THE MORAL DAMA OF WAR BY y WALTER WALSH Gilfillan Memorial Church, Dundee PUBLISHED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL UNION GINN & COMPANY, BOSTON 1906 Copyright, 1906 By WALTER WALSH ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 6lI.I TO THE THIRTEENTH INTERNATIONAL PEACE CONGRESS, BOSTON, 1904 THE AMERICAN DELEGATES AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHOSE LARGE-MINDED HOSPITALITY TO THE DELEGATES FROM OTHER LANDS AND TO THE GREAT PRINCIPLE THEY REPRESENTED WILL ABIDE AN INSPIRING AND IMPERISHABLE MEMORY IS INSCRIBED THIS POLEMIC FOR PEACE England and America are properly not two nations , but one ; inseparable by any human power or diplomacy ,* being already united by Heaven* s Act of Parliament , and nature , and practical intercourse ; indivisible brother elements of the same great Saxondom. Carlyle to Dickens, 1845 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/moraldamageofwarOOwals PREFACE The argument that follows is not spun from the writer’s fancy, but deduced from facts of which he has had intimate experience. The instances and illustra- tions were not coined in the mint of his imagination, but in nearly every case are either direct quotation or accu- rate summary of precise sayings and doings referable, on challenge, to their sources. So much was affirmed when the following pages were first given to the British public. But so hideous was the revelation they contained of the damage wrought by war upon the moral nature of all classes of society, that a few persons professed to receive it with incre- dulity, and dismissed the conclusions with evasive exclamations about rhetoric and exaggeration. Such persons were those who either had not passed through the same fire as the writer, or had not, like him, observed and noted, gathered and pondered, through sorrowful years, or whose previous habit of mind left them unprepared for the message of peace. The sin- cerity of these evasions may be judged from the fact that in no single instance were they accompanied by a demand for the production of the proofs so freely offered; whilst, on the contrary, others well qualified to judge corroborated the extremest statements, offering to supplement them by facts within their own possession, VL PREFACE soldiers even testifying from personal knowledge that they were not in the least exaggerated. Thus, having every right to believe that the comment, severe as it is, does not exceed the warrant of the text, the writer has met skepticism in advance by providing in this edition the means of verification. Every important statement is referred to the speaker or writer with whom it originated, and confirmatory extracts are given in the appended notes, so that the reader can judge whether the indictment of the war spirit here set forth be not fully warranted by the facts of the case. Unfor- tunately this could not be done without increasing the size of the volume ; but the writer is assured by friends qualified to judge that the material thus supplied to the peace advocate, with numerous references to the litera- ture of the subject, is well worth the space required to set it forth, and he has cheerfully performed the labor that seemed necessary to make this edition an armory of facts and arguments on behalf of the most pressing of modern reforms. The full index at the end will facilitate this use. Under the influence of that self-love which induces every nation to imagine itself the finest possible speci- men of the human race, discontent may be felt that the proofs of war’s damage are culled for the most part from the English-speaking peoples ; and the familiar accusation may be again heard that we are of those who “speak well of every country but their own ! ” Alas ! would that it were possible to believe that these apples of Sodom could be gathered only from the Anglo-Saxon stock ; but so far is this from being the case that the PREFACE vil author would undertake in a very short time, confining himself only to the wars of the last hundred years, to fill another volume as large as the present with simi- larly odious evidences of war’s demoralizing influence upon the minds of every civilized nation in the world. No; the demoralization does not inhere in any one people more than another; it inheres in war itself, by whomsoever waged, in the war spirit by whomsoever provoked. And it would be a thing equally silly and sinful to illustrate the moral injury of war by reference only to the brother nations; for that would be to feed still further the national vanity which is so largely provocative of war, and which it is one object of the following pages to expose. “Ah, yes ! ” the reader would exclaim ; “ those dreadful foreigners ! But how different with our just and humane wars, our civilized soldiery, our fair-dealing traders, our righteous statesmen, our eminently Christian preachers !” Nothing would be easier than for an Anglo-Saxon writer to make capital out of the military crimes of the Latin, Teutonic, or Slav races, as an indolent and timid preacher can earn cheap fame by denouncing every sin except that which sits in the pew before him ; but that would be to put yet further away the better understanding between nations, and the truer estimate of their mutual capacities for goodness, out of which alone the prevention of inter- national collisions can arise. Unimportant social habit and accident of environment apart, there is no essen- tial difference between the moral nature of one people and that of another. All possess the same capacities for goodness and happiness ; all incline to justice and Vlll PREFACE peace ; all are responsive to the vast cosmic movement towards brotherhood; and all may equally be turned to cruelty and injustice by the deteriorating influence of the war spirit. It seemed, therefore, quite necessary to show that all war is injurious to the moral nature of whatever people wages