THE CONFLICT OF WAR AND PEACE

PARTIAL LIST OF SUBJECTSAmerica the Exemplar of PeaceAmerica and the World's PeaceAmerica's Mission in the Peace MovementAmerica's Mission to MankindAmerica's ObligationThe Arbiter of the WorldArbitrationversusWarThe Challenge of ThorThe Conflict of War and PeaceA Congress of NationsThe Cost of MilitarismThe Cost of PeaceThe Crucial ParallelismThe Dawn of PeaceThe Dawn of Universal PeaceDemocracy and PeaceDiplomacy and PeaceDisillusionmentThe Dominant IdealThe End; and the MeansThe Evolution of a Higher PatriotismThe Evolution of JusticeThe Evolution of LawThe Evolution of National Greatness as a World PeacemakerThe Evolution of World PeaceThe Fallacy of the Economics of WarThe Federation of the WorldForces of War and PeaceThe FoundationsFrom Chaos to HarmonyFrom History's Pages—PeaceFruits of War and Fruits of PeaceGovernment and International PeaceThe Growing SentimentThe Growth of the Peace MovementHonor SatisfiedThe Ideal of the CenturyIdealism and the Peace MovementImmigration and PeaceThe Inefficiency of WarInstead of War—What?International ArbitrationInternational Justice and World PeaceInternational PeaceInternational Peace and the Prince of PeaceJustice and PeaceJustice by War or PeaceThe Keynote of the Twentieth CenturyThe Lasting WoundThe Law of PeaceThe Message of the AndesMilitary Selection and its Effect on National LifeModern BattlefieldsA Nation's OpportunityThe New Anglo-SaxonThe New BrotherhoodThe New Corner StoneThe New EraThe New NobilityThe New PatriotismThe Next StepThe Panama CanalThe Passing of WarThe Pathway to PeacePatriotism and PeacePeace and ArmamentsPeace and the Evolution of ConsciencePeace and the Fortification of the Panama CanalPeace and Public OpinionPeace InevitablePeace is our PassionPeace on EarthPeace, our Great IdealThe Philosophy of Universal PeacePhysical and Psychical Aspects of WarA Plea for International PeaceA Plea for PeacePopular Fallacies about WarPopular Government and PeacePopular Sentiment and Purer Citizenship: The Right Road to PeaceThe Power of International ToleranceThe Prince of PeaceProgress toward JusticeThe Proposed Court of Arbitral JusticeThe Rationality of PeaceThe Real PowerThe Redemption of PatriotismThe Regaining of the World's Lost LegacyRight or MightThe Significance of the Hague ConferencesThe Rightful RulerA Simple Method of Forwarding Universal PeaceThe Solving Principles of FederationSovereignty in ArbitrationStatesmanshipversusBattleshipThor or ChristUngrateful AmericaThe United States and Universal PeaceThe United States of the WorldUniversal Peace and the Brotherhood of ManThe Unnecessary EvilA Vision of a ConquestWar and ChristianityWar—The DemoralizerWar and its EliminationWar and the Laboring ManWar and the ManWar for ProfitWar—Universal Brotherhood—PeaceThe Warrior's Protest against WarThe Waste of War—The Wealth of PeaceThe Way of PeaceWhat, from Vengeance?World FederationThe World Organization

