Lo, the poor professor, whose untutored mindSaw microbes in the clouds, and heard them in the wind.
Lo, the poor professor, whose untutored mindSaw microbes in the clouds, and heard them in the wind.
But they were saved. One night the professor's wife dreamed that a monster centipedal microbe slowly let himself down from the ceiling, and enveloped her in his hundred long wriggling legs. She awoke screaming, to find herself enmeshed in the mosquito bar.
The next day they called another doctor. Hitherto, their doctors themselves had been infected, though neither they nor their patients knew it. But this time they were more fortunate; Dr. Goodenough had been attacked by the disease, had made a brilliant recovery, and consequently was immune.
He listened to the history of their cases, gave them a thorough examination, using his new instrument, the cranioscope—of course more for the purpose of inspiring confidence in his patients than to find out anything; for he well knew what ailed them.
"Don't be alarmed," he finally said. "You reallyarein a bad state; but I give you my word for it that you will recover. I find yoursensus communisall but disappeared. A little more excitement like that of last night, and you might have a hemorrhage—and there you are! Now put yourself entirely in my hands, or I'll not answer for the consequences."
He reached for his prescription blank, and after a few moments handed them a bit of unintelligible writing—the sort that only doctors and their druggist partners can interpret. As I happen to be in the secret, I may tell you that the prescription called for three fluid ounces of city water, not distilled, with two drops of aniline, a drop of nux vomica, a lump of sugar, and a teaspoonfulof whiskey, and that the druggist charged them a dollar and seventy-five cents.
"Begin taking immediately," said the doctor impressively. "Take two drops and a half in a half glass of boiled water every three hours from six a. m. to nine p. m. And you must go into the country to-morrow morning, and spend your whole vacation there.... Leave orders for your magazines and journals of all kinds to be held here, tell your friends they are to write you under no circumstances, and don't dare to come back to town on any errand whatsoever. Cut loose from everything! Delay is dangerous, and might be fatal."
The professor and his wife didn't dare to disobey. The doctor was a vigorous and imposing personality, and he had terrified them. They didn't know what asensus communiswas, even though the professor was a Latinist; the doctor had disguised the term by using the English pronunciation, and imagination contributed the usual amount to the impressiveness of his words.
So they packed up all their pasteurizers and sterilizers and disinfectors and bottles and screens and other antiseptic paraphernalia, and drove into the country to a farm fifteen miles away from any car-line or railroad, where there was no telephone or other connection with the scene of their unhappiness.
They hadn't got out of sight of the town before they began to feel differently. No one but a college professor knows how big his institution seems while he is within its precincts, and how small and insignificant when he is out of sight of it. The tension left their bodies and minds, and a balmy sense of repose and freedom succeeded.
But they felt a shock when, just as their carriage disappeared from view over the hill on its return, they saw two dogs and a half dozen cats on the porch of the farmhouse, noticed that the well was not more than ninety feet from the pigpen, whereas all the journals said it should be one hundred, and became sensible of the drowsy murmur of swarms of flies about the kitchen door, attracted thither by a barrel which was wide open—and smelled!
That was not all, however. Fortune seemed againstthem. It was bad enough for themselves, though they could sterilize their drinking water and pasteurize their milk, and exercise many other of their wonted precautions; but when it came to the baby, they were almost powerless. Watch him as they would, he was continually getting into unhygienic predicaments of the most dreadful description. Before they even entered the house, he had grasped one dog by the tail, and been thrown down by the other, as a mere mark of welcome; and when he got up, crying, in the instinctive effort to console himself of course he resorted to the habit of sucking his fingers, and put into his mouth two of those on the hand which had grasped the tail. The next moment, too, he was licked all over the nose and mouth by the repentant dog that had knocked him off his feet. Horrors!
And then the cats followed him into the house, and rubbed against his legs and licked his fingers, while he gave little screams of delight at the novel sensation. At supper, he toddled to the table in advance of the rest, and before his mother realized his intentions, had an unsterilized spoon in his mouth; and after supper he succeeded in browbeating the baby of the house, who was a month or so younger, and more timid than his experienced guest from the city, into giving up his gum.
The professor and his wife were horrified, but helpless. He went on in that way for a week. They simply could not keep track of him. He drank out of the horse-trough, dabbled in the puddles, consorted with pigs and chickens, shared his bread with the dogs and his milk with the cats, picked up crumbs from the dining-room sweepings, looked upon half rotten, muddy, and fly-specked apples found on the lawn as the greatest of prizes, and reveled in delight with old scraps of rags and hats and shoes which he, with the little country comrade under his leadership, resurrected from the most unlikely and unsanitary places.
The frightened and powerless parents read up again on the periods of incubation of all the microbes mentioned in the books. They could at least be ready with plans to meet whatever came, and cope with it at the earliest possible moment.
But it didn't come. At the end of two weeks nothing had happened. The child slept well and ate all he could get, and was in the best of spirits. At the end of three weeks he had gained four pounds. It was in direct and flagrant violation of all reason and all science, and thoroughly incomprehensible; but what could you do?
After much marvelling at the failure of science, however, they concluded to make a virtue of what was plainly a necessity, and gave the baby the freedom of the farm. And more than that; after a decent period of worrying, they too began to tread the primrose path, and let the little child lead them. They drank unsterilized milk and unboiled water, threw all precaution to the winds, rough-and-tumbled with the boys and dogs on the lawn, napped under the trees unprotected from flies and mosquitoes, ate apples with the skins and all, and without even washing them, went fishing in the creek a mile away up the marsh, and when overcome by blazing thirst drank of the water in the stream, played peg and got their mouths full of dirt, drew pictures for the children on the slate and erased them in the old familiar way—and did all the other reckless things they had done in their own childhood, when the microbe had not yet made a stir in the world, whendelirium tremenswas still the worst example of pathological misfortune, and nervous prostration had not yet spread to the masses.
When they returned to the city, clothed and in their right minds, they brought with them the half emptied medicine bottle, and charged smiling Dr. Goodenough with duplicity. He chargedthem—
Well, we shall not say what he charged them. Whatever it was, they engaged him for the next baby, and were grateful to him ever afterward. And as for microbes, before having to do with them in the future, they resolved to let them come at least half way.
