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| For more than
half a century, or ever since I owned and edited the Peace Advocate,
the international peace question, with its inviting aspects and promises,
has occupied a primary place in my thoughts and affections. No writer
who ever put pen to paper could, or can, or will be able to, adequately
describe the losses, sufferings, hatreds, horrors, inhumanities, and
atrocities of a single great war. A war commenced for one purpose
not infrequently originates or developes other blazing issues, which
have to be quenched in blood, if quenched at all. Wars, in fact, very
rarely settle questions; but they always settle men, and sometimes
scores of thousands of men in a single campaign. |
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costs and losses of a war are generally estimated by the amount of
treasure expended and the number of men killed and wounded; but these
do not include a half or a quarter of the material and moral damage
done on both sides, or a half or a quarter of the heritage of evil
entailed on future generations. Well may Mr. Hay, the late American
Foreign Secretary, describe war as "the most futile and the most
ferocious of human follies." War, in fact, has been the great
scourge of the human race. It has decimated the race, bred numberless
international suspicions, estrangements, and animosities, and strewn
the pathway of history with the wrecks of empires and civilisations.
It is the rock of offence against which millions of aspirations have
been and are being broken, and by which millions of efforts for human
improvement have been and are being neutralised. The chief wonder
of future ages will be not that in early times men and women were
cannibals, but that in after ages, and particularly when boasting
of their Christian enlightenment, they met in organised masses scientifically
to slaughter each other. And what has been done, in soaking the earth
surface with blood and tears by wars, will be repeated unless efficient
means are taken to produce a better state of things. What are the
means, and who are most likely to use them? The past and present chief
wielders of political power in the world, whether they be kings, or
emperors, or aristocracies, or plutocracies, or parliaments, have
not had the will or the power to prevent wars, or to avoid vast and
costly preparations for possible wars, which are almost as crushing
and destructive as actual warfare. |
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same may be said of Churches; and, strange to say, the most greedy
nations are Christian nations But what the classes and Churches could
not do or have not done, the masses may accomplish. The common people
everywhere suffer most by wars, and can do most to prevent wars, and
would be the greatest gainers if wars were prevented. They can make
the peace movement popular and powerful by cultivating the peace sentiment
in their homes, their workshops, their clubs, their friendly societies,
their co-operative combinations and political leagues; by using mediation
or arbitration to avoid strikes and settle labour questions; by their
votes at municipal and parliamentary elections; by sending greetings
on suitable occasions to their fellow workers in other countries,
and by welcoming similar greetings in return and by persistently asking
for a permanent Hiigh Court of Nations to settle, under the dominion
of international law, international disputes. Duelling, or attempt
at individual destruction, is, by common consent in this country,
regarded and punished as crime, and what one nation like England,
with its forty millions of inhabitants, or the United States, with
their eighty millions, can do for the benefit of individual citizens,
the two nations, or any two or any ten nations, can do collectively
for their mutual protection. Substituting reason for violence and
judicial methods for war methods, to adjust international questions
would make many rough places smooth and unlock undreamed of possibilities
of human progress. I plead for peace and good fellowship among men,
not merely as an end in itself, but to urge "man's search to
vaster issues. The economic benefits derivable from a peace policy
would repay, many times over, any labour or sacrifice employed in
producing it; but the economic gain would be small in comparison to
the consequent moral harvests that would gladden the world. Happily,
a hopeful spirit is abroad and manifesting itself in several countries-and
particularly in England, France, the United States, and all the smaller
nations of Europe-in the increasing number of international conferences
to promote peace, education, science, art, social and political questions;
in the multiplication and cheapening of means of inter-communication
and transit; in the growing impatience of excessive taxation mainly
caused by war expenditure; in the developing solidarity of the labouring
classes, and the increasing number of workmen representatives in European
parliaments. The removal of the spacious war-cloud that shadows the
world would enable peoples to breathe more freely, to work and worship
with more gladness, and see glimpses and enjoy foretastes of developed
duties and destinies. |
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