PARTIAL LIST OF SUBJECTS

America the Exemplar of PeaceAmerica and the World's PeaceAmerica's Mission in the Peace MovementAmerica's Mission to MankindAmerica's ObligationThe Arbiter of the WorldArbitrationversusWarThe Challenge of ThorThe Conflict of War and PeaceA Congress of NationsThe Cost of MilitarismThe Cost of PeaceThe Crucial ParallelismThe Dawn of PeaceThe Dawn of Universal PeaceDemocracy and PeaceDiplomacy and PeaceDisillusionmentThe Dominant IdealThe End; and the MeansThe Evolution of a Higher PatriotismThe Evolution of JusticeThe Evolution of LawThe Evolution of National Greatness as a World PeacemakerThe Evolution of World PeaceThe Fallacy of the Economics of WarThe Federation of the WorldForces of War and PeaceThe FoundationsFrom Chaos to HarmonyFrom History's Pages—PeaceFruits of War and Fruits of PeaceGovernment and International PeaceThe Growing SentimentThe Growth of the Peace MovementHonor SatisfiedThe Ideal of the CenturyIdealism and the Peace MovementImmigration and PeaceThe Inefficiency of WarInstead of War—What?International ArbitrationInternational Justice and World PeaceInternational PeaceInternational Peace and the Prince of PeaceJustice and PeaceJustice by War or PeaceThe Keynote of the Twentieth CenturyThe Lasting WoundThe Law of PeaceThe Message of the AndesMilitary Selection and its Effect on National LifeModern BattlefieldsA Nation's OpportunityThe New Anglo-SaxonThe New BrotherhoodThe New Corner StoneThe New EraThe New NobilityThe New PatriotismThe Next StepThe Panama CanalThe Passing of WarThe Pathway to PeacePatriotism and PeacePeace and ArmamentsPeace and the Evolution of ConsciencePeace and the Fortification of the Panama CanalPeace and Public OpinionPeace InevitablePeace is our PassionPeace on EarthPeace, our Great IdealThe Philosophy of Universal PeacePhysical and Psychical Aspects of WarA Plea for International PeaceA Plea for PeacePopular Fallacies about WarPopular Government and PeacePopular Sentiment and Purer Citizenship: The Right Road to PeaceThe Power of International ToleranceThe Prince of PeaceProgress toward JusticeThe Proposed Court of Arbitral JusticeThe Rationality of PeaceThe Real PowerThe Redemption of PatriotismThe Regaining of the World's Lost LegacyRight or MightThe Significance of the Hague ConferencesThe Rightful RulerA Simple Method of Forwarding Universal PeaceThe Solving Principles of FederationSovereignty in ArbitrationStatesmanshipversusBattleshipThor or ChristUngrateful AmericaThe United States and Universal PeaceThe United States of the WorldUniversal Peace and the Brotherhood of ManThe Unnecessary EvilA Vision of a ConquestWar and ChristianityWar—The DemoralizerWar and its EliminationWar and the Laboring ManWar and the ManWar for ProfitWar—Universal Brotherhood—PeaceThe Warrior's Protest against WarThe Waste of War—The Wealth of PeaceThe Way of PeaceWhat, from Vengeance?World FederationThe World Organization

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

STEPHEN F. WESTONExecutive Secretary

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

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

S. F. W.

ByPaul Smith, DePauw University, Greencastle, IndianaFirst Prize Oration in the National Contest held at the University of Cincinnati, May 17, 1907

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ByGlenn Porter Wishard, Northwestern University, Evanston, IllinoisFirst Prize Oration in the National Contest held at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, May 15, 1908

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

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

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

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

We do not advocate radical, Utopian measures; we do not propose immediate disarmament; but we do maintain that when England, Germany, France, and the United States each appropriates from thirty to forty per cent of their total expenditures in preparation for war in an age of peace, the time has come for the unprejudiced consideration of the present international situation. Why do the great powers build so many battleships? President Roosevelt, Representative Hobson, and others would have us believe that England, Germany, and France are actually preparing for war, while the United States is building these engines of destruction for the purpose of securing peace. But what right have we to assume that our navy is for the purpose of preserving peace, while the navies of the European powers are for the purpose of making war? Is not such an assumption an insult to our neighbors? As a matter of fact, England builds new battleships because Germany does, Germany increases her navy because France does, while the United States builds new dreadnoughts because other nations pursue that policy. Call it by whatever honey-coated name you will, the fact, remains that it is military rivalry of the most barbarous type, a rivalry as useless as it is oppressive, a rivalry prompted by jealousy and distrust where there should be friendship and mutual confidence. There is riot one of the powers but that would welcome relief from the bondage of militarism; the demand for the limitation of armaments is almost universal. Believing that to decry war and praise peace without offering some plan by which the present situation may be changed is superficial, we hasten to propose something practicable.