it, to verify the assertion about war in general by verifications drawn from the most recent wars, and (without ignoring the others) to base the conclusion upon the history of that Anglo-Saxondom in whose language the book is written and to whom it is sent forth. If any reader continues to cherish the idea that the English-speaking races represent the high- est evolution of the human type, let him, when he has read to the end of the indictment, reflect how indescrib- ably horrible must be the sum total of war’s iniquities when those of “ inferior ” races are added to those of the “ superior ” ; for “ if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry ” ? From the premise that war does actually, in a given case, inflict grievous hurt upon the moral sense of all classes and professions in a community, it is an easy step to the inference that it must, in every case, inevita- bly do so, and not a great stride to the conclusion that therefore all war is discordant with the religious princi- ples of Jesus. The sentence just quoted from the first edition, with the line of argument developed in the opening chapter, gave rise, it happened, to some misunderstanding among three reviewers favorable to the peace movement. The first warned the writer that the peace movement included PREFACE IX a large number of workers both in Europe and America who did not acknowledge discipleship to the Christian or any organized form of religion, yet found a humanist, rationalist, or utilitarian basis sufficient for their anti- war propaganda, and that it was a mistake to found an argument for peace solely on an authoritarian or tra- ditional form of religion . 1 The second pointed out that no church had recognized the Sermon on the Mount as the basis of Christianity, that the book virtually demanded a new basis, that the idea of a man’s good- ness being determined by love and zeal in the promotion of human brotherhood was not a Christian doctrine, no creed holding it essential to salvation 2 ; and this critical view seemed to be confirmed by the declaration of an avowed disciple of Jesus that the principle of the abso- lute sinfulness of war, on all sides, was not a Christian principle . 3 The third lamented that the first chapter seemed to discount all the tentative practical steps which alone the nations could be induced to adopt for several generations to come . 4 Now it is perfectly true that the present writer, chal- lenged to reflection, is only the more determined in the direction of the views expressed in his opening chap- ter : that no form of purely political or intellectual or utilitarian motive will be found effective in the removal of the curse of war from the earth ; that the pressure of the political situation of the day will always overpower 1 J. M. R., The Reformer , February, 1903. 2 Newcastle Daily Leader , November 24, 1902. 3 Private letter from a Roman Catholic priest. i Dr. C. F. Aked, Pembroke Pulpit, No. 24. X PREFACE ultimate ethical considerations ; intellect will attempt in vain to stem the torrents of animal passion bound up in the same personalities with it, and utility will always be able to argue that the greatest happiness of the greatest number will be promoted by the success of the nation’s arms ; and that therefore the religious motive alone has in it depth, power, and prophetic width of outlook to carry the peace principle through to a historical consummation. Whilst differing entirely from the distinguished writer 1 who affirms an “ ultrarational ” sanction for such religious conduct as consists in the subordination of national egoism to international altru- ism, or the interests of the self-assertive nation to the larger interests of the race ; whilst holding, on the con- trary, that such conduct can fully justify itself to the rational faculty, the present writer agrees that “ the evolution which is slowly proceeding in human society is not primarily intellectual but religious in character; . . . the great deep-seated evolutionary forces at work in society are not operating against religious influences and in favor of the uncontrolled sway of the intellect. On the contrary, it seems to be clear that these influ- ences have been always and everywhere triumphant in the past, and that it is a first principle of our social development that they must continue to be in the ascendant to the end, whatever the future may have in store for us.” Whatever “tentative practical” steps may be taken by the political powers will be deter- mined solely by motives of national self-interest mate- rially considered, and will always break down just at the 1 Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, pp. 103, 243, 247. PREFACE xi crucial point where the demand is for self-suppression and the coming into play of the sacrificial motive. Something from lower modes of thought and forms of activity will be certainly achieved by the way, but the propulsive energy will always be religious, and the final leap to the shining goal is forever impossible to any motive that has not learned the meaning of self-sacrifice, which is the essence of religion. In this religious conception, further, consists the true bond of union amongst the different thinkers and workers who come together at such international peace gatherings as that to which this volume is dedicated. Any discussion of the nature of Christianity, or the relation of the peace ethic to dogma and tradition, would be quite out of place here, and so long as the matter is debated amongst Christians themselves it would be absurd to base the argument for peace on any mere authoritarian system, or stake the cause upon uncertain book sayings of disputed interpretation, or risk a universal movement upon any single view. Mul- titudes of sincere Christians will be content to find the final condemnation of all war in the sayings attrib- uted to Jesus as these may be read in the white light of