THE WORLD WAR THE ROAD TO PEACE T. B. McLI-OD a Be- t .ffe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY WW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lm. TORONTO THE WORLD WAR AND THE ROAD TO PEACE BY T. B. McLEOD WITH AN tjnfy&bo&t&n NOTE BrfS. PAflKES CADMAN THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918 All right* reserved COPYEIGHT, 1918 Bii TrfE* MACMALAN COMPANY Sejc up ana 'printed. " PoBMMed, ^larch, 1918 TO ALL LOVERS OF PEACE WHICH IS THE OFFSPRING OF RIGHTEOUSNESS AND TRUTH AND TWIN SISTER OF LIBERTY THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE OFFERED BY THE AUTHOR work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteous- ness quietness and assurance forever." 208471 5 Much that has been spoken and writ- ten in these piping times about pacifism and the pacifist has fallen short of its purpose, and chiefly because the critics have allowed their zeal to run into vio- lence. A people at white heat are apt to have scant patience with lack of fervency, and to give short shrift to any who may hang back. Caution is mistaken for hostility, and doubt for treason. We are also prone to overlook the psycho- logical fact that error is seldom if ever cured by cursing it. Wrong opinion like clay is stiffened rather than sof- tened by fire. Men are not convinced with a cudgel, or brought to terms by recrimination. Opposition may for a FOREWORD time be subdued, but it is not perma- nently conquered by sheer force. Re- proval and rebuke in order to succeed must be carried on with all longsuffer- ing as well as doctrine. Even those of us who count ourselves rooted and grounded in the truth do not relish hav- ing truth thrust at us on the prongs of a pitchfork. Then, besides, this damnatory method of dealing with the pacifist fails to sat- isfy a large number of people who, though themselves militaristic for the moment, are loath to believe that so many men and women of exemplary character are pacifistically inclined without any rhyme or reason. Their reason to be sure may not appear sound on examination, but may it not be sin- cere? And if sincere is it not entitled to the respect which men usually accord sincerity? The American pacifist is not necessarily a traitor, neither is he a FOREWORD fool, and many of us would like to have his creed stated fairly and discussed dispassionately. The writer has endeavoured to put himself in the pacifist's place; to catch his point of view; to meet. him squarely on his own ground and to show that his position is not so impregnable as to ren- der the reconsideration of it by himself a waste of time. The writer moreover entertains mod- estly the hope that the following pages may be of assistance to some who while in hearty sympathy with the nation in the present crisis may be at a loss on the spur of the moment to give a reason for the faith that is in them. T. B. INTRODUCTORY NOTE It is superfluous to introduce Dr. McLeod to the religious world. He has long been known and recognised on both sides of the Atlantic as a thinker and a preacher of ability whose usefulness in common with that of many another di- vine has in my judgment been curtailed by his reluctance to give his utterances the wider range which the press affords. Fortunately I was permitted to read the manuscript of this admirable and weighty book, The World War and the Road to Peace, and presuming upon the long and intimate friendship with which the author has honored me, I urged its publication. After some dis- cussion and rather because he deeply felt the seriousness of the crisis now INTRODUCTORY NOTE upon the Christian Church than because of my request, he consented to forego the habit of a life-time and send out a mes- sage which is as earnest and devout as it is wise and timely. I shall not be guilty of the impertinence of summar- izing the argument which the author pursues ; nor, shall I in any way antici- pate the profit to be obtained from the author's discussion or the reader's pleas- ure in a style which is as lucid as light, and possesses a pungency reminiscent of Thomas Huxley at his best. The theme has already been treated by nu- merous writers: by some with clarity and conclusiveness : by others in that sentimental temper which defeats jus- tice in its yearning for a fictitious peace. But few I have noted have brought to the debate a fuller knowledge of its is- sues than Dr. McLeod displays, and none have expressed them to better effect. The balance and sobriety of a INTRODUCTORY NOTE mature mind are apparent on every page, and this putting of a vexed case cannot fail to be greatly helpful and even illuminating to thoughtful preach- ers, teachers, lecturers, and laymen gen- erally, who have constantly pondered the questions at stake and doubtless have often felt what Dr. McLeod here says and says so well. Perhaps it is need- less for me to add that I heartily indorse the main positions he takes and so ade- quately defends. Nor can I find any satisfactory refutation for his apolo- getic in behalf of righteousness as the source of peace. The dangerous ten- dencies which are neither moral nor im- moral so much as they are non-moral, and which make for peace as though it were not a derivative of justice are here candidly stated, and the appointed path to the concord we all crave clearly indi- cated. I am thankful that Dr. McLeod has written this book and I believe it INTRODUCTORY NOTE will be an instrumentality for great good in every circle where it is received. It is much in small compass; a com- pressed, concentrated, vigorous bro- chure, catholic in spirit, unmistakable in aim, and having the truest eloquence ; the eloquence which belongs solely to an unfaltering grasp of fundamental reali- ties. S. PARKES CABMAN. CONTENTS II UNDEBATABLE GROUND . . . .16 III PACIFICISM IN TERMS OF EELIGION 31 IV PACIFICISM IN TERMS OF CON- SCIENCE 42 V PACIFICISM IN TERMS OF HUMANITY 57 VI COMPENSATIONS 77 VII THE REAL ROAD TO PEACE . . .96 The World War and the Road to Peace i A PLAIN WORD WITH THE PACIFIST IN these excited times words are apt to run high and high words serve no good purpose; certainly they do not make for peace, whereas plain words if spoken in a kindly spirit may hope for a tolerant hearing, and if they do not leave their auditor in a better mind they at least do not leave him with a bitter heart. And yet it takes courage under some circumstances to speak plain words es- pecially when you are to speak them to 2 THE WORLD WAR AND your good friends whose flesh is still quivering under the stinging lash of criticism. Plain words however well meant may prove under such circum- stances as unacceptable as blisters on raw wounds. At the roll call of pacifists I hear with no little regret responses from some whom I am proud to number among my personal friends who not only deserve but command my confidence and admiration men of unchallenged in- tegrity in the commercial world, of rec- ognized standing and ability in the lit- erary world, holding high places in the Public Service, eminent as preachers of righteousness and peace in the religious world. It is easy to see therefore how one possessed of ordinary modesty re- coils from the task, though it be self- imposed, of having a plain word with men to whom he is accustomed to listen with deference, whose advice he covets THE ROAD TO PEACE 3 on matters of business, whose writings enrich his mind, at whose feet he gladly sits and waits for instruction in right- eousness and guidance in the way of life. One does not like to find himself at variance with such men, much less to assume the role of censor or of counsel- lor, though moved by an irresistible im- pulse to speak a plain word to them for the good of their souls. The writer be- sides suffers from an instinctive aver- sion to controversy of any sort, whether with the sword, or with the pen, or with the tongue. Dissension distresses him; even discussion gets on his nerves. Rather than insist on his point, his im- pulse is to agree with his adversary quickly. There are two possible predicaments which confront the man who is prompted to speak to the pacifist just now, neither of which can well be avoided. One of these is the likelihood 4 THE WOBLD WAS AND of being numbered with those offensive opponents of pacificism who work off their opposition in wordy abuse. They call hard names ; they pronounce inflam- matory judgments ; they rail ; they pre- fer charges of disloyalty and treason. In portioning out rebuke discrimination has been cast to the winds. While it is true that all pro-Germans, Sinn-Feiners, Bolshevikis, slackers, cowards, traitors are pacifists, it is not true that all pacif- ists are pro-German. But all pacifists, the pro-German and the patriotic alike, have been brewed in the same mortar with the same grinding pestle of wrath- ful accusation. Here then is one unpleasant predica- ment, namely, that if I venture my plain word I shall be turned down at the very start as one more of those terrible ogres who delight in billingsgate and love to fondle every opponent with a club. Failing to escape this fate I stand in THE KOAD TO PEACE 5 for the other thing that I have dreaded. For the pacifist is not as peaceable as he looks. When set upon he is a hard hitter. He does not sit down and ac- quiescently accept as chastisement from the hand of the Lord the criticisms of men no better than himself. He strikes back and fiercely sometimes; and I can hardly expect to escape some share of the retaliatory shelling meted out in full measure to those who in their zeal apply to the pacifist such terms as pussy- foot, and molly-coddle, and fifty-fifty. The recent lurid fulminations against his foes by one of our most eminent and influential pacifists ought to serve as a warning to timid souls who may be tempted to take issue with him and his brethren. In his sabbath temper, he ex- horts us all, when men are saying hot and scorching things, to use language which is free from heat, and to take heed unto our ways that we sin not with 6 THE WORLD WAR AND our tongue. After reading this ex- hortation, one is more than surprised by the bituminous rhetoric which this peace-loving preacher of righteousness employs as a vent for his holy wrath. I dread being told as this pacifist has told others that my patriotic utterances are " howlings," that my best meant ef- fort to inspire others with my own sen- timents of loyalty is only a " feverish frenzy," and that if I attempt to stir up the lukewarm I cannot hope to have the countenance of the sanest and noblest men of the country (meaning pacifists of course). Even though my withers are as yet unwrung, I can hardly abstain from shivering as I read the mordant chas- tisement which the press receives al this pacifist's hands or rather his mouth. " Fortunately," he says, " New York papers are not taken seriously outside of the city. They are despised in the THE ROAD TO PEACE 7 West and distrusted in the