How, then, shall we put an end to this useless rivalryof the nations? At present a general agreement of the great powers on the limitations of military establishments seems impossible. It remains for some powerful nation to prove to the world that the great armaments are not necessary to continued peace, with honor and justice. Some nation must take the first step.[2]Why not the United States? The nations of Europe are surrounded by powerful enemies, while the United States is three thousand miles from any conceivable foe. They are potentially weak, while our resources are unlimited. They have inherited imperialism; we have inherited democracy. Their society is permeated with militarism; ours is built on peace and liberty. Our strategic position is unequaled, our resources are unlimited, our foreign policy is peaceful, our patriotism is unconquerable. In view of these facts, I ask you, What nation has the greatest responsibility for peace? Are not we Americans the people chosen to lift the burden of militarism from off the backs of our downtrodden brother?

[2]The widely heralded proposal in 1913 for a naval holiday by all the great powers is the first move in this direction.—Editor.

Now what are we doing to meet this responsibility? On the one hand, we are performing a great work for peace. Many of our statesmen, business men, and laborers, united in a common cause, are exerting a tremendous influence in behalf of arbitration and disarmament. On the other hand, we are spending more on our military establishment than any other world power;[3]we are building more battleships than any other nation;[4]we areno longer trusting our neighbors; we are warning them to beware of our mailed fist; and we are thereby declaring to the world that we have lost our faith in the power of justice and are now trusting to the force of arms.

[3]The orator is comparing the cost of the United States army, navy, and pensions upkeep with the military establishments of other powers.—Editor.

[4]Since naval rivalry in its acute form has centered between Great Britain and Germany, European naval building programs have exceeded those of the United States.—Editor.

And why this paradoxical situation? Why do we at the same time prepare for war and work for peace? It is simply because many of our statesmen honestly believe that the best way to preserve peace is to prepare for war. It is true that a certain amount of strength tends to command respect, and for that reason a navy sufficient for self-defense is warranted. Such a navy we now have. Why should it be enlarged? Naval enthusiasts would have us prepare, not for the probable but for the possible. Seize every questionable act of our neighbors, they say, magnify it a thousand times, publish it in letters of flame throughout the land, and make every American citizen believe that the great powers are prepared to destroy us at any moment. Having educated the people up to a sense of threatened annihilation, they burden them with taxes, build artificial volcanoes dedicated to peace, parade them up and down the high seas, and defy the world to attack us. Then, they say, we shall have peace. Is this reasonable? As sure as thought leads to action, so preparation for war leads to war. This argument that the United States, since she is a peace-loving nation, should have the largest navy in the world in order to preserve peace is illogical and without foundation. By what divine right does the United States assume the rôle of preserving the world's peace at the cannon's mouth? Since when has it been true that might makes right, and that peace can be secured only by acting the part of a bully? It is unjust, it isunpatriotic, it is unstatesmanlike, for men to argue that the United States should browbeat the world into submission; that she should build so many battleships that the nations of the Eastern hemisphere will be afraid to oppose the ironclad dragon of the Western Hemisphere. Peace purchased at the price of brute force is unworthy of the name. Surely the United States cannot afford to be guilty of such an injustice. If we wish to be free; if we wish to remain a true republic; if we purpose to continue our mighty work for humanity, we must limit our preparations for war. The best way to preserve peace is to think peace, to believe in peace, and to work for peace.

The extent to which the great powers will go in order to secure enthusiasm for their military establishments is almost beyond comprehension. Each nation has its great military rendezvous, its grand naval parades, its magnificent display of gorgeous military uniforms, its wave of colors, blare of trumpets, and bursts of martial music. The United States is now sending her navy around the world—for the purpose of training the seamen?—certainly, but also that the youth of our land may be intoxicated by the apparent glory of it all, and thus enlist for service; that the American citizens may be aroused to greater enthusiasm by this magnificent display of the implements of legalized murder, and thus be willing to build more floating arsenals rather than irrigate arid lands, develop internal waterways, build hospitals, schools, and colleges.

The trouble with such exhibitions is, that it displays only the bright side of militarism. If in place of the Russian battleships they should display the starving massesof dejected and despised beings who pay for those battleships; if in place of the gay German uniforms they should exhibit the rags of the disheartened peasants who pay for those uniforms; if in place of the grand parade they should produce masses of wounded men and rivers of blood; if in place of the stirring martial music they should produce the writhing agonies and awful groans of dying men; if in place of sham war they should produce actual war,—their exhibitions would make militarism unbearable.