the developed conscience of to-day; whilst others will prefer to find their warrant in the evolution of the idea of social sacrifice or altruism characteristic of our time, in the faith that the Christ spirit in humanity is coming to higher ethical developments, leaving war behind as an anachronism and a husk outgrown. No great gulf divides these Christian schools from each other, or both from sincere ethicists and reformers of XU PREFACE yet other schools. It is undeniable that the actual test and criterion of genuine Christianity applied by Christians themselves, clearly expounded in its earliest stages, more and more emerging into view as the wrappings of the Dark Ages fall apart, is precisely its sacrificial or altruistic ideal applied to the relation not merely between the individual and the nation, but between the nation and the race. It is equally unde- niable that the weighty and progressive element in those ethical and reforming schools which stand outside nominal Christianity is their altruistic or sacrificial feel- ing working in the same direction. All alike bring the loftiest principles evolved in the modern consciousness to the solution of problems and the removal of abuses, each merely expressing them in terms of his own mental state as utilitarian, positivist, rationalist, humanist, or Christian. All alike transfuse their philosophies with that moral enthusiasm and self-renouncing motive which are of the essence of religion, and without which Chris- tianity itself is a mass of inert tradition as powerless to avert war as any fetichism that ever did duty for religion in an African jungle. Here, then, is the com- mon ground on which the present writer stands with such different but not contradictory thinkers as com- posed the Thirteenth International Peace Congress, and from which he can frankly ask them to accept the dedi- cation of this contribution to the great cause. All dogmas, traditions, expediencies, utilities, rationalities, humanities, are but the husks out of which emerge the perfect fruit of altruistic sentiment, racial solidarity, the brotherhood of man, — in a word, religion. And PREFACE xm the great typical poet of America will, as is most fit, speak the word . 1 I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion, Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur ; (Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion, Nor land nor man or woman without religion). What are you doing, young man ? Are you so earnest, so given up to literature, science, art, amours ? These ostensible realities, politics, points? Your ambition or business, whatever it may be ? It is well — against such I say not a word. I am their poet also, But behold ! such swiftly subside, burnt up for religion’s sake, For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, THE ESSENTIAL LIFE OF THE EARTH, Any more than such are to religion. 1 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass , complete authorized edition, p. 22. See also Specimen Days and Collect , p. 278. CONTENTS Page I. War considered as an Immorality .... i II. The Moral Damage of War to the Nation . 39 III. The Moral Damage of War to the Child . . 79 IV. The Moral Damage of War to the Soldier . 107 V. The Moral Damage of War to the Politician 167 VI. The Moral Damage of War to the Journalist 199 VII. The Moral Damage of War to the Preacher . 233 VIII. The Moral Damage of War to the Missionary 271 IX. The Moral Damage of War to the Trader . 305 X. The Moral Damage of War to the Citizen. . 345 XI. The Moral Damage of War to the Patriot . 379 XII. The Moral Damage of War to the Reformer. 41 i INDEX 451 THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR I WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you ; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven : for He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same ? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. — Jesus. THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR I WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY Considering that recent international conflicts have been utilized by so many eminent persons to effect improvements in the art of war and to make plans whereby succeeding wars may be rendered more com- pletely destructive, it cannot be out of place to point an entirely contrary moral, and to consider how such events may be most effectually discouraged, or, indeed, altogether prevented. If a word spoken in due season be as good as the old proverbist thought it was, the words that follow cannot be wholly impertinent. Opin- ions as to the origin and remote causes of any particular war may differ ; but there can be only one feeling in view of the long catalogue of disappointments, mistakes, miseries, and surrounding horrors of every war; and there should be only one disposition to ponder the moral questions connected with it. After strife, reflec-y tion ; after violence, reason ; after sin, repentance ; and surely no mind can be so prejudiced, nor any heart so hard, as to reject the lessons and refuse the pen- ances dictated by mournful experience. These questions 3 4 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR cannot be allowed to pass with the passing occasion, but broaden out from the particular to the universal, em- brace all occasions of war or of peace, and demand noth- ing less than an examination of those moral principles which may be supposed to justify or forbid the appeal to arms. Such times are opportune for asking whether Christendom has discharged its obligation to its Lord by denominating him, through its pulpits on the occa- sion of their annual Christmas sermons, the Prince of Peace, or whether it be at last possible to do the things that he says, gathering new interpretations out of the Hill Sermon, and giving them new applications. Christian morality is the touchstone to which war must now be brought ; for if it cannot