Each civilized nation protects itself from war by being ready at any moment to fight any other nation. Each other nation is supposed to be charged with the spirit of aggression, and it is supposed that that spirit can be allayed only by steadily increasing the risks involved in attack.
The modern War System has grown up unconsciously, by way of using war as a protection against war. The principle is that of fighting the devil with fire. As each nation, Great Britain beginning it, has increased its fighting material so as to assure its superiority over all rivals, so has each rival doubled its own armament with the same impossible ambition. All this has increased until the greatest security against war lies in the absolutely ruinous cost with which war is prosecuted.
The average man in England, France and Germany still believes, with more or less insistence, that patriotism goes with armor plate. The fact that there exists no enemy who wishes to attack, or cares to attack, or hopes to attack, or could afford to attack, or would gain anything whatever by attack, counts for little in this discussion. It is always best to be on the safe side, and the money it costs is cheap insurance against burning seaports and plundered banks. The enemy will strike when he dares, but not against an odds of 2 to 1 or even 5 to 3. As the enemy swells his equipment to correspond, each nation is therefore certainly in immediate and imminent danger; its safety lies in more armed men and armored ships; and in each nation all resources of borrowing, taxation, and conscription must be strained, that the enemy may continue to realize that the odds are still against him.
To the observer on the outside, all this rests on a series of chimeras, the product for the most part of men financially interested in the war system itself. The war scares, the wars of talk but not of action, which sweep over Europe, would be ridiculous but for their baleful consequences.
And now we come to the secret springs of all this. The elements of the War System are not only armies and navies, but also war traders, armament builders, money lenders, the recipients of special privileges, the corrupt portion of the press, and all others drawn into its service by choice, by interest, or by necessity.
About war scares and war equipment, matters inherent in the War System, centre the grossest exhibitions of human greed. Those who scent from afar "the cadaverous odor of lucre" have for the most part furnished war's dominant motive.
The cost of it all, the war and the War System, is spread over the whole world. It is felt by you and by me and by everyone, in the rising price of all articles of necessity. The world, to the degree in which it is civilized, has become an economic unit. Whatever wastes its substance here or there, robs your pocket and mine.
It is among officers of the army and navy, especially those retired from active service, that we find the most ardent apologists for war. To this end they are trained, and in Europe alone they find justification for particular wars, as well as arguments for war in general as a means of securing peace. They can be counted on for scares or warnings in every case when petty differences arise.
Nowhere does the military class seem to have any thought or care for ways or means. Economic preparations, the saving of money, or even the ability to borrow it, counts for nothing with the militarist, to whom the need to avert war by war outweighs all other considerations.
There have been in all countries many noble exceptions to this point of view, great soldiers who have confessed with General Sherman, that they are "sick and tired of war," its "moonshine" glories and its cruel realities. There are in the service of every great nation generals and admirals whom every lover of peace is proud to honor. But the rank and file are creatures of the system, and as such their influence is felt on the side of war and waste. The advocates of "peace by preponderance," of peace through risk, of peace through assured victory, must be counted on the side of war.
The character of the service journals in every nation shows this to be true. Presumably these periodicals meet the demands made on them, and each and every one, so far as I know, is a purveyor of war scares, an advocate of expenditure, and an agency in behalf of the war system and all of its ramifications.
But the central force of the War System does not lie with the war makers but with the great war traders. We may never underrate a power which has such "big money" behind it. The manufacturers of war implements the world over form, through "interlocking directorates" and through other means, a gigantic coöperating international trust, perhaps the most powerful, because certainly the most profitable, organization of its kind in the world. It is the more efficient and the more dangerous because, alone among great trusts, it has a privileged character as the exponent of the highest patriotism, of the great fundamental duty of "National Defense."
The methods of organization of the syndicates for war, and of their influence on national expenditures, have been lately set forth in detail in two remarkable papers, the one by George Herbert Perris of London, entitled "The War Traders," the other by Francis Delaisi of Paris, entitled "Le Patriotisme des Plaques Blindées," (the Patriotism of Armored Plates).
Mr. Perris tells us of the affairs of the great British companies—the Armstrong-Whitworth Corporation, the Vickers, the John Brown, the Cammell-Laird and the Coventry Arms Company, with their allies, tentacles and satellites feeding the patriotism, under many flags, of nearly half the globe. Delaisi's memoir tells of the Krupps and other concerns in Germany, and of the Creusots and similar armament trusts in France.
The capital invested in all the British firms amounts to about $250,000,000, the dividends ranging each year from 7-1/2% to 15% of the capital stock. In this industry, ten per cent. is a satisfactory return, counting stockholders, employees, soldiers and pensioners. Mr. Perris claims that "it is probable that 1,500,000 adult able-bodied men, onein six of the occupied adult males in the United Kingdom, shares to some extent in the 73,000,000 pounds ($365,000,000) a year which 'National Defense' now costs us." Besides the minor outgoes which form a sort of bribe money to the general public, the distribution of dividends affects a smaller but most influential class. In the share lists of the Armstrong-Whitworth company, Mr. Perris finds the names of 60 noblemen or noble families, 15 baronets, 20 knights, 8 members of parliament, 20 officers of army or navy, and 8 journalists. Shareholding in the war syndicates and membership in the naval league go together. But rich and poor are alike affected by the large returns. "Militarism is strong in England because Lazarus gets some poor pickings from the feast of Dives."