Again, we are told that we have suddenly become a world power, and that we must prepare to exercise a new diplomacy under new conditions. We must increase our navy, they say, to enforce this new diplomacy. We must prepare to fight in behalf of the Monroe Doctrine. But why, I ask, cannot this new diplomacy be enforced as American diplomacy has always been enforced? We promulgated the Monroe Doctrine without a navy; we have maintained it for over eighty years without the show of force. If our new diplomacy is right, it is as strong as the world's respect for righteousness; if it is wrong, a hundred battleships cannot enforce it.

We have become a world power, and therefore we have a world-wide responsibility, and that responsibility is to establish justice, not force; to build colleges, not battleships; to enthrone love, not hate; to insure peace, not war. Our mission is to strike the chains from the ankles of war-burdened humanity. Our duty is to proclaim in the name of the Most High our faith in the power of justice as opposed to the force of arms. May it be said of us that we found the world burdened with militarism, but left it blessed with peace; that we found libertyamong the strong alone, but left it the birthright of the weak; that we found humanity a mass of struggling individuals, but left it a united brotherhood. May it be said of us that we found peace purchased by suffering, but left it as free as air; that we found peace bruised and stained with militarism, but left it ruling the world through love and liberty. May it be said of us that we fulfilled our mission as a world power; that we were brave enough and strong enough to lead the world into the path of universal peace.

ByLevi T. Pennington, Earlham College, Richmond, IndianaFirst Prize Oration in the National Contest held at The University of Chicago, May 4, 1909

In the progress of the world the dream of yesterday becomes the confident hope of to-day and the realized fact of to-morrow. As old systems fail to meet new conditions and new ideals, they are discarded; and into the limbo of worse than useless things is passing the system of human sacrifice to the Moloch of international warfare. For centuries world peace has been the dream of the poet, the philanthropist, the statesman, and the Christian. That dream is becoming a confident hope. This generation should see it an accomplished fact.

There was a time when individual prowess determined the issue of every difference. Might made right, so it was thought, and the winner in any controversy was he who had the heaviest club, the strongest arm, or the thickest skull. Man's interrelationships multiplied as humanity advanced; with each new relation came new causes for quarrel, and for a time advancing civilization brought but increase in murders and assassinations.

We know the process by which personal combat ceased; how the duel replaced murder and ambush and assassination; how courts of law replaced the duel. The dreamer saw the day when personal combat should be no more; the man of mind refuted all the arguments in favor of the duel of men; the constructive statesman of that early day instituted courts of law and equity. Men who had a difference insisted that it was their quarreland they alone could settle it; but reason saw that two combatants inflamed by passion are least fitted of all men to see where justice lies. Many held that where honor is involved, no one can adjust the difficulty but those most directly concerned; but reason saw that a man's honor cannot be vindicated by killing his enemy or being killed by him. Men said, "If personal combat is abolished, courage and strength will perish from the earth." But reason saw that personal combat in a selfish cause does not bring out the highest type of courage; and that there are opportunities enough for the exercise of the highest and best moral and physical courage to keep valor alive forever. It was finally urged that there would be no power to enforce the decree if personal differences were left to the adjudication of others; but reason said, "That power will come with the need for it." And so courts of law and equity arose, based on the need of humanity; laws were passed defining rights and limiting aggression; and when one man wronged another, that wrong was settled in court by the power of the whole people and not in personal combat with the bludgeon or the knife.

For similar reasons wars between states and tribes have ceased; and face to face with the inevitable logic of past progress stands the world to-day. Though humanity has been slow to see it, the truth has begun to dawn in the hearts of men—that international wars are no more to be justified than civil strife, tribal warfare, or personal combat. Gradually the omnipotent power of right is overcoming the inertia of humanity, and the world is moving. One by one the awful truths concerning war are forcing themselves upon the consciousnessand the conscience of men. The mighty power of fact is beating down the opposition to world peace.

Men have begun to realize the terrible cost, the unbelievable wastefulness of actual war, and the preparation for possible war. When we read that the armed peace of Europe the past thirty-seven years has cost $111,000,000,000, nearly as much as the aggregate value of all the resources of the United States, the richest nation on earth, the figures are so appalling that mortal mind cannot conceive them, and they lose their force. When we remember that two thirds of the national revenues of the United States are spent on wars past or prospective, the matter comes closer home. When we realize that the cost of a single battleship exceeds the value of all the grounds and buildings of all the colleges and universities in Illinois, the figures have more meaning to us. And when we reflect that the cost of a single shot from one of the great guns of that battleship would build a home for an American family, a comfortable home costing $1700, the common man realizes that the richest nation on earth cannot afford to go to war nor prepare for war.