justify itself to the modern Christ, it surely cannot any longer command the approbation of modern Christendom. Ref- erence to ancient texts and traditions may help certain minds, and may have brought us part of the way ; but it is surely now possible to take our stand upon the historical development of the Christian consciousness, and claim that it demands the substitution of reason for violence, and the triumph of moral over physical forces. Appeal to the religious sense of the modern world is the highest — and if our object be the entire abandonment of this moral offense it is the only — appeal that is left us. Every other argument has had trial, and has had its partial truth acknowledged ; but none has been found dynamic enough to restrain the wrath or destroy the cupidity of the nations, which have gone on fighting just the same. Benjamin Franklin offered it as his opinion that “ there never was a good WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 5 war or a bad peace” 1 ; yet Milton’s reproach still wrings our withers : O shame to men ! devil with devil damn’d Firm concord holds, men only disagree. 2 The appeal to pity has not been strong enough to prevent war. Its sufferings, though great and terrible, have not been sufficient to restrain those whose inter- ests or passions drew them to arms. The ferocious bravery of besiegers and the stubborn valor of defenders is no such new thing in the history of the world that we need to pale with fear or purple in praise of it. Man is a brave brute ; all his story shows that. Wounds and death cannot turn him. Before our day he has fought ten thousand wars, greedy of wounds, careless of torture, merry in the face of death. The cheeriest, heartfulest animal in the universe is man. He will make a million children orphans, including his own, with an oath upon the fathers who begat them ; will break the hearts of ten thousand women, even his own mother’s, with a song upon his lip ; will spit an old mother’s only son, or be spitted, on a bayonet with as little remorse as he would spear a frog ; will gouge out the blue eyes of a girl’s sweetheart with as little compunction as he would pare his nails ; nothing to him the vacant chairs, the broken marriage altars, the widowed marriage beds. A cheery desperado is this man. And such obduracy may have in it an element of nobleness ; for there are things men fear more than pain and death, as there are things they love more than health and life. It may be a perverted sense of honor, or only lust of possessing, or sheer delight in brute combat ; but there is always 6 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR something to turn aside any address to the feelings. Terrible as are the pictures of war’s horrors drawn by pen and pencil, harrowing as are the reports of corre- spondents and letters of soldiers on the field, there is never any lack of recruits ; some drawn by love of country, others by love of fighting, others by inflamed thirst for glory, others by nothing more exalted than a shilling a day. Be the injuries inflicted by scientific weapons never so hideous, and let them be set forth with all the realism of camera and pencil , 3 — the pierced hands, shattered skulls, severed blood vessels, smashed bones, — the war demon has but to pass his red sponge across the page, and lo ! it is as if it had never been. Hard as is this way of transgressors, vastly as the wounds, maimings, deaths of war, exceed those of martyrdom, — for one man who is prepared to embrace death at the stake, a million are ready to meet it on the field of battle. Though imagination is wholly unable to body forth the awful whole of which artists and writers set forth some details, or make to the mind a complete presentment of the countless forms in which death meets the soldier on the field or in hospital ; and though men might be expected to pause before the prospect of bodily mutilation, torment, thirst, in con- junction with mental rage, anguish, and despair, — the physical hell of shot and steel and trampling hoof mingling with the moral hell of hate and revenge, brute foam and devil fury ; the early rain of blood and fell harvest fields of dead meeting the latter rain of tears and mournful aftermath of widows and orphans ; the long agonies of the broken limbs and the longer WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 7 agonies of the broken hearts, — yet it is vain to expect to put an end to war by considerations such as these ; for experience has shown that they are powerless to restrain the passions which lead to it, that they have no terrors for the bloodhounds which begin to bay in man’s heart when fired by lust of battle. Soldiers are not unseldom heard to declare, and the less determined friends of peace to echo , 4 that none is so averse to war as he who has made it, none is so much the friend of peace as he who knows the horrors of battle ; but ex- perience only partially bears this out. The soldier fre- quently longs for war in “ weak piping times of peace,” often rejoices in it because its fascinations overcome its horrors, and he knows he has always the gambler’s chance of escape in the bloodiest fray. Nothing can change this view of it save the sense of its sinfulness ; and to bear this sense of guilt in upon the minds of the authors and instruments of war is the bounden duty of the Christian religion. It would be altogether a mistake to attribute this indifference to the plea of pity to any extraordinary courage on the part of those whom other influences draw to arms ; for it has required something more than either fear or philanthropy to turn many from violence to the more excellent way of love. It frequently requires x as much courage to dissent from war as to wage it ; and their conviction of its unlawfulness, and consequent refusal to participate in it, has involved both ancient and modern Christians in physical sufferings and even