South. They are Prussianized, and what they are now teaching is the Gospel of Pots- dam. The daily press with a few hon- ourable exceptions presumably the Hearst papers and the Stoats Zeitung, et al. is owned by capitalists (let col- leges and churches take notice, for they are not altogether free from the baneful influence of the capitalist), shouts for big armies and navies and urges the na- tion to war. Editors are dabblers in world politics; they sit in their oflices, affect to speak with the oracular finality of Jove, caricature and slander clergy- men and others who believe in patience and sacrifice, and show by their conduct as well as by their words that they have been with Jesus." Nor is the business man spared. " The munition makers, money lenders, defence committees bring to bear on Congress the utmost amount of pressure 8 THE WOELD WAB AND possible in order to plunge the nation into war." This is rather hard hitting by the man who has just exhorted us to take heed unto our ways that we offend not with our tongue. Perhaps he makes a nice distinction between offences with the tongue and offences with the pen. I have quoted these from abundant sayings of like tenor by this preacher of the gospel of peace in order to show that unless one is prepared to take his medi- cine, or to swallow whole the pacifist creed, he might better keep away from the front benches and remain mute. Nevertheless, now that I have started I am resolved to face the music and have my say. Indeed my courage revives as I think of the large number of honest, open-minded * pacifists who neither bark nor bite, and who are seriously opposed to militancy by word as well as by sword. They see and understand that THE ROAD TO PEACE 9 the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, and is set on fire of hell ; that words can do as much harm as bullets; are as a matter of fact more dangerous, for the worst thing a bullet can do is to kill the body, whereas a word can kill the soul. To shed the blood of an enemy in fair fight is a venial sin compared with the assassination of character by lying lips. Indeed one need not even use the lips in a deadly assault on character. A shrug of the shoulder or a tilt of the eyebrow will do the trick. There is no compari- son as to the savagery of spraying one's social rivals with labial vitriol and that of spraying the enemy on the field with shrapnel. Slashing other folks with a serpent's tongue is a vile form of fight- ing compared with the use of physical force. I am not saying all this by way of justifying militarism so-called. Two bad eggs cannot be depended on to make 10 THE WOELD WAE AND a good omelet; but I am saying it in order to indicate that the pacifist is also capable of bad blood, and also to suggest that as long as he neglects to remove the beam out of his own eye, he would better not attempt to remove the mote from the militaristic eye. My courage to go on with what I have to say is further stiffened by the convic- tion that as a general rule pacifists like other folk are amenable to reason; and not only so, but are keen enough to note the difference between sound reason and sophistry, even when sophistry drapes itself in a gown and speaks from a pul- pit. No more worthy of confidence is it there than if it spoke from an anvil and wore a leathern apron. Sophistry is to sound reason what charlatanry is to science ; what pedantry is to scholar- ship; what quackery is to medicine; what daubery is to art. You may re- bind and label one of Zola's novels THE ROAD TO PEACE 11 " moral philosophy," but by doing so you will not make it wholesome read- ing. " A man may cry, Church, Church, And be no better than other people; A daw isn't a religious bird Because it keeps a cawing from a steeple." Take a sample or two of the sophistry to the use of which some pacifists will descend for the purpose of supporting their doctrine. One of them asks us to compare pacifism and militarism, and to aid us in the comparison he defines pacifism and then he defines militarism. How do you suppose he defines the lat- ter ? " The militarist," he says, " be- lieves in war; believes war is a good part of the normal and wholesome life of the nation, and that without war nations stagnate and the fibre of civi- lization rots. The militarist believes that war is the mother of virtues and that without war at short intervals men 12 THE WOBLD WAE AND lose their fighting edge and that virile qualities grow feeble and have a tend- ency to disappear." Now the writer of this stuff knew when he wrote it that there is not a man or woman on the continent of North America who be- lieves any such thing of an American militarist, not one man or woman. There are plenty of people in Germany who believe it. In fact this is the Ger- man appraisal of war, but this gym- nosophist of ours in order to strengthen his pacifist creed in the eyes of the American people draws a picture, not of American militarism but of German militarism, hoping I suppose that lit- tle children and feeble-minded folk will be moved to tears by the contrast. This is not sound reasoning; this is cheap sophistry. Take another specimen of intellec- tual legerdemain by this same pacifist. After examining it one is left in doubt THE ROAD TO PEACE 13 as to whether his aim is to make out a case against the British, or to soften our judgment of Germany's guilt, or both; but whatever his purpose, the baseness of his acrobatic performance is apparent to all. " If Germany is drowning the women and children of England, England is starving the women and children of Germany." He has nothing to say, you observe, about the murder of American women and children by Germany. " It is as devilish to starve German women and children on land, as to drown English women and children in the sea." " The British blockade is as illegal, indefensi- ble, devilish as the German blockade by submarines " ; and now that we have placed an embargo on foodstuffs likely to reach Germany, our act also is il- legal, indefensible and devilish. The blockade of the ports of an en- emy has the sanction of international 14 THE WORLD WAS, AITD law, whereas the murder of women and children is an atrocity condemned of heaven and earth. This author tries to make out that the holding up of neutral mail and the interruption of merchant ships on their way with aid and com- fort for the enemy is every bit as il- legal, defensible, and devilish as the slaughter of innocents on the high seas which they have a perfect right to travel. Why does he not go on and ameliorate Germany's crime in bombing undefended towns, hospital ships, and hospitals, and murdering little children in school and babies in their cradles; why does he not? Because this would rather hurt his case in the eyes of those whom he wants to persuade. This pacifist has surely lost his compass, and his standard of values has been mislaid. Pacifists generally will not hesitate to repudiate this sort of work in their be- half ; just as they will not hesitate to THE ROAD TO PEACE 15 repudiate all vituperation and the call- ing of hard names. The subject which is engaging the attention of Americans just now is too serious to admit of word play and mutual recrimination. II UNDEBATABLE GROUJiTD AS we approach a free, flexible, and friendly discussion of this sub- ject, we will be surprised to find at how many points we find ourselves in agree- ment. 1. We are all of one mind in our ab- horrence of war. We all wish that war could never vex the world, just as we wish that fire would not burn, or water drown, or frost freeze, or sin damn. When now and then I am advised by my pacifist friends that I would be sur- prised to know how many of our people detest war, my reply is that I would be surprised to hear of a single individual among our population of over 100,000,- 16 THE ROAD TO PEACE 17 000, who does not detest war, and that if detestation of war makes a pacifist then we are all pacifists, and always have been and always will be. The grim business of war has no attraction for any one of us. No American citi- zen needs to be preached at or to be bom- barded with tracts in order that he may become sensitive to the horrors of war. He hates war with a perfect hatred, and he loves peace so much that he is going to have it even if he must fight for it. As a people we have many differ- ences. We differ widely on questions governmental, political, social, educa- tional, religious. We are by no means of one mind as to the best methods to pursue in the development of our na- tional life. We are far apart in our ideas about labour, capital, taxation, the franchise; about internal affairs and foreign relation ; but we are all one in our abhorrence of bloodshed. The 18 THE WOBLD WAE AND tales that come to us of the loss of life, the suffering and agony which the soldiers and sailors endure are enough to curdle the blood in our veins. The very thought of it all fills us with a strange dismay and dread, and I am sure that if there were any way out of it, if savage beasts and savage men could be tamed and brought to terms by magic, or magnetism, or moral suasion, there never would be any fighting. When it comes to the frightfulness of war, the American people know neither militarist nor pacifist. Indeed the common use of these terms is an abuse of language. The American militarist is not a man who loves war, but who has reluctantly come to see that the brutal power organized to destroy the liberties and civilization of the world can be met, resisted, and overcome only by force of arms. The pacifist on the other hand is not a coward. He is not a man THE ROAD TO PEACE 19 afraid to fight if need be, but he believes that rather than resist by force the des- perate demon who has assaulted the peace and security of the world we might better submit, and suffer, and waive our rights until such time as the demon is brought to his senses by pacific means. 