship of Mars, Herodotus tells us, the ancient Scythian erected an old scimitar at the summit of a huge brush heap. To this, as a symbol of the great god of war, he offered not only the produce of the land but also human life in sacrifice. We shudder as we picture the priest standing over his victim, his hands wet with the blood of his fellow man. We cry out in horror as we think of the lives these peoples sacrificed. We call it an inhuman glorification of a pagan deity. We call it a ruthless waste of wealth and human life. These practices we pronounce to be the result of a popular delusion--a false sense of obligation to the spirit of war. Yet from the time the Scythian drew the blood of his victim in homage to the great war god, even down to our own day, the nations have paid homage to Mars.

Though we boast of our progress in civilization, history reveals the fact that we, too, have been the victims of the Scythian's delusion. Is it not a fact that one of the most terrible customs of savage men counts among its followers to-day all the nations of the earth? The subtlest skill of the scientist, the keenest intelligence of the statesman, vast stores of the world's resources, are devoted to maintaining great armies and navies, to inventing new means of attack or defense, to enlarging and making more deadly the enginery of war. What is our boast of civilization, while we tolerate this devotion of so many men and so much of wealth to war? Is this not a sacrifice essentially pagan in spirit? Are we not still paying unrighteous homage to Mars?

Why, then, we ask, do nations make provision for war the first necessity of national life? Behold Russia. A few years ago, in time of famine, spending millions of money for war equipment when millions of her own peasantry were slowly starving for the lack of one dollar's worth of food per month. What motive impelled Russia to this heathen conduct? It was solely that Germany, France, England, Japan, and the United States had great armies and navies against which starving Russia must be prepared to defend herself. What dire stress compels England to-day to perpetuate her program of naval supremacy when she is struggling in the throes of budget difficulties which seem all but unsolvable? What is it that compels Germany and France to tax themselves until they fairly stagger under the burden of military expenditures? Naught other than a suicidal lust for military power. Naught other than the infatuation of the dizzy, competitive war dance of mutual destruction--each nation blindly driven by all, and all by each.

We as Americans profess to find in the conduct of Russia, in the militarism of England and Germany and France, examples of militarism run rampant. How our hearts have warmed within us when we have thought of our own republic as the happy envied nation, free from the burden of militarism! Our farmer has gone singing about his work, apparently not having to carry on his back a soldier, as does the European peasant. Our mechanic has freely plied his trade without thought of supporting a sailor. Yet how can we say that the United States in buying battleships and erecting coast defenses, in arming her soldiers with Krag-Jörgensens, has not been deprived of schools, colleges, and opportunities essential to happiness and prosperity? In a decade we have spent nearly a billion dollars on our navy alone. Yes, we have aped the military fashions of Europe and have set a new standard of military waste.

Verily our national advancement waits on militarism. Inland waterways should be improved; forests must be safeguarded; other natural resources of untold value should be conserved; millions of acres of desert lands should be improved; millions in swamps should be redeemed. The problem of the nation's food supply is becoming urgent; for its solution we must look more and more to scientific methods in agriculture. Yet contrast the support our government gives these vital interests with war's mighty drain on our treasury. Congress appropriated $648,000,000 for all expenditures in 1910. Of this amount $407,000,000 were appropriated for war expenditures and the glories of militarism. For this same year agriculture received for all its needs the comparatively paltry sum of $12,000,000. In spite of the fact that our nation is devoting two thirds of its enormous national expenditures to war, our militarists point to our vast national wealth and sneer at the niggardly mortals who object to spending it for guns.

It is evident that no nation is yet beyond the infatuation for display of the splendors of war, yet in every one there are signs of a new power that is coming upon us. All are thinking less of the glories of war--of the beat of the drum, of the rhythmic tread of regiments, of glittering sabers and of monster battleships--and are thinking more and more of the glories of peace, of thriving industries, of magnificent libraries, of comfortable homes, and of more efficient schools. Obviously, though we still possess a war spirit, we are seeing with a clearer vision that the waste of war is depriving us of the fullest measure of the wealth of peace. Our frame of mind is much the same as that of the ragged street urchin who, having lost his day's earnings, thinks of a hundred things which he might have spent it for. The same spirit is permeating every nation. The American manufacturer, the Russian peasant, the English mechanic, the German scientist, the French scholar, are all asking themselves, "Why need the world continue to carry this Atlantean burden of war?"