death. Those persons who put armed conflict finally into the category of the unlawful and proscribed things^ 8 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR are moved by something deeper than a humane shrink- ing from the sight of blood ; for they are precisely of that martyr breed which, whilst it fears sin, does not fear death ; and they are moved to abandon it more by a sense of its moral evil than its physical suffer- ings. To their minds death is not necessarily an evil — might even, under certain conditions, be the greatest good and the highest joy ; so that they are not deter- mined merely by the spectacle of their fellow-creatures suffering, by the myriad, death in its most appalling forms. It is the fact that death meets those myriads whilst indulging the most appalling passions — their hands filled with weapons of carnage, their hearts with fratricidal hate. It is their sense of the moral death involved ; searing of conscience, deadening of heart, blunting of moral faculty ; fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans of the stricken can be to the mere corporeal nerve. The thing to fear is not pain, but trespass ; not suffering, but wrong ; not death, but demoralization ; not hell, but sin. ('Therefore it is not the suffering of war, immense and indescribable as it is, for suffering is the heritage of man ; neither is it death by war, cruel and uncountable as that is, for death is the common lot ; but it is the sin and crime of war that constitute its chief offense, and that render it the one peculiarly and entirely damnable occupation of moral beings. The last evil of war is not its ruin of cities, wasting of homes, burning of cornfields ; not its plague, famine, or fire ; for storm and earthquake, raging sea and devouring WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 9 flame, lingering decline and swiftly fatal machine, crush- ing train and suffocating mine ravage equally with the red field, whilst they are innocent of the flagitiousness of war, — the peculiar sin of which is that it corrupts while it consumes, that it demoralizes whilst it destroys. It is not because war kills that it is the devil, but because it depraves ; and it is because it depraves that it is condemned by the religious consciousness. The damage it inflicts upon the persons and property of men is trifling beside the damage it inflicts upon morals ; and it is this that is exciting in thoughtful minds a fresh interest in the whole military conception. The ominous thing is not the body prostrate on the battlefield, but the brute rampant in the mother land ; the general lower- ing of ideal, the blatant materialism and defiant selfish- ness, the open and shameless divorce between ethics and religion, the naked and unashamed adultery between ecclesiasticism and the powers of this world. Many feel that they must stand and consider. The time has come to think. If the appeal to pity has proved too weak to stay the tempers that lead to war, so also has the appeal to reason. The rational faculty, indeed, is the last to be consulted either in the inception or prosecution of a war. When the execution of a single criminal is in- volved, ethics and jurisprudence unite to secure impar- tial trial ; but when a nation is concerned, a bastard “patriotism” (the sum of passion, pride, and prejudice) insists upon inflaming popular fury upon the basis of a brief drawn up by one of the offended parties (the 10 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR government of the day), who constitutes himself judge, jury, and executioner in one, and then dispatches his armed minions to promulgate the sentence of death by brute force and every accompaniment of fear and frenzy. Attempts to put force upon a basis of reason are not wanting, but no reasons have yet been alleged that can restrain a people when the war fury has taken possession of it. On the contrary, whilst in times of amity its philosophers and ecclesiastics build up fine theories of lawful and unlawful wars, its people in time of provocation rage and its rulers take counsel together to find excuses for the struggle upon which they are bent. Many reasons can then be found for, but few against, it. A reason is never wanting. The root motive may be land lust or blood lust ; it may be the pirate or the sheer savage who hastily huddles some rags of argument about his nakedness ; but there are never wanting finer plausibilities to give forth to the world in order to satisfy the etiquette of civilization, appease the unquiet conscience, and enlist the ecclesiastics. Nay, after the philosopher has rounded off his exercita- tion about lawful war, and formulated a theory that appears to meet all the requirements of thought, he will discover that he has put no period to the practice of arms ; for every one who is excited by passion for com- bat, or moved by covetous desire, will, with juggling more or less conscious, discover that the theory ex- actly fits his case. In every time of national difference the jealous patriot will conceive that injury is being meditated to his interests, his honor, or his prestige. He will be able to instance a score of suspicious WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY n circumstances and imagine a hundred more ; to fortify his fears by quoting historic precedent, and to proclaim his injured innocence before a sympathizing world. He will exhort a long-suffering nation to put its foot down before a worse thing come upon it, and neither the students nor the preachers will be able to remember the distinction between lawful and unlawful war ; nor, if they remember it, will they hesitate to class the particular war of the day in the category of the lawful. Such excuses as self-defense, justice, necessity, honor, interest, will never be wanting — not in a single case. In the eyes of all disinterested persons the attack may be cruel, wanton, cowardly, but