2. Another point about which there can be no dispute concerns the origin and authorship of this war. Nobody doubts which of the nations is to blame for the precipitation of the dire conflict which has involved the whole world in such misery. England with her contemptible little army of 150,000 men was in no con- dition to go out against the trained and disciplined millions of the Central Pow- ers. It is matter of record that Great Britain, France, and Russia exhausted every resource of diplomacy in their de- sire to avoid war. They went on their 20 THE WORLD WAR AKD knees almost before the Kaiser in their entreaties that he would spare the world the catastrophe into which he and his Potsdam gang had chosen to plunge it. Serbia surely did not want to fight. Rather than get into trouble she offered to yield everything short of her sov- ereign rights as a nation. Poor little Belgium tortured and crucified by that moral monster who has been out- lawed by the civilized nations did not want to fight. She drew the sword only when her territory was actually invaded by the Hun in defiance of his solemn oath to respect and protect Belgium's neutrality. Italy did not want to fight ; and for a year and a half after war broke out maintained a strict neutrality. And surely responsibility for this war cannot be laid at our door. The United States did not want to fight. For two and a half years, in spite of numerous provocations which no other great self- THE ROAD TO PEACE 21 respecting nation would have put up with we succeeded in keeping out of war. For two and a half years the insolent, arrogant German ogre kept thrusting his leering lineaments into our face, but provoked nothing from us in response save an occasional mild pro- test. In the opinion of some of us we kept out of the fight altogether too long ; so long in fact that the enemy decided we were cowards; our friends judged us to be morally indifferent; and we our- selves had begun to lose all sense of self- respect as a nation. During this period of neutrality we endured unpar- donable insult and outrage with unpar- donable patience and long suffering. Our hospitality was being barefacedly abused by the guests of the nation. The ambassadors of the Central Powers, German military and naval attaches, propagandists, agents, spies were plot- ting against our peace; were subsidiz- 22 THE WORLD WAS AND ing our press; were corrupting our leg- islators ; were dynamiting our factories ; were sowing the seeds of dissension among our people; were seeking to em- broil us in war with Mexico and Japan ; were unleashing their submarines to sink our merchant ships and to murder our citizens, men, women and children. There is no American fit to be at large but knows that we are not respon- sible for this war, that we did not pro- voke it, unless indeed our refusal to become a vassal under German suze- rainty is to be regarded as provocation. To quote the words of President Wilson, " It is plain enough how we were forced into the war. The extraordinary in- sults and aggressions of the Imperial Government of Germany left us no self- respecting choice but to take up arms in defence of our rights as a free people, and of our honour as a sovereign gov- ernment. The military masters of Ger- THE ROAD TO PEACE 23 many denied us the right to be neutral. They filled our unsuspecting communi- ties with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf. They sought by violence to destroy our indus- tries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us, and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her. They impu- dently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly executed their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. What great na- tion under such circumstances would not have taken up arms ? Much as we have desired peace, it was denied us and not of our own choice. This flag under which we serve would have been dis- honoured had we withheld our hand." If any pacifist in spite of these facts and this declaration still doubts which 24 THE WOKLD WAR AND nation is to blame for this war, I would lead him right up to the inner sanctum of pacifist headquarters and have him listen to what the High Priest himself has to saj. " One nation is more re- sponsible for this war than any other, and on that nation should rest the hot indignation of all men who love right- eousness. The trampling upon Belgium was one of the most infamous and das- tardly crimes committed by any nation in a thousand years. If that was not wrong, then there has never been a wrong thing done on our planet." And he expresses the hope that the Hohen- zollern dynasty will be overthrown. So firmly convinced from the beginning of Germany's guilt was this distinguished leader in the pacifist school, and so strongly did the current of his sympa- thies run in the direction of the entente allies that he deprecated the President's THE ROAD TO PEACE 25 advice to the American people to ob- serve a strict neutrality. 3. One other point at which pacifists and non-pacifists can meet without the least danger of dispute concerns the pur- pose with which we as a nation deter- mine to enter this war. It will be uni- versally admitted that we have entered the war with hands as clean and hearts as pure as those of the men who fought at Lexington, at Bunker Hill, at Valley Forge and at Yorktown. And what is true of our purpose is we believe equally true of the purpose of our allies. It is quite a common way of ours quite cheap also and not at all satisfactory in its result when we wish to convict a man or a nation of present guilt to rake up the past and think of all the evils that were done in those degenerate days. It is admitted that many selfish, aggressive, unrighteous wars have in the 26 THE WORLD WAS AND past been waged by European nations, but it is not a respectable method of rea- soning to take me back to wars waged long ago in India, Africa, China, Spain, Ireland, in order to convince me that England and France must be criminally engaged in this war. Such a style of reasoning as this is on about the same moral plane as petty larceny. Not one of the entente belligerents is fighting for Empire, for territorial ex- pansion, for commercial supremacy, for the suppression of a successful competi- tor, or for any selfish end whatsoever. These nations are fighting, as we are fighting, to make the world a safe place for free men to live in. We are fight- ing in order to prevent a cruel, brutal autocracy from overriding weak and defenceless peoples. We are fighting to secure for small nations the right to live their own lives free from outside interference, to enjoy political auton- THE BOAD TO PEACE 27 omy, and to develop their own ideals. We have taken up the hloody pen to write that never again on this planet shall a brutal military power attempt to establish the rule of might over right, to set up a new moral code for the world, and to dominate the thought and will of other peoples; and while we are about it to write it so indelibly that no reflu- ent wave of barbarism can ever wash it out. " The object of this war," says Presi- dent Wilson, " is to deliver the free peo- ples of the world from the menace and the actual power of a vast military estab- lishment controlled by an irresponsible government which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, pro- ceeded to carry this plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long established practices and long cherished principles of inter- national action and honour." 28 THE WORLD WAR AND Here then are three important points about which we are all of one mind: (1) We all hate war. We are a peace- able and peace loving people. We are so by a temperament and by education. (2) We are all agreed as to where the blame for this war lies.. We did not provoke it, we were provoked into it, as the President says, " we were denied any other choice." (3) We are agreed that in taking up the sword, we are not actuated by revenge, or by greed, or by lust of conquest, or by any sinister mo- tive whatsoever, but only by the high and fine resolve to help redeem this world from slavery to an immoral mon- ster, and to establish more firmly in the earth the reign of righteousness and truth. But, alas, while accepting without re- serve the facts and principles stated above, we are not all of one mind as to the method to be employed for the, THE ROAD TO PEACE 29 emancipation of enslaved peoples and for the putting down of that arrogant power which dares to impose its will on the civilized world. The majority of us believe that the savage enemy who flouts all moral obligation can be mas- tered by force only; that moral suasion would be worse than wasted on the ram- pant wild beast; and ghastly though it be to even contemplate there is nothing for it but to meet and down the demon power with its own weapon. On the other hand a respectable mi- nority of the people calling themselves pacifists insist on some other way for the settlement of controversies than the way of physical force and therefore they are opposed to armies and navies and guns and forts and everything suggestive of war. The grounds on which their oppo- sition rests are various and of various value. Indeed, to the average intelli- 30 THE ROAD TO PEACE gence many of them are of no value as foundations. Some are as unsubstan- tial as a dream, or as a mirage of the desert which disappears as it is ap- proached. Some are as undependable as quick-sand, and some are so fluffy and flimsy that they shrivel up like gossa- mer in the judgment fires of criticism. On such grounds as these is based the opposition of all sorts of queer people, visionary people, flighty people with ephemeral interests who are ever ready to be seized with any sort of novel no- tion provided it be vague enough and to organize themselves around it until the novelty of it wears off, or until sup- planted by some other notion still more vague and unpracticable. Such people are hopelessly unamenable to plain words ; so I pass on to examine some of the more substantial grounds on which opposition to war is based by more sensi- ble pacifists. Ill PACIFISM IN TERMS OF RELIGION THERE is the ground of religious belief. Many pacifists are the enemies of war because they believe that Jesus was the enemy of war. If this be true that Jesus was the enemy of war of every kind then none but Jews, athe- ists, agnostics and secularists, would be in this war or ought to be in this war; for the bulk of the American people ac- cept the teachings of Jesus as of ulti- mate authority. We must not allow to go unchallenged the implied claim of the pacifists that they are the only peo- ple who recognize and yield obedience to the authority of Jesus. But is it true that Jesus declared him- 31 32 THE WORLD WAR AND self in opposition to war and forbade his followers to fight? We know he for- bade revenge, vindictiveness, bitterness, hatred, retaliation, reprisal. Even if he had never uttered a word in condem- nation of these we would know that he was dead against them. We would know it from his own behaviour; from the example he set the world of gentle- ness, meekness, generosity, charity, and compassion. But was he against war of every sort regardless of the purpose with which men and nations fight ? If we take him literally and not as the oriental mind took him and we must remember that Jesus had to do with the oriental mind, which was fed on imagery then we must admit that he was dead against war. " Resist not evil. If a man smite thee on the one cheek turn to him the other also. If a man compel thee to go with him a mile, go with him twain. Love your enemy, etc." 33 These and other like sayings of his do sound as if he did not intend his fol- lowers to fight for any cause whatsoever. If I am to take them literally and obey them implicitly, then no rights of mine are so sacred as to justify my vindica- tion of them by