These great companies especially promote the patriotism of Great Britain, but they are controlled by no narrow nativism. Under other flags the same people develop the same noble sentiments. These British corporations, individually or coöperating, maintain three ship building companies in Canada: hence the recent movement for a Canadian navy, to be built in Canadian Yards. They have five tentacles or subsidiary companies in Italy, (Pozzuoli, Ansaldo, Odero, Terni, and Orlando), one in Spain (Ferrol), one in Portugal, and one in Japan. "Time was when Englishmen bled for Portugal; now our old-time ally must bleed for us." The relations of these British trusts with similar groups in other countries are most close and friendly. In the "Harvey United Steel Company" (wound up in 1911), we find them in international combination with the Bethlehem Steel Plant in Pennsylvania, the Creusot company in France, and the Essen and Dillingen concerns in Germany, with a similar international combination of supporting banks. "In forty years," observes Perris, "all the Peace Societies have not succeeded in effecting such a Franco-German reconciliation as this. In the share list (of this company) Mr. Newbold found the names of one British general and two major generals, and behind these were the shadowy figures of a vast host of princes, peers, ministers of the Crown, soldiers, sailors andclerics. A veritable Brotherhood in Arms! I cannot believe that the Harvey United Steel Company is really dead. Somewhere it surely has had a glorious resurrection! Under some metamorphoses it lives and works to prove the pettiness of national prejudice and the ease of forgetting such sores as Alsace-Lorraine, when men have learned the golden wisdom of 'good business.'"
A needed accessory of such good business is a series of commercial agents, "the strong silent men," who frequent every court of Europe. Incidental to their work of making sales, is tocreatea market. This is done by means of the recurrent war scares. A third element of importance is the reiteration of the constant fact that only the latest inventions can serve in war, and that all former purchases should be "scrapped" as rapidly as possible. Were it not for the scrapping process, the world's market for implements of destruction would be speedily glutted. The machinery of war has reached such marvelous perfection and such an acme of cost that the work of a day may bankrupt a whole nation. The issue of a campaign may be decided by the control of a single murderous invention. Thus science has been called into the service of war, to a degree that inspires the hope that, by carrying its risks to madness, it makes war virtually impossible. But meanwhile the expenses go on.
And under such influences half the people of England, let us say—professors, business men, manufacturers, workingmen, heads of colleges, and dignitaries of the church, with nine-tenths of the army and navy, are agents, conscious or unconscious, of the British armament trust. The greater the stock of weapons, the newer and more varied the instruments of physical defense, the more pitiful and more persistent are the fears of invasion. A most striking example of the collective cowardice of a great but over-armed nation, made up of men individually brave, is found in the fear to open a tunnel under the British Channel. Every need of commerce, of travel, of the friendliness with France, demands the removal of a most unpleasant and expensive obstacle. Nowhere in the world is there tolerated another such stumbling block in theway of a gigantic traffic, as that of the present system of crossing the English Channel. And yet half of England cries out against the simple remedy, lest, having over-powered Northern France, the German hordes should come pouring into Dover, before the watchman at the portcullis should have time to drop the gates.
The triumph of the war trades in Germany has been even more rapid and complete than in Great Britain. By the system of interlocking directorates, the house of Krupp is in alliance with all centres of German finance. The army, the aristocracy, the ministry, the armament syndicates, are all bound together in that mailed-fist coöperation in which the power of Germany seems to lie. The King of Prussia himself inherited from his august grandfather stock in the Krupp concern to the amount of five million of thalers, an investment now estimated at about $12,000,000.
The House of Krupp by various means has placed itself at the summit of German war patriotism, and it has made most thrifty use of its opportunities. It employs 250,000 persons, 60,000 of these on salary; 5,000 engineers. It maintains, according to Delaisi, a great hotel, the Essenerhof, "l'Auberge de la Mort," in which are entertained most royally all emissaries of all nations who come as purchasing agents of tools of death. Its specialty is "National Defense," and "Defense not Defiance" is said to be the "international code signal."
In France "armor plate patriotism" is sustained by the same methods, and in part by the same money. The leading industries bear the names of Creusot, Homicourt, and Châtillon-Commentry. A special feature of the French system, not unknown to the others, is its free use of representatives of the army and navy. Some twenty admirals and generals have left the public service for the better paid work of selling guns and ships. This transfer of allegiance is said to be "perfectly legal," but it is also dangerous to the morale of the public service. And it is to these men that we owe most of the militant revival of French war patriotism, which had lain dormant from the time of the "Affaire Dreyfus," to that of the "Affaire Agadir."
As to the war-syndicates in the United States, little that is definite is on record. Like conditions produce like results. The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Daniels, reports the existence of a combination among the three chief producers of armor plate in America, the Midvale, Bethlehem, and Carnegie Companies. He is reported as saying: "When this administration came into office, we found that the Navy was apparently, or, so we were assured, hopelessly, at the mercy of the three big steel corporations, who submitted practically identical bids for armor forgings and other materials, and then divided the work between them to suit themselves." As a result of this condition, the Secretary rejected their bids, and by going outside, recorded a saving of $500,000 on the battleship in question.
Behind the war traders, stand their allies, the finance houses who lend money for the war system. These are not bankers, rather pawnbrokers, dealing in the credit of nations for a certain per cent., according to the straits in which the borrower finds himself. The banking system of London avoids this class of risks. Paris is now the centre of the system, and it is usually stipulated with every foreign war loan that the materials it covers should be bought in Paris. In earlier times, before the great nations had borrowed to the limit, the heads of these finance houses as "Masters of Europe" exerted great personal influence, permitting or forbidding wars. Of recent years this personal power has greatly dwindled, as joint stock companies of greater capital and more or less impersonal management, have largely taken their place. The present influence of the money-lenders is against war, but in favor of the war system. Minor wars it permits or even encourages, but these have their risks. The second Balkan war, unforeseen and undesired, is said to have entailed a loss of some $30,000,000 to the Paris backers of Bulgaria.
Interlocking with the finance houses are the great exploiting corporations of the world, operating mostly in the backward nations of the tropics. These "interests" are often all-powerful in foreign affairs. They are frequently able to control the operations of the foreign offices to sucha degree that the foreign policy of a great nation is often but the expression of their will. The desire for colonial expansion, the "mirage of the map," is a reflection of these interests, and most "imperial wars" have been undertaken for their benefit. Abundant illustrations may be had from the recent history of each of the leading nations. Civil wars in the tropics, as a rule, have their origin in conflicting interests of people remote from the field of battle.
Another factor supporting the war system is the hereditary aristocracy, waning in influence, but still powerful through its control of money, of the army, and of the Church. The profession of arms is almost the only one not unworthy of the caste of nobleman. The military constitutes the right arm of aristocracy; the state church, the left; while the monarch stands as the visible head. The leaders of official religion are, with many and honorable exceptions, upholders of the war system, and apologists for the "God of Battles." The dissenting churches, having no alliance with privilege, are almost as unanimously on the side of peace.