it will assuredly be represented as righteous and glorious by the rulers and their journalistic minions, by the fashion- able circles that revolve like satellites round the seat of government, by the officials with their vast social ramifications, and by the army with its family relation- ships throughout the length and breadth of the land. The accumulation of interests and self-regarding motives tending to find justification for a desirable war is over- whelming, and bears down the slender barriers erected by reason as easily as an avalanche crushes a harebell in its path. Despising alike the opinion of contempo- rary civilization and the possible verdict of posterity, the infuriated nation inevitably arrives at the conclusion that its particular war is just, patriotic, and glorious — as England did when it attempted to crush Scotland, as Austria when it strove against the liberties of Switzer- land and Italy, as Russia when it suppressed Poland. The French nation, in a memorable deliverance, declared 12 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR that it “refuses to undertake any war with the object of conquest, and will never employ its forces against the liberty of any people ” ; 5 but all the world knows to what a sanguinary denial subsequent events drove it. They were not sinners above all the Galileans. So long as war in general has its morality admitted, any par- ticular assault becomes a matter of casuistry, and will never lack justification. So long as a distinction is drawn between moral and immoral wars, every occasion will without difficulty be discovered to be moral by the nation concerned, and the rulers, with affectation more or less conscious, will speak of it as a necessity, pain- ful no doubt, but a necessity still. “ In our opinion the Crimean war was a perfectly gratuitous piece of folly, waged with no real aim and capable of produc- ing no good results for the future. It was, in fact, a pure waste of blood and treasure. The present war, on the other hand . . ,” 6 The opinion of Gulliver’s houyhnhnm master is fully justified: “He seemed therefore confident that, instead of reason, we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural vices, as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill-shapen body, not only larger but more distorted.” Even those persons who regard the ecclesiastical world as a kind of moral reserve upon which they can fall back from the secular temper of the politicians will here be disappointed, for ecclesiasticism will never be wanting with its sanction for the political excuse, and with fresh excuses drawn from its own sphere. A clear distinction must always be made between ecclesiasticism WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 13 and religion, or between religion organized as a church and the religious consciousness in humanity. An ex- perienced American observer testifies: “If you address a miscellaneous audience at the Cooper Institute in New York, for instance, and tell them, as I have, that war is a relic of barbarism which has no business to show itself at the end of the nineteenth century, they will cheer you to the echo, and scarcely a man will be found to make a protest. I have also spoken to audi- ences of educated Christians, and I have found them cold. Only once were my hearers unanimous against me without an exception, and that was when I was invited to address a meeting of Protestant ministers.” 7 It will always be possible for a bishop to get up and say that war is a necessity for a wronged nation, and to declare his to be that nation. There is always a way. There is always a reason. Never was quarrel so fla- grantly unjust but dignitaries of the church discovered that it was permissible to drop the sermon and draw the sword ; that it was a bounden duty to descend from the Mount and take the field . 8 The devil will clothe himself, for certain, in the garb of an angel of light. There will never be wanting a divine to say that “ the national conscience is clean, — it is a righteous war; from the bottom of our hearts we can invoke the bless- ing of Almighty God.” 9 The pulpiteer, in gown and bands, will stand gravely up to assert with Mozley 10 that the religion which recognizes nationality recognizes also war ; that nothing but the sword can decide dis- putes between those nations whose destinies collide ; and that to so much as arbitrate upon a dispute wherein 14 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR the national conscience is clear is to be guilty of treach- ery. He preaches that it is “better to plead the cause of right by shotted cannon and revolvers than that the wrong should continue unrebuked.” 11 It is “ impossible for them to submit to arbitration the fulfillment of their imperial obligations, and they cannot decline the chal- lenge to the cold, cruel arbitrament of war.” 12 Some- times he has not so much as heard of arbitration and The Hague International Convention. “An individual can bring his case before a civil tribunal for judgment, but a nation has no such court of appeal. There is left only the stern arbitrament of war.” 13 It is thus that the irrational airs itself in the gar- ments of argument, ignorance puts forth pretensions to virtue, and sheer immorality talks the language of religion. Never two brutes met on the same narrow path that did not consider their colliding destinies matter enough for combat to the death ; never two duelists who did not allege that they had exhausted the resources of reason before falling back upon the pistol ; never a Herod who did not call the heavens to witness the purity of his motives, nor a Caiaphas who did not declare it expedient that one nation should die for the empire, nor a Pilate who did not publicly call for water and wash his hands in innocency. If, in the last resort, the ecclesiastic is driven from every pretense of reason back upon mere apology, he announces