force; and no wrongs of which I may become the victim can be so outrageous as to justify my resist- ance of them. The burglar may have my property ; the human swine may in- vade and despoil my home, mistreat my wife, and murder my children with im- punity. But while distraught and well-nigh exhausted by my effort to adjust my thinking so as to harmonize with these sayings of Jesus, I suddenly come upon other sayings of his for an interpretation of which I must appeal to the pacifist. That saying of his for instance about hating my father, mother, wife and children as a para- 34 THE WORLD WAR AND mount condition of discipleship ; and that other saying of his, " I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword; to set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law," and that saying of his, " He that hath no sword let him sell his garment and buy one." Am I to take these sayings of Jesus literally also ? The pacifist cannot have it both ways. If the words of Jesus which seem to be opposed to war are to be taken literally, by what canon of inter- pretation am I required to take figura- tively these other sayings of his which seem to imply that under certain cir- cumstances he approves of war. As a matter of fact any effort of ours to arrive at an understanding of these and other similar sayings of the Mas- ter must lead to endless confusion un- less we study them first in the light of THE BOAD TO PEACE 35 the circumstances under which they were spoken, and secondly in the light of the nature of him who spoke them. The old Jewish custom of revenge and retaliation was under discussion; and Jesus was condemning that custom according to which the Jew had a right to demand an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. A cruel custom this, exclaims Jesus. Rather than insist on the practice of it, it would be a better, finer, nobler thing to suffer any indig- nity even to the turning of the other cheek to the smiter. It relieves me to think that it was in the spirit of this counsel that President Wilson said on one occasion, " We as a nation are too proud to fight " that is to say too proud to stoop to vindictive re- prisals too proud to repay outrage with outrage. Then again before we decide as to the value of these sayings of Jesus, we 36 THE WORLD WAR AND should study them in the light of the mind and spirit that were in him. He, the chivalrous champion of the wronged and the oppressed, was often moved to anger. His pulses quickened and his face grew white as he looked on cruelty and injustice. While he never resorted to the use of carnal weapons unless we make an exception of that whip of small cords he fought back neverthe- less with terrific fierceness. The thun- derbolts which the old law hurled against wrong and the wrongdoer were as feathers compared with his fulmina- tions aimed at sin and the sinner. The angry lightnings which played about Sinai were concentrated in the Sermon on the Mount. The tempests of the di- vine wrath as reported in the Old Testa- ments were dew falls compared with the outpouring of Jesus' soul against in- iquity. While recalling how the pro- phets portray him as the Lamb of God, THE ROAD TO PEACE 37 let us not forget that they portray him also as the Lion of the Tribe of Juda. If they saw him coming as a preacher of peace, they also saw him as a warrior coming up out of Edom with dyed gar- ments from Bozrah, sword on thigh and travelling in the greatness of his strength. Jesus urged men to be generous and gentle, but he never urged them to be molly-coddles. He forbade vindictive- ness, but he never forbade vindicative- ness. He required men to be long suf- fering under personal grievance, but he expected them to defend the weak even to the death. He discouraged retalia- tion, the taking of an eye for an eye, but he never encouraged men to permit with- out resistance the invasion of their homes, the desecration of their sanctu- aries, the ruin of their property, the abuse of their wives, and the murder of their children. 38 THE WORLD WAR AND Those of us who would shift over on Jesus the responsibility for our oppo- sition to fighting with or for our coun- try owe it to ourselves to make sure that our conception of his program in the interest of mankind coincides with the facts. It was, as stated by himself, a part of that program to purify and improve the moral and spiritual facul- ties of men ; but it was not any part of his program to give them a new set of faculties in place of the original ones. He did not undertake to deal with men as we are sometimes obliged to deal with a decrepit and useless clock, namely, to substitute an entire new set of works for the old ones, leaving only the case intact. He came to heal the morally sick, not to supply them with a different set of or- gans and senses; not to give them an- other nature, but to reform their present nature. He caused lame men to walk, but he did not supply them with a differ- THE BOAD TO PEACE 39 ent kind of legs. He restored the par- alytic, not by giving him a new set of muscles and nerves, but by reviving the power of the old ones. He caused the blind to see and the deaf to hear, but he did not alter the structure of their eyes and their ears. Even so, he found men's spiritual vision dimmed, their spiritual powers partially paralyzed, and he restored their defective vision, revitalized the impaired faculties and gave them a new aim, a new ambition, a new outlook, and new ideals. To eliminate all or any of their original en- dowments would prove nothing less or else than an annihilation of their iden- tity and the turning out of other kinds of creatures. Instead of doing this, his object was to verify, vivify, purify and empower the capacities with which men come into the world. Among these are love, sympathy, compassion, anger, moral indignation. To eradicate these 40 THE WORLD WAR AND from the structure of the soul would only be to dehumanize men. God would not be God without them. Men would not be men without them. To render men incapable of love, sympathy, compassion, would reduce them to the level of beasts. To render them in- capable of anger and moral indignation would reduce them to passionless paste. To quench in man the fires of moral in- dignation would be in a way as much of a disaster as to render him incapable of love. This would not be giving him a new heart, but afflicting him with fatty degeneration of the old heart. Better leave him as he is than render him an anemic and impotent non-resister of wrong. If I could be convinced that Jesus meant to make of me a non-resister un- der all circumstances ; meant to develop in me a soft and easy tolerance of wrong and the wrongdoer and an aversion to THE BOAD TO PEACE 41 dealing lustily with both; meant me to lie down and be trampled on by a ruth- less foe ; meant me to compromise prin- ciple and negotiate peace at any price with an enemy rather than fight him, I would feel compelled to select from among the list of the world's heroic worthies another teacher and guide who would bid me sacrifice and suffer, fight and die in behalf of honour, liberty and righteousness. IV PACIFISM IN TEEMS OF CONSCIENCE ANOTHER class of pacifists base their objection to war on moral grounds. They fall back not on the au- thority of Jesus but on the authority of conscience. They are conscientious ob- jectors. They have no desire to search the scriptures for ammunition where- with to pop militants. They have no use for the sentimental stuff that is be- ing served up in the name of religion. They are too intelligent to think of ex- ploiting in support of their position cer- tain moral maxims of Jesus couched in oriental imagery and used for the pur- pose of pointing out to a revengeful people a more excellent way of behav- iour. They have chosen what they be- 42 THE BOAD TO PEACE 43 lieve to be more solid ground for their objection to war. Let us see whether this ground they have chosen is rock or shifting sand. 1. The presumption seems to be against them, though we are not going to be satisfied with presumption. A man who persists in setting up the au- thority of his individual conscience against that of the collective conscience on any public question ought to make very sure that he is in possession of a direct divine revelation. When the question is a private and personal one, the imperatives of conscience are su- preme and must not be meddled with or gainsaid by the outsider, however wise the outsider may be. But when the in- dividual conscience comes into collision with the public conscience on questions affecting the state, the presumption is that the decision of the individual con- science is not to be trusted. 44 THE WORLD WAR 2. We are compelled to listen to much that is being said in these days about rights constitutional rights, moral rights, religious rights supposed to be sanctioned and secured to the indi- vidual not only by public statute but by private conscience. On this double ground the soap box orator claims and defends his right to preach sedition ; the peace at any price man his sentimental piffle; the teacher his corruption of the minds of the youth of the land; the preacher his pathetic appeals to sensi- tive children and suffering women; the legislator his treasonable appeals to the masses; the anarchistic demagogue his red shirted damnation of the prosperous and his impudent effort to build a devil's bridge between the home of him who has and the home of him who has not. 3. ISTow this whole question about rights, even when the rights men claim sound reasonable enough, is a very com- THE EOAD TO PEACE 45 plex one. It is, however, a well estab- lished principle of which the pacifist should take notice that when even the conscientious rights of the individual conflict with the rights of society, the rights of society must remain paramount even though the individual suffer martyrdom for conscience' sake. -For instance, the people in their organized capacity resolve to have courts of jus- tice, school houses, a system of police, public roads, canals, breakwaters, bridges, lighthouses, etc. Some of us never have need of the courts or the po- lice or the canals or the lighthouses and we might therefore quite conscien- tiously claim as our right exemption from taxation for the support of these institutions, and call the forcible collec- tion of taxes for this purpose an in- fringement of our rights. But such as- sertion of our rights would very prop- erly be laughed out of court. The bach- 46 THE WOBU) WAS AND elor has rights, but nobody will regard seriously his right to claim exemption from the school tax on the ground that he has no children to be benefited by the schools. The Quaker has rights, but what becomes of his conscientious objec- tion to fighting when his country is driven to war? The state recognizes nothing as the right of the individual which interferes with its own suprem- acy. To allow an