Already this sentiment has accomplished practically all that can be done in humanizing war. It has outlawed the dumdum bullet, it has enforced radical sanitary measures, it has neutralized the Red Cross and brought its ministrations to the relief of the sufferings of war. But humanized war is not the goal of this sentiment. As long as there is an increase of armaments there will be war; as long as the battle rages there will be waste and suffering. The same sentiment which has humanized war now demands war's abolition. It has already accomplished something toward this end in making the settlement of international disputes through arbitration more probable than war. What it has not accomplished is the discrediting of militarism. It has failed to stop the growth of armaments. Can we expect our regiments to find contentment in the irksome routine of training camp with never a thought of charging the enemy? Can we expect to man the seas with fleets of war just for gay parade and cruises around the world? Can we expect that our skilled gunners will be satisfied to practice, practice always, and never long for human targets? It is against arming nations for battle and tempting them to fight that the peace sentiment is rousing itself and is being organized. It is in this labor that peace societies the world over are performing valiant service. Their great mission is the creation of an intelligent public opinion, a force more potent than government itself.

What, for instance, was the purpose of the founder of this Intercollegiate Peace Association? Not, I take it, to give men a chance to win petty oratorical triumphs; not, I suppose, to bring together speakers to entertain such audiences as this--or to weary them. But their object must have been to set the men of our colleges to thinking on the great question of peace. In such ways are peace societies using the platform and the press to establish a firm basis for unity and peace throughout the world.

Yesterday the advocate of world peace was called a dreamer; to-day rapidly organizing public opinion demands the abolition of war and recognizes the wealth and culture of peace. Yesterday we erected statues to those who died for their country; to-day we cheer the Gladstones, the McKinleys, the Roosevelts, who live for humanity. Yesterday we bowed the knee to Mars; to-day we join in peans to the Prince of Peace. Yes, the new spirit of the day is fraternal; it is undaunted; it is for mankind. Even now the world's geniuses are mustering the soldier citizens of every nation for a peaceful conflict. The great battles of to-morrow are to be fought in quiet laboratories, in legislative halls, in courts of justice, and on the broad battlefields of productive labor.

The final outcome is, indeed, irresistible. Racial movements have mixed all peoples; the oceans have become the world's common highways; the air is filled with voices speaking from city to city and from continent to continent; an international postal system makes the world's ideas one; there is quick participation of mankind in the fruits of invention and research. We behold financial and economic enterprises world-wide in their outreach; we feel the force of social projects and social ideals that concern not one but every nation; and we are participating in missionary movements that affect not one but every race, and are changing the very face of nature itself. Our world is a world unified beyond all possible conception a century ago, and the world unity is a certain stepping stone to world peace.

The world never offered grander opportunity to the nations for leadership--not for leadership in military splendor, but for leadership in the sublime paths of peace. For the United States this call means not only opportunity but even obligation. Already this country has performed well her duty in fostering international arbitration. She has been a party to half of the cases where disputes between nations have been referred to the Hague Tribunal. Arbitration is performing its mission with more and more efficiency, yet each year the war budgets of the nations are increasing. The peace sentiment now demands a decrease of armaments, a conversion of the waste of war into the wealth of peace. To demonstrate that this is practicable is the immediate opportunity before us, our present obligation. What is our waste of war expressed in terms of the wealth of peace? Notice! Two thirds of the cost of one dreadnought, like the mammoth _Florida_ launched but yesterday, would erect and furnish a veritable palace for every foreign ambassador and minister of the United States, thus solving a perplexing problem of our diplomatic service. One twenty-second of the cost of one dreadnought would support for one year the entire force of the American Board of Foreign Missions in their work of proclaiming our gospel of peace. One half the cost of one dreadnought would erect and equip twenty-five manual-training schools, teaching the rudiments of a trade to forty thousand young people each year. The cost of two dreadnoughts would provide every state in the Union with a half-million dollars with which to save the juvenile delinquents from criminal courts and schools of vice behind prison bars. The cost of one dreadnought, wisely spent each year in the fight against tuberculosis, would make the white plague in a single generation a disease as rare as smallpox is to-day.

Where now we are erecting battleships and forts, it is for us to build libraries and schools. Where now we drain our treasuries in equipping men to fight their fellow men, it is for us to arm against the common enemy, disease. Where now we pour out our wealth before the pagan Mars, it is for us to devote our treasure to supporting the works of the Prince of Peace.