With all this, and working toward the same end, is the false education which the war system has unconsciously produced. For generations it has obstructed sound teaching of history, of patriotism, of morals, of religion. It is only after reaching manhood, if at all, that we realize that Thackeray's "redcoat bully in his boots" has not been the maker of England's greatness. In the schools of all nations, the man of violence is the hero—the man on horse-back, the man who bears the flag, even if in defiance of justice and order.
We have been taught that nations grow strong through war, and that through war they achieve their destiny. Each man who falls in battle on any side, in any cause, is a patriot hero, giving his life for fatherland and for religion. Each boy learns that his own nation was in the right in every quarrel, that in every battle it was victorious against great odds, or else defeated through base treachery.
For the war system as it exists to-day, first and finallyresponsible are the people who pay for it, the common man in the nations concerned. The government belongs to him. It is his own fault if it does not. It cannot go far ahead of him, and it never lags much behind. When it is laggard, the fault still rests with him. He has neglected to look after the machinery of government, and it has been turned against him. This is the case in Germany and in Russia, where the government represents only part of the people. In these nations, the man belongs to the state. In the more democratic nations, the state belongs to the man, who has therefore the more pressing responsibility.
And this man on the street, the unit of the nation, whether noble or commoner, whether educated or illiterate, overlooks one fundamental fact. The other nations of Europe are made up of men about like himself. What he thinks, they think; what he hopes, they hope. If he has no designs of aggression, neither have they. If he is "hungry for peace," so are they. If he finds his taxes distressing, so do they. If he is one of a majority favoring more cordial relations between states, they belong to a like majority. If he is one of a minority who would do away with the war system, there is a similar minority which will meet him half way. If he is a workman, his problems are those of all other workmen; if he harbors no evil designs of a war of invasion, neither do his fellow-workmen across the border. If he is swept off his feet by a burst of martial music and resounding patriotism, so are they, and it is just as easy for them to recover as it is for him. If he is scared by the reckless talk of pangermanists across the channel, or of chauvinists on the Paris Boulevards, or of panslavists in St. Petersburg, or of jingoes in London or New York, let him remember that he finds just such people at home, wherever his home may be—just as many, just as noisy, and possessed of just as little permanent influence. The force of mere noise grows less and less, year by year, in each of the "settled nations." If you are convinced that other nations need have no fear of your jingoes, by the same token you need not fear theirs.
The War System is making this great, rich, resourceful world a bankrupt concern in the hands of its creditors. The nations of the earth still owe some 40 billions of dollars in gold for the wars of the last 100 years, from Waterloo to Adrianople. But one nation of all the number (our own) has made any progress whatever in paying its share of this debt. The tendency is ever to borrow more, up to and beyond the limit of credit. The interest is paid, perhaps by borrowing, but there is no haste about the principal. Except for war, no nation on earth would ever need to borrow a dollar.
And this interest money of a billion and a quarter every year is only an incident in the cost of the War System—about a fourth of its annual expense, even in what we call times of peace. Under the armed peace of the War System, a kind of frustrate war goes on, an antagonism the more repulsive because no one has the slightest idea what it is all about. This antagonism is simply part of the system, and the system itself is only organized cowardice, for it is perfectly well known that not one of the great nations has any design to attack any other. Only the poor crude Balkan people have taken the War System seriously. Because they have done so, and interfered with trade, they are now under the ban of Europe, as they lie supine on the floor of the arena.
The War System has exhausted its own resources. The great nations have no money with which to fight, and no stomach for fighting. The concert of Europe is content with the suppression of discords among its own players. And the reason for this is clearly indicated in the words of Mr. H. Bell of Lloyds Bank in London. He calls the attention of bankers to "the great spectre which will rise up in future before the monied classes when they are invited to lend their money for warlike purposes. There is going to be very clearly written in the handwriting on the wall the word 'Repudiation.' The peoples of Europe will say: 'We know we ought to pay our interest. We know we ought to pay our debt, but we cannot. We are human beings, we must live; we are overtaxed; we cannot get enough to clothe ourselves; we cannot get enough to eat.We can get no profit from our work!' The men who find money for purposes of war will not get their money back again."—(H. Bell. Remarks before the Institute of Bankers, Jan. 17, 1912.)
War cripples the nation physically by cutting off without posterity its strongest and boldest men. The key of national strength in the future is found in the good parentage of to-day. The basis of national greatness is indicated in the principles of Eugenics. To be well born is the first step to an effective life. "Like the seed is the harvest." This is the law of heredity. It applies to races of men as well as to breeds of horses or of sheep. No nation has ever fallen from leadership, intellectual or physical, save through breeding from inferior stock. The causes of all decline may be sought among these three factors, emigration, immigration, war. Rome fell when her streets swarmed with the sons of slaves, scullions, sutlers, adventurers, men who were not Romans. When, after her wars, internal and external, "Only cowards remained, and from their brood came forth the new generations." The culture of Greece passed away when war had obliterated the Greeks. "Send forth the best ye breed" and you will breed from the second best. First best, second best, third best and fourth among the yeomanry of Europe have been swallowed up in war in the "Obscene seas of slaughter" over which Europe has gloried and gloated through all these deluded ages.
The decline in the physique of the average man in France has been usually cited in evidence of this tendency. But the same causes have produced like effects in every warlike nation, and the decline in stature is one of the least important of the results of reversal of selection. These changes are just as marked in England and Scotland, as in France, and they are not wanting in Germany. The loss of dash and initiative is one of these results. Havelock Ellis observes: "The reckless Englishmen who boldly sailed out from their little island to fight the Spanish Armada were long ago exterminated; an admirably prudent and cautious race has been left alive." Bettermen would make better history. Braver men would not cower at the war scares of to-day. Men of character and initiative would not wallow in the London slums. The sons of those war could not use, swell the records of pauperism. It is not the strength of the strong but the weakness of the weak that invites and perpetuates paternalism and tyranny, two names for the same thing. "Slaves may have wrongs, but only free men have rights."