individual citizen to count himself absolved from conformity to the expressed will of the majority be- cause that will comes in collision with his scruples is to invite anarchy. When the state guarantees to the individual his legal rights, his constitutional rights, it does not extend that benefit to his whims, his caprices, his prejudices, or even to his conscientious convictions, or pledge itself to respect the imagined rights of the Jew, the Quaker, the Mormon, the anarchist or the pacifist. THE ROAD TO PEACE 47 4. But the conscientious objector raises the point that what is wrong for an individual to do can never be right for a hundred or a million individuals to do. If it is wrong for two men to quar- rel and to settle their controversy with deadly weapons it can never be right for two organizations of men called nations to use force in the settlement of their controversy. The number of men en- gaged in a fight does not justify the fighting. This is plausible reasoning. Let us see if it has any merit above that of plausibility. How about the major premise of the syllogism ? Even a very young child will see at once that it is a baseless assumption. He will see that it is not always wrong for a man to fight and with deadly weapons at that. He will see that it is not pacifism but paltry cowardice in a man who does not put up a fight when a fellow man attempts to take his property or his life. 48 THE WOELD WAB AND But granting for the sake of argument the assumption that it is wrong for an individual to fight, does that fact, allow- ing for the moment that it is a fact, prove that it is wrong for a community or a nation to fight? To allow that is to disregard and disown a primary vital truth, namely, that moral duties are often determined by moral relations. I am not insisting, mark you, that all moral duties are so determined. Ko re- lations or complications or combination of circumstances can make murder, or theft, or lying other than immoral. Nevertheless it is true as we may see by a simple illustration or two that certain acts take their moral complexion from the character of the relations in which the actors stand to one another. A little boy is severely and cruelly treated by his big brother, who seems to take pleasure in torturing those who are not big and strong enough to defend 49 themselves. The little fellow feels keenly for a time the wrong that has been done him and his heart is full of anger and resentment; but by and by when the smart of his bruises has passed away, he forgets his injuries, for- gives his cruel brother and is ready to join him in the next game as if nothing had happened ; and we applaud the little fellow's magnanimity and we say what a splendid, generous and noble spirit that boy possesses. But the unhappy inci- dent comes to the knowledge of the father of the boys. What will he do? What is his duty in view of what has taken place? Shall he ignore the af- fair ? Shall he take no notice of the big brother's vicious behaviour? Shall he treat the boy as if he had committed no offence, and condone his cruelty? To do so would not only be a crime against justice but a crime against the boy for whose moral training he as a father 50 THE WOELD WAS AND is responsible. If he winks at his son's brutality he will have nobody to blame but himself if by and by he finds he has a Cain on his hands. You see that what was noble in the little brother to do, would be base in the father to do. Moral duties are sometimes determined by moral relations. A good citizen going about his law- ful business is set upon and brutally beaten and left for dead by a beastly bruiser of a man who knows no law but that of force and recognizes no author- ity but that of his own will. The in- jured man is taken to the hospital and recovers. His heart is for a time hot with indignation against his assailant, but being a kind-hearted, magnanimous, charitable man he not only refuses to take reprisals but forgives his enemy. And we say what a fine generous thing to do ! But the assault is witnessed by an officer of the law who hales the crim- THE ROAD TO PEACE 51 inal to court for punishment. What now will the judge do with the prisoner ? Will he get down from the bench, pat the savage on the back, poor-poor him, and give him money to pay his fare home ? That would be to encourage the man in his evil courses, to confuse his moral consciousness if he should hap- pen to have any moral consciousness left to put bad men on a par with good men, and to expose the court and the law to contempt. What was noble in the injured citizen to do would be base in the judge to do. Moral duties are determined by moral relations. What we might applaud as a shining ex- ample of generosity on the part of the injured individual we would denounce as an atrocious outrage of justice on the part of the judge who is the agent and representative of the social organism. 5. We have too much respect for our fellow citizen of the pacifist brand to 52 THE WOBU> WAS AND suspect that there is even one of their number who objects to the agencies and implements in the way of courts, juries, judges, police, prisons which we employ to fight the lawless within our gates. This being so, it is hard to understand why they should object to our use of all the resources at our command to fight the lawless who thunder at our gates from without. 6. A brutal and unbarbarous nation given over wholly to war its people trained not merely in military camps, but in universities, schools, churches, homes and nurseries inspired by the lust of conquest, marshalling its forces during the lifetime of a generation for the subjugation of the civilized world, has without provocation assaulted this country which has dwelt in peace, cul- tivated the arts of peace, and lived on terms of good will with all its neigh- bours. It has trampled on our THE ROAD TO PEACE 53 betrayed our good faith, broken its signed and sealed contracts with us, maltreated our citizens, murdered our women and children, sunk our merchant ships bound on peaceful errands, cor- rupted our press, sown sedition among our people. What is our duty as a na- tion under these circumstances? The man who on moral grounds and prompted by his conscientious scruples counsels us to waive our rights rather than to fight; to surrender and submit to these unspeakable indignities and ir- reparable injuries, yes, and even allow this demonic power to overrun our land, devastate our fair fields, burn and pil- lage our cities and homes and reduce us to the condition of prostrate Belgium without ever striking a blow in vindica- tion of our national honour and in de- fence of the oppressed whose cry rises up into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth; this man would better look to 54 THE WOELD WAB AND that conscience of his and see of what sort it is. 7. Conscience, however we may de- fine or think of it an inward moni- tor ; the voice of God ; God's vice-gerent in the heart of man ; the tongue that tastes the flavour of an intention may be in one of several states. Meant to be an infallible guide in conduct, it is often dimmed, blurred, dulled, perverted, prostituted by passion, by selfishness, by prejudice, by pride, by ambition, by ignorance. When therefore a man sets the authority of his private conscience over against the testimony of the public conscience he should make very sure that his conscience is in good order. The conscience of some of us is in the condition of an old sun dial in a neg- lected garden. Once trustworthy, it is now hurled from its pedestal and lies overgrown and smothered by tall rank weeds. Conscience may be sensitive or THE ROAD TO PEACE 55 it may be seared as with a hot iron. It may be alive or it may be dead. It may be independent of the will or it may be the creature of the will. It may see clearly or be purblind or totally blind. It may serve as a guide or it may serve as a mask for cowardice. If it be true that conscience makes cowards of us all, it is equally true that cowardice makes for some of us the only shred of con- science we possess. O ! Conscience, what crimes are committed in thy name ! One man persecutes the Christians, hauling them to prison and to judgment under the stress of his conscience and believing the while he is liquidating a heavy debt to God. Another betrays his master for thirty pieces of silver and then, urged on by his conscience, goes out and hangs himself. 8. Keeping in mind these considera- tions and also a couple of facts about our entrance into this war, namely, first, 56 THE BOAD TO PEACE that the enemy denied us the privilege of keeping out of it, and secondly, hav- ing gone into it, we are not in it for re- venge, or for a division of the spoils, or for any selfish purpose whatsoever, but in order that we may help make the world a safe place for peaceful peoples to live in, I must be allowed to doubt the firmness of this foundation on which the pacifist rests his objection to war. PACIFISM IN TERMS OF HUMANITY OF all the reasons, specious and otherwise, which have been ad- vanced by the non-militant in support of his contention, the most plausible and by all odds the most powerful is that based on humanitarian ground. It is an appeal to men's hearts, and while hearts are being played upon and stirred heads are of little value and might as well beat a strategic retreat. The argument unseals a mighty flow of emotion against which reason can hope to make but little headway, while the pacifist having launched his bark on this current finds the pulling easy. 1. Knowing it to be easy, others be- 57 58 THE WORLD WAR AND sides the genuine philanthropist get aboard. The purely selfish man finds it a benefit to himself to join the goodly company on the voyage. He cares little for men, but he has a profound interest in money. The lives of others he holds cheap enough, but he has great regard for his own precious skin. His horror of bloodshed is mild compared with his horror of taxes. He is thinking not so much of loss of life as of loss of prop- erty. His fear of the results of war on trade and commerce and incomes is his uttermost fear. His voice was never heard in opposition to war as long as the controversy was confined to European peoples, for that meant the sale of rich cargoes of cotton and corn and muni- tions; meant heavy loans and fat prof- its; but as soon as the possibility of our joining in the fray loomed on the horizon he added his voice to the chorus of lamentation over the horrors of war. THE ROAD TO PEACE 59 War involving this nation threatened his peace of mind and the comfort of his easy chair in the cozy corner, and he began to croon out his complaint. " Why are the nations fighting ? Why do they not compromise here and there, and yield a point or two. for the sake of peace? The Belgians butchered to make a German holiday could have saved themselves from martyrdom by conceding to the Imperial Government a right of way through their land. France could have escaped the woe which has overwhelmed her by re- fusing to approve of Russia's quar- rel. England could have avoided war by accepting Germany's bribe, and thus the catastrophe which has over- taken the world could have been avoided." So speaks this man of peace who finds it convenient now to sail un- der the flag of humanitarianism. He may be dismissed. His voice is that of 60 THE WOKLD WAR AND the sluggard. His protest is the prat- ing of the petty egotist; and the great body of the American people may be trusted to appraise him and his pacifis- tic plea at their proper value. 