Such a victory for peace would make America not simply a world power: it would make her the world leader. Will we stop tagging at the heels of Great Britain and Germany and travel this broadening road in which we can be first? How humiliating to struggle along, a trailer in the military procession! How noble to set the daring example of living up to the belief in peace! Will we say: "See our hands; we bear no bludgeons. Search us; we carry no concealed weapons. Militarism we have thrown to the scrap heap of practices discredited and vicious. We have stopped war's wanton waste of men and treasure; we rejoice in the growing wealth of peace ideals realized"? Thus shall we speed the steadily growing public opinion of the world, to the bar of which must finally come every nation which does aught to break or hinder the world's peace.

THE HOPE OF PEACE

By STANLEY H. HOWE, Albion College, Albion, Michigan

First Prize Oration in the National Contest held at Johns Hopkins University, May 5, 1911

THE HOPE OF PEACE

The history of civilization is a record of changing ideals, and ideals are best reared in the hearts of the world's young men. Inevitably, nations look toward the cradle for their future and intrust the care of their destiny to the hands of youth. "Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men," declared Edmund Burke, "and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation." When the blood of youth is sluggish and impure; when the young hold wealth more dear than worth, remove the check of virtue from their selfish aims, establish Mammon as their god, and, ambitious to govern the world, forget how to govern themselves,--then nations choke and die. But when the blood of youth is rich and pure, pulsating through the veins of the universe with strong, resistless surge; when fathers teach anew the angel's message of good will and peace, and sons build high their goal upon a pedestal of service and of truth,--then nations breathe and live. What hope, then, asks the world, finds the doctrine of peace in the ideals and aspirations of America's youth to-day?

The nation faces a charge of militarism. It is the indictment of her critics that never before in American history has the government entertained an attitude so hostile toward her neighbors and so dangerous to the interests of peace. They point to the attempt to fortify the Canal and cry out that America would drain her treasury to build a monument of reproach to international integrity. They criticize the vast appropriations for the navy and declare that America is starving her poor that she may more pompously parade the seas. They protest against the "war-game" on the Rio Grande[1] and even charge that in the interest of a Wall Street king America invites the world to arms. And these are not illusions. The lure of gold has turned the nation from her mission. The spirit of commercialism has eclipsed the sentiment of brotherhood and tempted the Republic to barter her honor for the price of imperial supremacy. Wherein, then, again asks the world, finds America hope for the future? And to the charges of her critics, with their dismal prophecy of a "wrong forever on the throne," this is the nation's answer and defense--that an eclipse is never permanent, that the world stays not in the valley of the shadow forever, and that the solution of the problem, the fulfillment of a national mission, and the hope of world peace find their common assurance in the changing ideals of America's aspiring young men.

[1] Part of the United States army was mobilized on the frontier for maneuvers, in 1911, owing to the Mexican revolutionary disturbances.--_Editor._

The young American is essentially ambitious. He is wont to seek the shortest path to leadership, and, when blocked at one highway, to turn with undiminished ardor to another. And his ideal is a mirror of the age in which he lives. In revolutionary days he covets the glory of a minuteman, and in the deeds of Warren and Putnam finds the consummation of his hopes. Again, in the hour of civil war his eyes turn toward the battlefield--and from her boys under twenty-one the Union draws eighty-five per cent of her defenders. But fortunately for America this drama of the youth's ideal has one more act. The lure of fife and drum has become a thing of the past. The glamour of military life has become a dream of yesterday. The young man is learning that the prize of battle is never equal to the price. And with the growing conviction of the folly and futility of international strife must disappear the last apology for war. Nations will cease to struggle, not when they have learned that war is a tragedy but when they have discovered that it is a farce.

And the youth of to-day is learning it. In the same deplorable conditions which the nation's critics have regarded as an alarming tendency toward militarism, he reads a message of the absurdity of war. Militarism itself is revealing a mission. Based as it is on the spirit of aggrandizement, it is teaching to youth the economic value of a human life. It is uncovering its own selfish motives and betraying its own senseless ends. It is impressing the world with the truth that battles are fought for purse string and not for principle. It is teaching to youth a new ideal; it is itself the answer to complaints of friends and calumnies of foes. It is the cloud before the dawn. It heralds the coming of the brightest epoch yet chronicled in American history. It is the realization of that glorious prophecy of John Hay that the time is coming when "the clangor of arms shall cease, and we can fancy that at last our ears, no longer stunned by the din of armies, may hear the morning stars singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy."