Another count against the War System, not unrelated to this, is its pollution of the blood of the race. The "White Slave Traffic" goes with the "Conscription Act," both outgrowths of the War System. Army movement and barrack life have been leading, though not exclusive, causes of the widespread diffusion of infectious diseases, one of the most alarming features of civilization to-day.
Another count against war, as yet scarcely realized, is found in the vandalisms by which it has destroyed so much of worth as well as of intellectual importance in the art and the architecture of the past. War respects nothing. It was German bombs which burned the library at Strassburg. The devastation of the art world is chargeable to war. As I write this there rise before me the paintings in the gallery at Munich, of the twenty-one cities of Greece, from Sparta to Corinth, from Eleusis to Salamis, not as they are now, largely fishing hamlets by the blue Ægean Sea, not as they were in the days of the glory of Greece—but as ruined arches and broken columns, half buried in the ashes of war, the war which blotted out Greece from the world history.
It is plain that sooner or later such a system must come to an end. The influences that have abolished cannibalism, slavery, and religious persecution must in the end do away with international war. It seems also clear that this result will not be obtained primarily in any direct way by official action. The administrators of nations must follow public opinion rather than create it. Where public opinion demanded the burning of witches, the officials had only to see that it was done decently and in order. At the most,they could only limit the number to be consumed on any one occasion.
What is our line of attack on the War System?
For the suppression of war we must have a public opinion. And this opinion must not rest only on the fact that war is brutal and hideous. That is only half the struggle. There are many good men to whom the brutal is also the heroic, and still others to whom evil methods are condoned by success. We must further convince the world, that is, the common man, the man on the street, that modern war attacks his pocket.
The modern phases of the Peace Movement differ from the earlier ones in being educational rather than emotional. The early workers were convinced that war was wicked and unholy, and with this they were usually content to rest their case.
With the same conviction as to the immorality of war, in the bottom of his heart, the modern worker tries to find the facts. What is the historical evolution of war? What are its effects, economic, biological, moral? What can be found as a national substitute? And side by side with the study of war and war problems, rises the fabric of international law. We may not say that the modern method is more righteous than the earlier, or even more effective. But the treatment of the subject from all its various points of view, and not mainly from that of morals and religion, reaches a much wider audience and has a more immediate effect upon public opinion.
It is an immediate purpose of the Peace Movement to make war a last resort, not the first one, in times of international differences. To this and every agency which tends to postpone action and give the blood time to cool, must contribute.
In civil life, there has been through the ages, a steady movement from violence to law, from the ordeal of private combat to the arbitration of the courts. In like fashion, we would extend and strengthen the parallel tendency among nations. Already arbitration is everywhere welcomed as a means of composing differences.Conciliation goes before arbitration and is a factor of equal importance. The very existence of an Arbitral Tribunal before which differences may be brought, itself insures that most differences will be adjusted without its agency. If war is really the last resort, very few nations will ever come to it, and the War System will decline through neglect, as of obvious uselessness.
But so long as the War System is in full force, there is always danger of war. So great an agency can never be fully under control. Its existence insures the presence of a powerful group of men, anxious to test its powerful machinery and impatient of civil authority. The War System is designed for war, defensive of course, but it is a maxim of war, as of football, that the best defense is to be the first to score.
As to the Arbitration treaties and the hundreds of disputes which have been settled for all time by the tribunals at The Hague, no verdict thus obtained has yet been rejected or opposed, and none is likely to be. The public opinion of the world would be as wholly opposed to the repudiation of an adverse verdict as it would be to the repudiation of a national debt. The verdict and the debt involve the same sanction of national honor.
The discussion as to the need of an international police to enforce decisions made at The Hague, is therefore wide of the mark as there can be no occasion for the use of force in such a connection.
It is becoming more and more evident in Europe that the greatest single asset of the Peace Movement is the success of the republic of America.
America is opposed to the War System. There is a much larger percentage of pacifists in the United States than in any other of the larger nations. For one thing, it is relatively easy to be a peace man in a republic. No criticism or obloquy attaches to it. But in Europe, the direction of least resistance is to follow the wake of the War System.
In spite of the unhallowed sums we have carelessly spent to build up a War System, we have none. We shall never have any. Should we pass under its yoke we should cease to be America. Even our admirals and generals donot belong to the War System. They are civilians in spirit, sometimes in disguise, but permeated with ideas of law and justice, a condition far removed from that of the professional war maker of the continent of Europe.
The impression of America as a great factor in international conciliation receives impetus with the celebration of the hundred years of Anglo-Saxon peace, with its lesson of the unguarded and therefore perfectly defended 4,000 miles of Canadian frontier. This impression has been strongly emphasized by the admirable skill by which President Wilson has up to the time of this writing, honorably avoided war with Mexico, a war which was considered inevitable in most political circles in Europe. While on the one hand the United States cannot have the secret treaty, the cherished tool of the War System since the days of Machiavelli, and while Democracy is a form of government fitted for minding one's own business, and for nothing else, it is recognized that the United States must and should take the lead in conciliation and in arbitration, as she is now taking the lead in furnishing means for a world-wide survey of the War System, and for the resultant propaganda for its abrogation.
It is understandable that Germany and Great Britain should consider their armies, their battleships, dreadnoughts, super-dreadnoughts, and invincibles as constituting the chief machinery for peace. In celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession to the imperial throne the Kaiser was hailed as "the true and central factor of the past peaceful policy of Germany." These were Lord Blyth's words, in recognizing the avowed policy of the Emperor to preserve peace through the utmost practicable preparation for war; and ex-President Taft, who would refer to arbitrators even questions of national honor, spoke of this apologist of arming for conflict between nations as the "greatest single individual force in the practical maintenance of the peace of the world." The Kaiser's silver jubilee was the signal for unstinted acknowledgment by the leading men of the world that His Majesty's policy had preserved the peace of the German Empire for a generation. In its exterior relations Germany had looked too terrible to encounter, and the romantic, warlike spirit that distinguishes the Teuton had found vent in the service of preparation. The young Germans, both aristocratic and bourgeois, were encouraged by every means to train, to show, to be martial, but not to fight. And it will be recalled that Germany refused to discuss the limiting of armaments at The Hague only because the Conference was not empowered to deal finally with it.