that war, like wild beasts and earthquakes, is to be tolerated for its dispensational functions ; which is precisely the excuse alleged by Moltke, that master of scientific murder. Pulpiteers who flout Darwinism WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 15 in the realm of theology are heard to mouth imper- fect and unformed applications of it in the sphere of imperialism, — sometimes to idealize them into what has been justly stigmatized as “impious hymnology,” 14 — and to proclaim the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest in such ways as to pervert them from a gospel of the evolutionary God into doctrines of the devil of national destructions. They cannot abide the ape as their progenitor, but are willing to n acclaim the tiger as the type of national morality. Surely the Master of Christendom himself was mis- taken, for greater seem the beatitudes of war than those of peace! “We have heard a great deal of late about the horrors of the war in which we were recently en- gaged. It is all a question of imagination. The horrors of war — and war is always hell — are nothing to the devastations of peace.” 15 Let it be granted that war is a divine scourge upon national sin ; nothing is thereby conceded as to its moral nature, for earthquakes and crocodiles, plagues, famines, and locusts are in the same sense instruments of divine chastisement ; yet we neither attribute moral character to them, nor permit their providential function to stand in the way of their prevention or removal. And it will not unseldom be found that the sins for which bloodshed is a punishment are the sins of greed, tyranny, ambition, coming to a head in the nation which, after quarrel sought and found, falls back upon this last argument of kings ; whose very wars are its punish- ments ; which reaps from even successful strife the certain fruits of suffering, death, impoverishment, and l6 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR social distress ; and which, all the time that it foolishly talks of being the dispenser of justice, itself lies under the very curse and judgment of heaven. In this sense it is true that war is as fatal to the conquerors as to the conquered. If the carnal weapon were not as destructive of intelligence as of morality, we should never hear a religious official commit himself to such a proposition as this : “ I would rather a man earned his living by fighting than by betting. ... I would rather a man slay his neighbor than cheat him.” 16 For this involves merely the comparative ethics of the fox and the wolf ; and the true function of religion is to condemn both, not to insinuate that the wolf quality in human nature is a virtue, by flinging the fox quality into deeper shade. It admits of tedious and uncertain discussion whether the gambler who lives by cheating be a better or worse man than the pugilist, duelist, bully, wife killer, cut- throat, and all the tribe who live by slaying ; whether a Sultan who massacres his subjects be worse or better than a Kaiser who taxes them ; and whether the rev- erend speaker of so much pernicious nonsense would rather be brained than burgled, or would prefer a bul- let in his skull to a button in his collection plate. The conclusion is plain. Seeing that intellect and ecclesiasticism are as helpless as politics to deliver us from the red scourge, we must fall back upon pure ethics. Since there is no hope of escape by the exercise of the logical and political faculties, we must pass beyond to the practice of morality. We must not go on saying that this war is just or unjust, and that one WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 17 right or wrong ; but must boldly gird up our minds and say that all war to-day is wrong, that every war is sin ; that war need not be, must not be, shall not be. If the Christian world had faith as a grain of mustard seed, it could, within a week, make war forever impossible. In default of the appeals to p_ity and reason we turn to considerations drawn from expediency, only to find that we are again leaning upon a broken reed. The political motive can never prevent the resort to force. Republic and monarchy alike have adopted imperialism as their ruling idea, and each makes the expansion policy of the other an excuse for increasing its own armaments ; so that every one stands in the position of “ bogy ” to all the rest, incessantly raising the standard of equipment and providing opportunities all over the world for bouncing statesmen, reckless journalists, fire-eating ecclesiastics, and ambitious sol- diers. Amongst the armed powers not a single voice is bold enough to dissent from the note of alarm sounded by their leading statesmen ; yet not a single voice is brave enough to command an absolute halt. Again and again we are assured by competent governors that bankruptcy and chaos are yawning straight ahead ; yet these same governors go on adding corps to corps, ship to ship, debt to debt, with a recklessness which can be explained only by the strong saying that “ they needs must whom the devil drives.” Parliamentarians and journalists present us from time to time with figures showing the millions of men and the hundreds of mil- lions of money devoted to this business of throat cutting ; 1 8 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR yet these same wise persons turn to denounce any who, building on their own figures, propose to put a stop to this process of suicide by slow bleeding. It is useless to argue with our public men upon the economic waste // of war, — its burdens upon industry, waste of workers and of wealth, drain upon the physical, intellectual, and financial energies of the nation,' — for they know it all too well, and meet every indisputable fact by the despairing assertion that the burdens must be borne if the country is to exist at all. They resemble men who hang by a breaking rope upon the sheer side of a glassy precipice, who can find no way of ascent, nor any foothold to prevent their fall ; who can only watch with strained curiosity whilst strand after strand gives way above them, and with still hearts wait the fatal ^ plunge. “ The emperor has diagnosed an incurable disease. You might as well tell me that I am going to die. It is as inevitable as death.” 