And is this but the dream of a visionary? Is it merely the fancied perception of an inexistent star? Is it nothing more than a groundless hope and an alluring vagary? The answer is visible everywhere. And the hope of peace finds its safest assurance among the institutions of learning in America. James Bryce has referred to the United States as the nation having the largest proportion of its young men in college. In the last month of June more than fifty thousand collegians wore the cap and gown of graduation. It is to the trust of the college-bred man that the peace movement confides its future, and modern education assumes no greater responsibility than the training of the new world-citizen. Already the school has become the most potent factor in the new uplift. The youth is no longer dependent upon the newspaper for his knowledge of world-politics. An intelligent study of foreign affairs is at last regarded as of as much importance as a study of the past. To broaden the young man's vision of the world, prominent educators are even advocating traveling fellowships. In twenty-five of the larger universities of America an association of Cosmopolitan Clubs is establishing the groundworks for a wider international fraternity. Plans are already under way to have an organized delegation of more than a hundred students of all nationalities present at the third Hague Conference. Day by day the problem of world-unity is becoming more and more deeply embedded in the mind and thought of the rising generation. More and more is youthful patriotism becoming a realization of the truth that "Above all nations is humanity." The lure of war is losing its magnetic power and the brotherhood of man becoming more and more an international reality. A sentiment for universal peace is sweeping the world, and behind the defenses of advancing civilization, armed with the strength of a lofty and unselfish purpose, stands an army of America's young men, mustered from the nation's colleges, enlisted to serve for an eternity, and invulnerable in the protection of a new and a conquering ideal.

Therefore the significance of the young man in the world's affairs to-day is something more than a fancy. Again and again the plea for world-harmony hears a response in the changing ideals of a new generation. The growing sentiment of the educated youth of Japan finds its crystallization in the efforts of Count Okuma toward the consummation of world-disarmament. The spirit of the youth of England finds expression in the ambitious dream of George V, whose hope it is to tie the bond of Anglo-Saxon unity, long since dissevered by George III. Among the young men of Russia the life of the great philosopher of world-citizenship has left a lasting conviction of the senselessness of war. Even in imperialistic Germany the reckless building of dreadnoughts brings out a vigorous and uncompromising protest from the thinking youth of the land. In America a vision of the international parliament of man, growing large in the minds of her leading statesmen, finds expression in the continued philanthropy of a great industrial king. And, most significant of all, these are the world-wide examples that the college man enthrones in the empire of his thoughts. Sixty thousand European students, bound together by the cosmopolitan ties of a peace fraternity, have ceased to glorify the triumphs of the battlefield. The commentaries of the hero-worshiper to-day do not record the names of a Marlborough or a Bonaparte. Rather does the young man find his idols in the more humble annals of a Tolstoy or a Hay. And the new ideal of international peace is not merely the religion of a few enthusiasts. In an individual way these apostles of peace voice to the world the spirit of the unnumbered thousands of obscurer men whose lives and talents are directed, not to the construction of material kingdoms but to the building of a better and more world-wide brotherhood.

Such is the Hope of Peace. The nation's critics may continue their indictment, and, pointing out the crises of the hour, paint in dismal hues a picture of the problems never to be solved except by shot and shell. Her skeptics, blinded by thought of the errors of the past, may prophesy the desecration of her honor and the disappointing failure of her hopes. The press may pen a graphic story of the military spirit of the age, and frowning patriarchs relate the deeds of golden days gone by. But underneath this cloud that overhangs, and almost hidden in the gloom of history's disparagement, the new world-citizen discerns the birth-light of a brighter and more steadfast star,--perceives the coming triumph of good will and peace,--and the awakened eyes of expectant America look forward with promise to the dawn of that new day when a nation shall be judged by the weight of its cross and not by the wealth of its crown.

THE ROOSEVELT THEORY OF WAR

By PERCIVAL V. BLANSHARD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

First Prize Oration in the Western Group Contest, 1912, and in the National Contest held at Mohonk Lake, May 16, 1912

THE ROOSEVELT THEORY OF WAR

Ex-President Roosevelt has made this astounding statement, "By war alone can we acquire those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life." These words, coming from the lips of a nation's idol, have fallen like a bomb shell in the camp of the pacifists. Not that Mr. Roosevelt's opinion was of overwhelming weight, but that he was voicing the opinion of some of the most influential thinkers of the modern world. Not long before the German philosopher Nietzsche had taken a like position, and he was indorsed by Von Moltke, the statesman; Ernest Renan, the historian; Hegel, the philosopher; Charles Kingsley and Canon Farrar, the divines. We must have a care, we peace advocates, how we treat such men's opinions. If they are right; if, as they maintain, war develops a nation, then we are fighting against the instrument of our own salvation and smothering the only hope of the nation itself.

But are they right? Does war make for national greatness? Before we can give a rational verdict we must answer certain other questions. What is our nation, anyway? What are the factors that make for its greatness? And how does war affect these factors?