2. And in dealing with the humani- tarian pacifists it is no more than fair to assure them that they are not to be held responsible for or to be bulked in with a group of persons who from mo- tives which have failed, IT stir our dormant moral consciousness into proper recog- nition of moral values. In spite of all its horrors it will have proved a blessing in disguise. All that has happened before our eyes the past three years and a half, the faithless violations of treaties, the im- pudent repudiation of international agreements, the disregard of all law human and divine, the disregard of the piteous appeals of suffering peoples for mercy, the ferocities, cruelties, inhuman barbarities committed by a nation pro- fessing to be civilized, has stirred us as nothing else could stir us to a review and if need be to a revision of our easy moral code ; has stirred into activity our power of moral indignation which had become flabby, has put an edge on our blunted regard for righteous dealing, and has given us a fresh vision of the pricelessness of honour and truth. THE ROAD TO PEACE 95 " Blow, bugles, blow ! they brought us for our dearth Holiness, lacked so long, and Love and Pain. Honour has come back as a King to earth And paid his subject with a royal wage, And nobleness walks in our ways again And we have come into our heritage." VII THE REAL KOAD TO PEACE SOONER or later this war will come to an end. We believe it will end right. There will be no let-up on the part of the allies until the Teutonic powers are beaten down, brought to terms, and compelled to atone (as far as atonement is possible) for their barbaric crimes against the world. Then and not till then there will be peace; that is to say, there will be a cessation of hostilities. Fighting will cease. There will be an end to bloodshed and slaugh- ter. The various contending armies will be demobilized. The forces in the field will be returned to their homes and will resume once again their places in 96 THE KOAD TO PEACE 97 the various departments of peaceful in- dustry. There will also be in due time a resumption of commercial relations and later on, when the bitterness pro- duced by the war has passed, there will be a renewal of social relations between the peoples who have been shedding each other's blood. 1. We all want it. It is the thing we talk about and pray for ; and nobody wishes more or prays harder for it than the men on our fighting ships and in the trenches. But ardently as we all desire it and devoutly as we pray for it, we will not be content with a peace secured by surrender or by compromise or by negotiations. We may if we will have peace tomorrow, that is to say, we may if we will have an end of hostilities. If we want peace so badly as to be willing to pay his price for it, the Hun will grant it to us, and will undertake on certain conditions to 98 THE WORLD WAB AND leave us undisturbed in the enjoyment of it. But we do not allow ourselves to talk or think of such a peace. We are not ready to barter our birthright for a mess of pottage. We will have noth- ing short of peace with honour; peace based on righteousness and wedded to liberty. The Teutonic powers are more than ready to make peace, and are quite willing to enter into a covenant of peace with the nations against which they have made war. But of what value would their signatures be to any pact? By their outrageous disregard of former pledges they have forfeited the confi- dence of all civilized nations. And to trust the word of the military masters of Germany until they have repented and brought forth fruit meet for repen- tance would be as absurdly foolish as to build a city in the crater of an in- active volcano which for the moment ap- pears to be harmless. The resultant THE ROAD TO PEACE 99 peace would at best be only a truce to be treacherously ended at the conven- ience of a foe who has proved himself so utterly faithless to all former treaty obligations. 2. But when the German menace to the independence of the world has been abolished, and the German will to dom- inate the world has been destroyed, and the wrongs which have threatened the liberty of the world have been redressed, then what? How can all further dan- ger of war be averted ? By what means can a universal and permanent peace based on righteousness be established and maintained ? Some of our more in- fluential leaders strongly recommend as a preventive of war and a promoter of peace, a fresh and final definition of national frontiers which shall be de- fended with bristling guns. In other words, each nation must be prepared for war in order to make sure of peace. But 100 THE WORLD WAB there are serious objections to the adop- tion of this way to peace. In the first place, the enormous cost of the plan would doom the peoples to perpetual poverty, and besides the peace secured by this method would after all be but a strained concordat. That is not a very high order of peace which reigns be- tween men who envy one another and are ready to fly at each other's throats, being prevented from doing so only by the impassable barriers which separate them. Burglar alarms and loaded re- volvers do afford us a sort of protection and peace, but a peace after all which we can enjoy only with fear and trem- bling the kind of peace which the wives and children of long ago enjoyed while the men folks kept guard on the hills against the inroads of Indian sav- ages. 3. Others propose a way of peace by the abolition of all frontiers which THE ROAD TO PEACE 101 hereafter shall be mere imaginary lines, and by the amalgamation of the peoples under a uniform system of government. Such a proposal is about as fatuous as the kind of religious union which some good people are hysterically striving to bring about. Pan-christian conventions are periodically arranged, and are at- tended by bishops and clergy and laity of the various denominations, who get together, fraternize, and have a sweet millennial time. They talk and pray and resolve in the interests of unity, thinking that if only all churches could agree to repeat the same creed, and use the same prayer book, and appear in the same vestments, and adopt the same sac- ramental forms, and submit to the same discipline and government there would be unity and peace. They fail to see that even if all this that they aspire after should come to pass the resultant peace might not after all be much better 102 THE WOELD WAE AND than that which prevails in the family vault. They seem to have forgotten that just this very kind of unanimity and uniformity obtained in Christen- dom some centuries ago, and that this was the time when the church was the deadest. There was a kind of peace, but there was a lamentable absence of life, and action, and ambition, and achievement. But just as soon as there were the stirrings of life in the valley of dry bones and men began to think and move once more, the uniformity was broken up and war ensued. If we can imagine that the nations weary and exhausted by war could be made to forget differences and to unite under one flag, be it that of universal autocracy, or democracy, or socialism, in no time at all, unless fused together by some mighty irresistible spiritual power, ri- valries and contentions would spring up THE EOAD TO PEACE 103 and there would be a renewal of hostil- ities. 4. A more promising program for the promotion of peace among the nations and one in which many of us have put great faith is that of the Peace Soci- eties which have been in operation for many years. These societies have num- bered in their membership many of our prominent and gifted men who have assembled themselves together at fre- quent intervals to talk peace, and to de- vise ways and means whereby the public should be enlightened and brought into active sympathy with a movement look- ing to the settlement of all disputes national and international by arbi- tration. The movement gained rapid headway one of the outward and vis- ible signs of its prosperity and power being the erection of a magnificent peace temple at The Hague, the gift of a 104 THE WORLD WAR AND wealthy and enthusiastic member of the organization. Other societies similar in character and purpose to the one which has flourished in this country were organized in several of the Euro- pean states and enlisted the approval and support of thoughtful and influen- tial people everywhere, who like our- selves had an unbounded faith in their power to bring about a condition of per- manent peace among the nations. Only one more thing was needed to complete the efficiency of this movement, and that was the binding together of these sep- arate and already powerful organiza- tions in one international body. But at the very moment when this union was about to be consummated, in spite of all our faith and hopes, the bloodiest and most disastrous war ever seen on this planet broke out and the various Peace Societies which promised such THE ROAD TO PEACE 105 great things were blown to bits by the explosion. 