In response to the Czar's call, delegations of twenty-six Powers attended in 1899 the First Hague Conference; forty-three Powers were represented at the Second Conference in 1909. These gatherings formulated the world's opinion against many of the evils of war. Their agreements expressly forbade international bloodshed except between the actual fighting forces. They made it unlawful to sack cities, to take or destroy private property on land, or to menace the peace and safety of non-combatants.Those who observe that the nations have not yet agreed to do away with war overlook the fact that the non-combatant millions within belligerent nations may not be molested in lives or property, save that they must bear the war's financial burdens. With respect to most of the civilized dwellers of earth the sword is forever sheathed. Among the fighters, too, wounds are quickly bound, and quarter is expected and given.
The machinery of peace governing this world society is not complete. It provides a way of peaceful settlement of disputes by arbitration. It lacks a court such as that whose decisions, backed by police and the more potent sentiment of the people, guard the king's peace in civilized communities. But arbitration has done much to keep the peace of nations. The experience of the United States is in point. Up to the time of the Second Hague Conference Mr. John Bassett Moore finds records of more than sixty arbitrations, the tribunals sitting with overlapping terms of years that aggregate a hundred and twenty-five—exceeding in number the years of this nation's life. The total cost of these tribunals was doubtless much more than would have been the expense of an actual court kept always in session.
Before The Hague Conferences, the American Government had already been participating in what was tantamount to a permanent tribunal of arbitration. The questions adjusted were of every class, not merely pecuniary claims, but questions affecting what are called "vital interests and national honor." The case of the Creole, for instance, brought the United States and Great Britain close to war, and later, in 1842, nearly caused a rupture of the conferences between Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton—a rupture which would almost inevitably have led to hostilities. The case came before a tribunal of arbitration in 1853, and was so quietly disposed of that the public paid no attention to the award. Then there was the negotiation of the Alabama Claims by Hamilton Fish. Lord John Russell answered our proposal to Great Britain, that it involved the honor of Her Majesty's Government, of which it alone was guardian, and the claims were notsubject to arbitration. After being examined and critically formulated, they were eight years later submitted to the tribunal at Geneva, and settled. Mr. Roosevelt, opposing President Taft's treaties of arbitration with Great Britain and France, objected that they would embrace "questions of vital interest and honor." Perhaps he had not studied the cases of the Creole and the Alabama.
The values involved in American arbitral proceedings have been enormous. More than a thousand claims were adjusted in cases of the United States against Mexico in 1868, and a thousand more counterclaims of Mexico were disposed of under one commission, the total amount involved being well over half a billion dollars. And the arbitral awards of the tribunals in which America participated have in every case been final. Not one of the awards to which the United States has been a party but was carried into effect by both Governments concurrently. In rare cases new facts discovered have reopened the proceedings, but on such occasions the parties proceeded to end them in a spirit of justice and equity.
It was to nations trained in self-restraint that the Russian Emperor addressed his rescript of August 24, 1898, recognizing the fact that the preservation of peace had been put forward as the object of international policy. More terrible engines of destruction were being wrought, and the intellectual and physical strength of the nations, with their labor and capital, were diverted from their natural uses and wasted. Economic crises threatened the world because of war preparations, the while sentiment against war's devastation found concrete embodiment in arbitrated disputes. A conference was proposed to limit armaments, to prevent armed conflicts, and to mitigate the atrocities of war. The twenty-six nations that met at The Hague on May 18, following, codified the international laws of war and peace already existing. Delegates of the forty-three nations that met in the Second Conference on June 15, 1907, amended and strengthened these codes, added to them, and appointed the meeting of the Third Conference, to be held in 1915.
In the first two Conferences the rights and duties of neutrals were defined, the employment of force for the recovery of contract debts was renounced, and it was laid down that the "right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited." The bombardment of undefended towns was prohibited, together with the discharge of projectiles from balloons, the use of bullets that expand or flatten in the human body, the poisoning of wells, pillage, violation of "family honor," confiscation of private property, the laying of automatic contact mines that do not become speedily harmless, the seizing of submarine cables, destruction of monuments and works of art, and interference with religious customs. The killing treacherously of individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army or of those who have surrendered was outlawed and it was forbidden to make improper use of a flag of truce, or of the national or military colors of the enemy, or of the Red Cross badges.
The progress in these agreements reached by the Second Conference is notable, in that it forbade that the rights and acts of a member of the hostile nation be abolished, suspended, or regarded as inadmissible in a court of law; that a belligerent compel a man to fight against his own country, even though he were in the belligerent's service before the war broke out, or to force the inhabitants of seized territory to give information about the army of the other belligerent, or about its means of defense. While all appliances for transmission of news and for transport, whether by land, sea, or air, may be seized, together with depots of arms and all munitions of war—even if belonging to private individuals—they must be restored when peace is made, with due award of damages. The inhabitants of a territory are to be regarded as belligerents only if they "carry arms openly," and that is to be the test of their belligerency. Besides all this, the rights of prisoners of war are sedulously guarded.
This code, relating to the laws and customs of war, received what many critics of the Conferences regard as an undue amount of attention; it was even charged that, in effect, it legitimatized war. It did quite the contrary.Francis Lieber drew up for President Lincoln in the second year of the American civil war rules, which Lincoln ratified and promulgated in the famous General Orders No. 100—the first code regulating the conduct of armies in the field. The international convention drawn by the Brussels Conference of 1874, had its origin, as acknowledged by its President, Baron Jomini, in these rules of Lieber and of President Lincoln. To the United States honor is due, not for legitimatizing war between nations, but for beginning to restrict its operations to the actual fighters and their works of attack and defense. At The Hague the work of the Brussels Conference became in turn a basis for reaffirming this principle, and for restricting more closely the field of combat.
Moreover, the principles of the Geneva Red Cross Convention were adapted to naval war. Machinery for rescue and treatment of the sick, wounded, and shipwrecked men of the world's navies was provided.