But mere money is one of the cheapest things in all the world. The price of war never can be paid in gold. Not in national treasuries can you see the payment of that price, where smug, well-groomed politicians sign bonds and bills of credit. If you would see the payment of that price of war, you must go to the place of war. With all your senses open, step upon the battlefield. Smell the smoke of burning powder, the reek of charging horses, the breath of fresh, red, human blood. Feel the warmth of that blood as you seek to stanch the wound in the breast of one of the world's bravest, dying for heknows not what. Hear the screams of the shells, the booming roar of the cannonade, the clash of the onslaught, the shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the last gasp of him whose life has reached its end. Such is the infernal music of war. See the victim of the conflict reel in the saddle and fall headlong. Cast your eyes on the mangled forms of godlike men, fallen in the midst of fullest life. Come in the night after the battle and look upon the ghastly faces upturned in the moonlight. Gaze on the windrows of the dead, Mars's awful harvest, that impoverishes all and enriches none, and you know something of the cost of war.

And yet we have seen but little. Could we but enter the wasted homes and see the broken hearts that war has made; could we go to the almshouses and soldiers' orphans' homes and see widows and children by the thousand suffering the doled-out charity of state or nation because war has robbed them of their rightful protectors; could we but realize the agony of the broken home, a thousandfold worse than the agony of the battlefield,—then might we know more of the real cost of war.

And still our idea would be inadequate, though we realized the full measure of every groan and heartache. Earth's most priceless treasures are still more intangible things, the treasures of justice and kindliness and love. In that higher realm the cost of war is most terrible and most deadly. The spirit of war in the soldier sets aside the moral law, makes human life seem valueless, human suffering a thing to be disregarded, human slaughter an honorable profession. The war spirit blinds the eye of the statesman, till wrong seems right, folly seems expediency, and the death of thousands seems preferableto the life and happiness of all under terms of peace not dictated by his own will. Justice is dethroned, and revenge takes up the iron scepter and lets fly the thunderbolt. The war spirit perverts the mind of the publicist, till the achievements of honorable peace sink into insignificance, and the press clamors for the war that means money to the publisher but death to innocent thousands who can have no possible interest in the conflict. The war spirit takes possession of the pulpit, and the minister called to preach the loving message of the Prince of Peace stirs up the spirit of contention and animosity, of hate and murder. Could we but draw aside the curtain and, back of the tinsel and gold braid, see the crime, the hate, the moral degradation that war always brings, never again would a friend of humanity ask for war.

But the eyes of the world are opening to the fact that the cost of war is far too high in money and in men, in suffering and sacrifice, and in those higher values of justice and kindliness and love. And as the thought once grew that personal differences might be settled without personal combat, so men are looking toward the settlement of international difficulties without recourse to the sword. They have seen that every argument against the duel of men applies with still greater force against the duel of nations. And the world has moved farther toward world peace in the past twenty-five years than in all the centuries of history that have preceded. World peace has become not the dream of the poet but the confident hope of the world, whose realization is the task whose accomplishment is set for the men of this generation.

One by one the obstacles to world peace are being broken down. Commerce has destroyed much of international prejudice. Community of interest has obviated many former causes of quarrel. The sophistical arguments of the friends of war are being answered by the logic of hard facts. Warfare has been ameliorated by international agreement. Vast reaches of territory have been neutralized. Unfortified cities are no longer to be bombarded in any country. Actual disarmament has taken place between the United States and Canada, between Chile and Argentina.[1]Norway and Sweden have separated peaceably. Bulgaria has achieved her independence without bloodshed. The Dogger Bank incident, which a century earlier would have plunged England and Russia into war, has been adjusted amicably. Two Hague Conferences have advanced tremendously the progress of international amity. Over eighty arbitration treaties are now in force. We already have a permanent high court of nations, to which are being referred questions that would once have resulted in war. And we are nearer than the dreamer of last century dared hope to "the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world."

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