5. And now in place of this a brand new society has been organized on an entirely different basis, whose object is to bring about and maintain permanent peace by force. The organization is known as " The League for the Enforce- ment of Peace." When it gets under way there will be no more eruptions. Lids are to be fitted and screwed down on all craters. The underworld may boil but it can have no vent. The various nations are to unite in legis- lating into existence a police force which will do for the world at large what the police do for a city by proving them- selves a terror to evil doers. The pact of peace once signed any nation show- ing symptoms of disloyalty is to be watched and if guilty of an overt breach of the peace is to be indicted, convicted 106 THE WOBLD WAR AND and punished. Peace by the forcible suppression of the peacebreaker is the gist of the scheme. The experiment may prove well worth while. It will be interesting to watch how this new legislation will work. Its operation will certainly have the spice of variety, the culprit of today being one of the jury tomorrow. The plan may secure us a kind of peace, but not quite the peace we need and most de- sire. The mother may enjoy the quiet but hardly the peace which reigns in the house while Young Irrepressible is do- ing time in the closet. But we may surely aspire to a higher kind of peace and follow a better road to it than that afforded by legislation, national or in- ternational. Law at its best can only muzzle the vicious dog; it cannot cure his viciousness. It may restrain the horse's heels with kicking straps but it cannot cure his evil temper. It may THE EOAD TO PEACE 107 clip the tiger's claws but it cannot change the tiger's nature. Law may be able to clear a devil out of the house, and sweep and garnish it, but it cannot pre- vent seven or more other devils from entering in. Regulations and restraints imposed by law are a social necessity under existing conditions, but the most and the best they can accomplish in the direction of peace is to carry on an in- exorable and unending war against the law-breaker. Before the world can have the peace it needs and longs for the fires of evil passion must be subdued, and the will to do wrong broken down. But to try to compass these ends by legislation would be as foolish and futile as to try to extinguish Vesuvius with a garden hose or to demolish Gibraltar with a pop-gun. 6. Seeing the hopelessness of secur- ing a righteous and permanent peace by either of these methods, many of us are 108 THE WOULD WAB AND putting our faith in education as a pan- acea for the world's ills. Men are quarrelsome and blood-thirsty because they are ignorant. Educate and en- lighten them and they will not only be- come peaceable, but peace makers. But highly as we prize the benefits of educa- tion and knowledge, the theory that they are not merely a specific but a cure-all and an effective preventor of war is dis- credited by the fact that the best edu- cated nation on the earth today is the most warlike, and not only so but the most cruel in its practice of the art of war. Knowledge after all is but a weapon ; a weapon that may be wielded by a bad man or a good man for purposes of de- struction or for purposes of construc- tion. The educated man is armed, but if knowledge is all that his education has given him, he is not full armed for the highest achievements of life. When THE ROAD TO PEACE 109 a boy has completed his schooling you are not dead sure whether he will put the schooling to good or bad uses; whether you have prepared him to make an honourable livelihood and to be a blessing to the community, or to write iniquity and read putrescence and to figure up the difference between his small income and the enormous one of the man next door. The doctor's knowl- edge of physiology, of hygiene and drugs does not keep him from abusing his body. Nor does the lawyer's knowl- edge of law prevent him from becoming a law breaker. A man's education may multiply his power for peace if he be a man of peace, or it may multiply his power to kill his fellowmen if he be a man of war. Education has not made Potsdam pacific, because to the mind of a German knowledge and morality are as mutually exclusive as frost and fire. Germany the schoolroom of 110 THE WOELD WAR AND the world has subsidized the school- room, the university, the professor, the doctor of divinity, the student in the interests of war. Education of itself does not make men less proud, less haughty, less arrogant, less intolerant of their fellows. At best it but drapes with a thin disguise his natural sav- agery, while it enables him to convert the arts of peace into the most deadly devices for destruction. Education, legislation, arbitration, leagues for the enforcement of peace all good as far as they go are inade- quate to the end they aim at because they all work on the outside. They deal with symptoms and not with the disease. They fail and must fail of a cure because they attempt to treat the patient for some cutaneous affliction when the real trouble of the sufferer is disease of the heart. 7. What the world needs for the pro- THE BOAD TO PEACE 111 motion of peace is power to change men. When that power is brought to bear on society we shall have peace, permanent peace. Change men and their laws will be changed. Make men just and their laws will be just. Make men kindly and the social order will be kindly. Let this new power infiltrate the people, and then war will not only be averted but war will be impossible. There will be differences of opinion still, diversities of gifts, differences of organization and of administration, but there will be peace, just as peace reigns between the diverse organ and functions of the hu- man body. What is this power which promises to pacify the world and put an end to strife? It is the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Nineteen centuries ago He the Prince of Peace came an- nouncing his program to the world. Kighteousness was the girdle of his 112 THE WOBLD WAS AND loins and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. He did not call out his program on the highways or introduce it with noisy demonstration. Neither beating of drums nor blare of trumpets an- nounced his appearance. His doctrine dropped as the rain and his speech dis- tilled as the dew. He did not cry or lift up or cause his voice to be heard in the streets. His expectation of the ul- timate success of his program though confident was modest. While taking for granted that it would win ascend- ancy in the long run, he foresaw that its progress would be slow ; but he could bide his time. One day with him was as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. A few faithful fol- lowers were all he could boast of at the close of his earthly career, but these few were men of faith who won other converts, and these in their turn still others until as the years and the cen- THE EOAD TO PEACE 113 turies came and went, the disciples of Jesus were numbered by millions visionary men and women if you please, idealists, dreamers of dreams who, no longer deceived by the gospel of force, the gospel of hate, the gospel of selfish- ness, the proud gospel of human effi- ciency, were committed to that Kingdom into which the glory of the nation would yet be brought. They foresaw that all kings should yet bow the knee before this Prince of Peace, and that on his head would be many crowns the crown of politics, of commerce, of sci- ence, of art, of literature, and that under his gentle but omnipotent sway war would cease unto the ends of the earth, and that the matin of the angels heard over the fields of Bethlehem would in the fulness of time be chanted around the world. But many of the adherents of Jesus in these days have grown sceptical con- 114 THE WORLD WAR AND earning the efficiency of his scheme for the woes of mankind. They have stud- ied it with interest, have been attracted by it, have admired it, but they have come to lose faith in it as a practical solution of the hard, unrelenting and inveterately hostile conditions that curse humanity. Christianity has been on trial for nineteen centuries and seems to have failed as a promised panacea against the evil forces which continue to disturb the peace of the nations. And others of us find our faith strained almost to the breaking point by the delayed success of Jesus' pro- gram. Like a weary bird flying into an icy air our faith grows afraid and faint, and we are tempted to ask where is the promise of the coming of the kingdom of peace ? Now it will help to revive and rein- vigorate our faith if, curbing our im- patience, we ponder seriously and fre- THE BOAD TO PEACE 115 quently two or three plain but important facts : In the first place, the fact that Jesus nowhere holds out the hope that the progress of His Kingdom in the world would be rapid. He Himself had no such expectation. On the other hand he understood and gave his disciples to understand that the growth of his Kingdom would be slow; that it would come without observation first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. Unlike mechanical, spir- itual forces work slowly. We can erect in a few months structures ample enough to house thousands of men and thus provide for their physical com- fort, but it is a different matter when we come to make saints of thousands of sin- ners. Given forces enough, a great mili- tary genius like Xapoleon can plough Europe with cannon shot and in a short time conquer a continent, but to win 116 THE WORLD WAR AND the affection and devotion of a dis- obedient and rebellious people, that is beyond him. Comparing spiritual things with natural we see how the higher and more complex the result, the longer the time consumed in its development. It takes months for the seed cast into the furrow to become a harvest of golden grain; and years for the little babe to become a stalwart man ; and centuries for the hollow log to grow into the ocean greyhound, or for a country sparsely peopled by savages to become a populous nation of millions of civilized men. It took millenniums for the hope begotten in the heart of a prophet to ripen into reality in the in- carnation of Jesus. Why then wonder and lose heart because the spiritual con- quest of the world through gentleness, patience and love should progress so tardily. A second fact we would do well to THE ROAD TO PEACE 117 ponder is that slow as the progress of the Kingdom must from its very nature be, it has been seriously retarded by the perfidy of the very organization to which Jesus committed its fortunes. That organization is known as the Church. As long as the Church ad- hered to and was inspired and con- trolled by the simple principles of its founder she made rapid progress. She outstripped in celerity the marches of an Alexander. Within a brief period she had planted the standard of the Cross in most of the important capitals of Europe and Asia Minor. By faith the followers of Jesus subdued king- doms, wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the vio- lence of fire. Even a Christian Em- peror occupied the throne of the Csesars. Rome, that moral cesspool of the nations, began to feel the cleansing power of the Gospel ; her .temples which 118 THE WORLD WAB AND were brothels were turned into pure sanctuaries, her priests the ministers of vice became zealous preachers of righteousness. Gladiatorial shows and Eleusinian mysteries were supplanted by moral and spiritual services. Her women who had been slaves, and her slaves who had been ill-used cattle came to be regarded and treated as human beings. But by and by the Church designed to remain separate from the world be- came merged in the world. She became inoculated with the world's philosophy, became mixed in politics and infected by worldly ambition. Controversies arose which splintered her into frag- ments and weakened her influence. Her lust for political aggrandizement and power paralyzed her. Forgetting her mission which was to redeem men from sin, she made converts by force, and drove them to baptism by the power THE ROAD TO PEACE 119 of the sword. The meek and lowly Jesus was no longer represented by a Paul who was aflame with