An International Prize Court was established, which, in the opinion of Elihu Root, should later develop into the court of justice for the nations. The only obstacle to ratifying the convention for this court was swept away by the code of laws of naval war embodied in the Declaration of London, and drawn in February, 1909, by delegates of the European Powers and the United States. The liability to capture of the merchant ships of belligerents throws their commerce largely into the hands of neutrals. Efforts to prevent neutrals from trading with the enemy follow. Then blockades, searches, and seizure of contraband goods stir up strife with other nations, and give occasion for general war. The American war of 1812 with Great Britain resulted from such causes, the effects of which, again, the two nations barely escaped during our Civil War; and the sinking of British merchantmen by Russia during its war with Japan provoked strong resentment. Excepting two questions, those respecting the conversion of merchant ships into warships on the high seas, and as to whether the nationality or the domicile of the owner shall be considered in determining "enemy property," the London declaration embodies clear and definiterules on which the International Court of Prize may render just decisions.
The measures for restricting the field of actual war were accompanied at The Hague by the erection of machinery for the pacific settlement of international disputes. That was work of prevention, and it was in four parts.
In the first part the contracting Powers agree to "use their best efforts to insure the pacific settlement of international differences."
The second provides that proffers of good offices and mediation by a third State, never shall be regarded as unfriendly. Throughout the Turko-Italian and Turko-Balkan Wars, and during the Inter-Balkan conflict, the European Powers acted as mediators under this provision, and smoothed the way to peace.
The third part provided for international commissions of inquiry, such as were comprehended in President Taft's proposed treaties of arbitration with Great Britain and France, and Secretary Bryan's proposed treaties with the Central American republics and with the Powers of Europe and Asia. The intent of these commissions is to investigate the causes of complaint and publish them, trusting to international public opinion to accomplish a just settlement. This machinery worked to bring about the voluntary payment by Russia of $300,000 damages for the destruction of British fishing boats, fired on mistakenly by Admiral Rozhdestvensky in his ill-fated expedition against Japan. Again, the report of a commission on the French steamer Tavignano, seized by the Italian torpedo boat Fulmine during the Turko-Italian War, and concerning the attack on the Tunisian mahones Kamouna and Gaulois, was accepted July 23, 1912, and referred for the final solution of equities to The Hague Court of Arbitration.
This court—the fourth instrumentality—is composed of three distinct bodies; namely, the Permanent Administrative Council, the International Bureau, and the Court of Arbitration proper. The Permanent Council is made up of the diplomatic envoys of the signatory Powersaccredited to the Netherlands, besides the Dutch Minister for Foreign Affairs, and was constituted after its ratification by nine of the Powers. The Council is permanent in the sense that its members are always at The Hague; it controls the International Bureau, appointing its staff and methods of administration, and reporting the proceedings of the court to the signatory Powers.
The International Bureau receives all the documents and stipulations in disputed cases, where arbitration is agreed upon and referred to The Hague, acting as a board of registry. It places its staff at the disposal of tribunals of arbitration, and occasionally of those not constituted at The Hague, and its expenses are paid by the Powers.
The Court of Arbitration proper is really an "eligible list" of individuals, "of recognized competence in questions of international law, enjoying the highest moral reputation," designated by the forty-four Powers signatory to the convention. Their terms are six years, renewable, not over four members appointed by a Power. Their jurisdiction extends over all cases submitted to them, but sometimes the parties agree to a special tribunal not selected from the list. Two names may be selected from the list of arbitrators by each of the Powers in dispute, and the amended convention of 1907 provides that only one of these can be its envoy or chosen from its nominees to the Court of Arbitration. The four arbitrators thus selected themselves choose a fifth as umpire, or, if the votes of the four are equally divided, the choice of umpire is intrusted to a third Power to be agreed upon. If there is failure to agree upon a third Power, each party to the controversy makes a separate choice of a Power, and the two thus selected will try to appoint the umpire. But if they, in turn, fail to agree, each shall within two months' time present two candidates from the general list, excluding those selected by the disputants or of their nations; by lot among these, the umpire is finally elected.
The work of the Third Conference, besides adding to the statute law of war, will largely concern the regulations governing the Court of Arbitration. Since it was constitutedin April, 1901, this court has passed judgment in fourteen important cases without having established needed rules of practice. It is not decided whether the cases and counter-cases shall be presented with argument, or merely with statements of the facts, the conclusions sought, and the proofs. The practice is both ways. The thirty-five articles relating to "arbitral procedure" fail to prescribe rules, leaving this task to the tribunal in each case. As a result the terms of procedure in the Casablanca dispute, for instance, which were decided hastily to avert a threatened war, were brief and vague, and they left the discretion of the tribunal uncontrolled. The order of oral debate is not determined chiefly because a disputant is touchy about being classed as plaintiff or defendant. Clear rulings on points of practice are not made when presented, although the agents and counsel are entitled by the rules to "present orally to the tribunal all the arguments they may consider expedient in defense of their case." Yet opportunity to argue a motion is sometimes not afforded when the motion is made, and an argument presented later would be out of place. It would aid procedure to have arguments presented and rulings made as the points come up. Finally, the informal discussions between court and counsel frequently hinder the straightforward presentation of a case.
But the chief defect of these arbitral tribunals, as in all others—for practice has not reached the perfection of choosing disinterested judges belonging to nations not concerned in the controversy—lies in their temptation to compromise. Gallatin, in the Northeastern Boundary case with Great Britain, remarked that the arbitrator "has always a bias to split the difference." The Casablanca case, the decision of which really did avert war, and more than any, so far, justifies the establishment of the world court, depended on law and fact, but was compromised. Dr. Heinrich Lammasch, a distinguished member of several Hague tribunals, speaks of the "preponderatingly diplomatic character" of this decision. Other decisions have been criticised for the same reason, notably those of the North Atlantic Fisheries and the OrinocoSteamship. Compromise, while of value, is the function of diplomacy or mediation, and the cases referred to The Hague are admittedly those which diplomacy cannot adjust. The remedy is by direct agreement to exclude from the tribunal judges who sit as diplomatic agents of their governments. A beginning in this direction is in Secretary Bryan's plan for commissions of inquiry, consisting of five members, three of whom should be chosen from other countries than those in dispute. But these would be merely committees. The defect of Mr. Bryan's plan, and the great lack of the Hague Court of Arbitration, is that the agreements to refer cases in dispute are purely voluntary; the one thing for friends of peace to work for, of course, is to make it as easy for differing nations as for differing men to hale each other into court, and as impossible to refer their differences to force.