a passion for souls; or a John who walked in inti- mate fellowship with his Master, or by a Barnabas the son of consolation ; but by a Hildebrand or an Innocent haughty, arrogant, tyrannical, cruel, lustful, before whose swaggering au- thority Kings must come on their knees. To be sure during all this period of degeneracy a remnant was preserved who kept the pure fires of devotion alive in caves and dens of the earth, in catacombs and in secret places. Now and then a saintly hero like Savonarola would arise to denounce the corruption of the times and defy the Vatican with its wriggling minions. Reformations too and revivals occurred at intervals in the history of the Church which in a measure cleansed the clogged 120 THE WORLD WAR AND channel through which the pure water of life was meant to flow for the healing of the nations. And yet the most loyal Churchman of us must acknowledge that there is still a good bit of the road of repentance to travel before the Church gets back to the simple charter which alone justifies her existence. Meanwhile deploring as we must this shameful record of the Church and see- ing as we do how her aberrations have seriously hindered a more rapid realiza- tion of the program of Jesus we will not fail to remember that these grave and disgraceful departures of the Church from the faith once for all de- livered to the saints are not chargeable to Christianity. The perversions, dis- tortions, and corruptions which dis- figure the history of the Church ; the clericalism, priestism, sacerdotalism, and tawdry symbolisms which have crept into the life of the church are THE ROAD TO PEACE 121 no more an essential feature of Christianity than barnacles are an es- sential feature of the structure of a ship, or than leprosy is an essential feature of the human form divine. The purity of the spring is not dis- credited because the stream which flows from it is fouled miles away from its source. Nor are the purity, vitality and power of Christianity discredited by the ghastly caricatures of it which the cor- rupted church has from time to time presented to the world. Still another thing we have to bear in mind as we wonder and ponder over the delay of the Kingdom of peace is that while the church has gotten rid of many of the abuses which have in- capacitated her as an instrument of the power of Jesus she has yet in large measure to learn to mind her own business and to attend to the one thing which has been given her to do. Jesus 122 THE WORLD WAR AND said : " As the Father hath sent me into the world, so send I you into the world." He has left us in no doubt as to his purpose in coming into the world a purpose which he never lost sight of, and from which he was not to be diverted. He came to save sinners; to seek and to save the lost; to give re- pentance to men and the remission of their sins. Men were slaves and he came to set them free. They were spiritually dead and he came to give them life. They were blind and he came to open their eyes. They were selfish, wilful, unrighteous, cruel, and he came to restore them to moral sanity. They were lost sheep and he came to bring them in out of the wild pasture and out of the stormy night. This was his mission and this is the mission of the Church. Never was the Church numerically stronger than she is today. Never was she so active and THE ROAD TO PEACE 123 busy as at present. Never were so many well-disposed people engaged in works of philanthropy and benevolence as now. Never were men more intent on the business of softening hard con- ditions, relieving distress, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick than today. But if we are to ac- cept the New Testament definition of the Church all this that her adherents are so largely devoting themselves to must be regarded as but an incidental feature of her great commission, just as healing the sick in body, opening blind eyes, cleansing lepers, feeding the hungry multitude were incidental features of Jesus' mission. He did not come to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a philanthropist, or a dispenser of alms. He came to make bad men good, un- righteous men righteous, heartless men merciful, impure men pure, wandering prodigals sons of God. The Church 124 THE WORLD WAR AND does well to build hospitals and alms houses, to fill storehouses for the sup- ply of the needy, to devise better methods for the care of men's bodies and the education of their minds; but the church was called and commissioned to preach the Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation, the power of God to turn men from wickedness, from self- ishness, from pride, from the lusts of the flesh. The Church is an am- bassador with instruction, a messenger with a message which she has been ap- pointed to deliver to all men the message of forgiveness, of love, of good will and peace. Feed men and they will be hungry again ; gratify them and they will be ungrateful again; house them and they will be improvident again ; make concession after concession and they will demand the more. The Gospel which Jesus put into our hands was not the Gospel of improvement THE ROAD TO PEACE 125 merely, the Gospel of social betterment, the Gospel of soap and sand paper, a sort of remedial measure for the cure of uncouthness, a sort of drapery where- with to disguise men's natural feroci- ties. This might have been his Gospel if his conception of sin had been that of many of us a fall up, an in- teresting phase of moral evolution; a misfortune at the very worst; the stumbling of a blind man ; the in- firmity of a defective man. But look- ing upon sin as the most awful fact in the universe; as separation from God; as alienation from the highest and the holiest; as denial and defiance of all moral restraints ; as that thing which if uncontrolled would dethrone God; the remedy Jesus proposed and which He commanded the church to proclaim must match the disease the Gospel of Moral and Spiritual regeneration. Give men this Gospel and then the 126 THE EOAi TO PEACE rich will be humble and the poor will be content; the ferocious will be tamed and the meek will come into their own; the great and the strong will kneel by the side of the ministering Christ in service and the weak will bless and not curse. The frontiers of the nations will be defined by walls of salvation and gates of praise. The art of war shall be forgotten; and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the f attling together ; and a little child shall lead them. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA HTHE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. Through War to Peace BY ALBERT G. KELLER Professor of the Science of Society in Yale University, and Author of " Societal Evolution." Cloth, isrno. Professor Keller discusses the present war from the point of view of the sociological, or the societal, theory. This theory, briefly, is that society expands by developing certain cus- toms, manners or folk-ways. Gradually these customs become a religion, ultimately develop- ing into what may be called a code. There has been growing up an international code of re- cent years and the progress of civilization is determined by the character and efficiency of this code. The Germans marked a variation from this code and notably during the last few years have been developing a code of their own, sharply opposed to that of civilization. The present war is then regarded as an in- evitable conflict between the code of civiliza- tion and the German variant. Professor Kel- ler writes in a vigorous and popular style, pre- senting his theoretical and rationalistic sup- port of the American cause in a way that the average reader can understand and appreciate. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York TWO BOOKS BY WALTER E. WEYL The American World Policies 12* $2.256. The United States is deeply concerned with the peace which is to be made in Europe, and with the Great Society to be re-constituted after the war. With world influence come new responsibilities, opportunities and dan- gers. This book relates our foreign policy to our internal problems, to the clash of indus- trial classes and of political parties, to the de- cay of sectionalism and the slow growth of a national sense. It is a study of " American- ism " from without and within. The End of the War Preparing Here Dr. Weyl gives us a new interpreta- tion of the war and of America's entrance into it. He points out the end toward which the war is moving and outlines an American policy for the war and for the peace which is to fol- low it. His purpose is to show the relation of this struggle to the whole history of Amer- ican thought and action, and to forecast the future policy of this country toward Europe and the world. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York The Soul of Democracy BY EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS Cloth, i2mo. $1.25 What at bottom does the war mean? Why has it been our war from the beginning? Wnat will be the effect of the war upon our social philosophy and upon the future of democracy? These are the questions which this volume undertakes to answer. The re- spective values of democracy and paternalism for efficiency, endurance and finally for the welfare and progress of humanity are studied in a series of vital chapters culminating in an analysis of the effect of the war upon social- ism, feminism, religion, education and litera- ture. Those who have heard the author's pub- lic addresses will readily realize the signifi- cance of a volume embodying his whole philos- ophy of the world's struggle with its effect upon the future. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York America Among the Nations BY H. H. POWERS Author of " The Things Men Fight For," etc. Cloth, ismo, $1.50 To arrive at an estimate of national char- acter from the homely facts of our national history, is the purpose of this volume, as ex- pressed by the author. He would, too, dis- card the time-honored prepossessions and epi- thets which have too long done duty with us as estimates of foreign nations, and arrive at a juster conclusion based on their actions. In short, he says, this book is an attempt at an Historic interpretation of our national char- acter and of our relation to other nations. With this purpose in mind he devotes the first part of his text to a consideration of America at home, taking up such topics as, The First Americans ; The Logic of Isolation ; The Great Expansion ; The Break with Tradition ; The Aftermath of Panama; Pan-Americanism and the Dependence of the Tropics. The second division is entitled America Among the World Powers, and considers among other things : The Greater Powers; The Mongolian Menace; Greater Japan; Germany, The Storm Center; The Greatest Empire; and The Greatest Fel- lowship. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64r-66 Fifth Avenue New York 000047596