The International Court of Prize has already come nearer to this ideal than the Court of Arbitration. It is a regular court of justice. Its judges are not arbitrators, they receive a fixed compensation, their jurisdiction in cases of appeal from the national prize courts relating to captured merchant ships and cargoes, is compulsory. In absence of treaty provisions between the states in dispute, the convention adopted by the Second Hague Conference reads, "the court shall apply the rules of international law; if no generally recognized rule exists, the court shall give judgment in accordance with the general principles of justice and equity." Before ratifying the convention, Great Britain in 1908 called a conference in London of the chief naval Powers, which codified the laws of naval war, covering blockades, contraband, service ill-becoming neutrals, destruction of neutral prizes, transfer to a neutral flag, hostile character, convoy, resistance to search, and compensation. Here a whole category of cases is at once removed from the judgment of biased minds.
The existing Court of Arbitration may be resorted to increasingly as a means of diplomatic conciliation; but by its side and above it should rise, in the opinion of all authorities on international law, a Supreme Court of Arbitral Justice, not diplomatic but judicial, that will renderits decisions rigorously according to the declared law and the evidence. The Second Conference at The Hague approved a convention for the establishment of such a court. The United States has proposed to the Powers that the Prize Court be invested with the functions and jurisdiction of a Court of Arbitral Justice. The practical difficulty met at The Hague was in the appointing of permanent Judges. Forty-four, one for each state including The Netherlands, would be too many. A court of but fifteen Judges was recognized as desirable. Such a court could not be chosen from forty-four nations, and the delegates were in a quandary. The arguments were irrefragable, of course, that a small, independent body of magistrates selected in advance is needed to settle controversies between nations as they arise, and as a court of appeal from the decisions of temporary tribunals. Such a tribunal might well become a court of first as well as of last resort, because of the difficulties and delays usually experienced in making up the mixed arbitral commissions from the eligible list of the Court of Arbitration. The alternative recourse is especially needed when the imminence of war requires a speedy reference, as in the Casablanca case. For these reasons the convention was drawn and approved, leaving to the Third Conference the task of constituting the court. Ernest Nys, a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and Counselor of the Court of Appeals of Brussels, urging the necessity of such a tribunal, makes the point that its members should not be chosen to represent any countries, as such, but rather in a way to assure that the different systems of law and procedure, as well as the principal languages of the world, might be represented. By this means the world peace may be permanently established. Organized justice will succeed arbitration, guaranteeing to individuals and states the security of their rights and institutions, precisely as the "king's peace" had come to guarantee them within the limits of each sovereignty.
In this review of the instruments making for peace by conciliation and law, the arguments for war have not beenignored. If at The Hague in 1915 the Powers should decide to nationalize the private industries that supply armaments and engines of war, the artificial stimulus given to those industries and the exploitation of new appliances for war would cease; manufacturers would no longer oppose the limitation of armaments, which every nation desires. Complete preparation for war did not prevent the Balkan States and Turkey, not yet emerged from the civilization of the Middle Ages, from coming to the death grip with each other. It was different with those nations whose Council of Ambassadors, sitting in London, and watching the kaleidoscopic changes in the Balkans, became by the statesmanlike influence of Earl Grey, a clearing house, through which the affairs of the six chief Powers were adjusted to a harmonious ending. It is noteworthy that in the more than forty years of Europe following the close of the Franco-Prussian war—perhaps as good as a cycle of Cathay—those six Powers, though armed for provocation, have by such careful negotiations remained at peace. But making the allowance due to this remarkable abstention from war, to which must be added the hundred years of peace between the United States and Great Britain, the inherent appeal of war to the imagination and emotions of mankind must still be recognized.
War's mutilations have never roused aught but horror, its waste of men and treasure are deplored. But the spirit of strife, of daring, and of heroism remains in human breasts. If war is outworn, if bloodshed and sacrifice of lives are to cease between civilized states, as they have long ceased within those states, it must be that better means have been found to satisfy the profound human need of expression and of conquest. The German Emperor, while keeping up the medieval pageantry of arms, has welded his nation into a militant power of industry and science. Their arts are not ignoble, their industries are not monotonous, but have taken on the aspect of imperial enterprise and daring. Their scientists are rescuing mankind from disease and freeing it from menial labors, while their merchants and traders are modernizing the orient, setting examples of method and discipline,incidentally, to their rivals in the civilized nations. It is by such means that civilization need no longer rear itself on human slavery; the very beasts of burden have been freed, and man has seized control of nature's forces. By them he is borne through cities, manners, climates, councils, governments, more swiftly than Ulysses went, and beyond the paths of all the western stars.
More distant horizons of science have been opened. The transmutation of the elements, but recently announced, is expected to realize more than the dreams of the alchemist. If we are to believe Professor Soddy, who with Sir William Ramsay obtained in 1903 the first direct proof that radioactive processes are veritable transmutations, this discovery in its consequences should "absolutely revolutionize the whole condition of existence." For of all processes, this alone accounts for the wealth of energy dissipated so prodigally throughout the universe over apparently endless periods of time. Once means are found to accelerate the transmuting rate of radioactive atoms, Professor Soddy believes the same means will suffice to break up the other elements now unchanging, releasing energy which man may harness a "million times greater than any at present utilized." In his masterly address in 1908 before the American Society of International Law, Elihu Root traced the development of the international spirit by the use of human inventions conquering space and time. Clans, communities, nationalities have lost their early function, and frontiers and territorial possessions are changing their political significance. Terrestrial pioneering is not ended, the continents are rediscovering each other in new relations.
Much has been done to open new channels for the play of men's energies away from war. War has had its uses to break up the old order, to let loose new and unknown forces in society, to set men free from tradition. That was the great work of the Crusades. Chivalry and knighthood are still needed, but of a new order. The martyrs for aerial navigation are the type. The machinery for peace that has been set up in the new palace at The Hague will not confine the adventurous spirit of mankind.