17 It is vain to point out how the expenditure upon army and navy, volunteer and militia, new guns, new explo- sives, and new shooting ranges would be sufficient to educate every child and pension every worker within the realms ; vain to protest against the idolatrous wor- ship of the military Moloch to whom we pass our chil- dren through the fire, and who, having devoured our children, proceeds to devour our substance also, — every increased crop of the farmer and wage of the worker ; for we are met by the last word of politics in despair, — that these hardships and dangers must be incurred for the sake of empire. “ If this goes on,” said Gam- 5* betta, “ Europe will be reduced to beg at the door of the WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 19 barracks.” That was five and twenty years ago, since when Europe has gone steadily from bad to worse, and America with her new imperialism and big navy has flung her vast bulk to accelerate the swirl of the down- sucking maelstrom of militarism. It is thus that the door slams to as often as we open it. Thus is destruc- tion courted in the name of patriotism ; thus do we enfeeble ourselves through jealous fear of being thought feeble ; thus do we commit suicide in order to avoid being murdered. In strictest truth, the nations are), killing themselves with their own weapons. wolf, being desirous of crossing a swollen river, //" requested a serpent to stretch himself from bank to bank, so forming a bridge on which he might safely pass to the other side. The devouring reptile hearkened to the four-footed marauder ; but he, when he was step- ping across, yielded to the instinct to snap at the shin- ing throat before him, upon which the serpent thought it proper to gratify the desire which had been secretly growing within him, opened his capacious jaws, and swallowed the aggressor; whereupon, being borne down by the sudden weight in his middle, he dropped into the river and was drowned. It is thus that the marauding nations call upon devouring militarism to save them, perish in the very act of killing, and perplex the specta- tor whether to call their deaths suicide or murder. v Considerations of policy will always be so strong as to resist any argument drawn from those wrongs of war which we may perhaps call secondary — such as the in- justice of slaughtering in the field those who had no hand in the quarrel, whilst those who nursed it sit safe 20 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR at home ; the cruelty of wasting the home lands of those who neither as rulers nor combatants are responsible for the fighting ; or the iniquity of taxing people at home for the prosecution of bloodshed of which they utterly disapprove and against which they daily protest. The single belief that the perpetration of these wrongs is necessary for self-preservation turns such weighty matter into so many feathers in the balance. Vain also is it to urge upon men the inevitable con- sequence of every war, for they know perfectly that the fruits can never be other than poverty, heartbreak, and universal misery ; they know also that the knowl- edge will never deter them from any conflict upon which they may set their hearts. A colonial secretary 18 will always be found to speak in praise of war as something of a magnificent game in which young and old, patriots and sportsmen, could imagine no more delightful posi- tion than to be with one whose duties included the blowing up a great number of men by driving them over concealed mines. No argument drawn from the sphere of utility — the expense, risk, misery of military operations — can avail, for it will always be silenced by the expectation of counterbalancing gains and endur- ing prosperity after the temporary disadvantages have passed away. “ The only successful way to encounter these insane preparations lies in a life-and-death struggle being carried on against militarism.” 19 In the hour of proud and prosperous peace expediency will serve us well for flattery and fine writing, will nourish our self- conceits as civilized and most Christian people, and will give happy themes for complacent moralizers in WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 21 magazine and pulpit ; but when the trumpet sounds we shall be down on all fours like the brutes. The insufficiency of any appeal to the utilitarian principle may be illustrated by the fate of the Peace Crusade initiated in Great Britain for the purpose of eliciting popular approval, both in Europe and America, of the Czar of Russia’s Rescript inviting the nations to a conference on the possibility of arresting the growth of armaments. That ecstasy of an hour — which might have been the glory of a millennium — was inaugurated by royalty, ostentatiously approved by every statesman in the civilized world, trumpeted by a unanimous press and cheered by the chorusing monthlies, blessed by the bishops and supported by the organized forces of the entire church ; yet in Britain it was literally blown into smoke by a single declaration of war. The Peace Crusade might reasonably have been expected to exer- cise a moderating influence on the passions that grow to blood, since it embraced nearly all that was respect- able and eminent in the land ; but at the first blast of the bugle all the forces of expediency melted away, — all the dukes and earls, all the mayors and pro- vosts, all the aldermen and councilors, journalists and magistrates, bishops and pulpiteers, — the platforms that had once known them knew them no more ; and the dismal work of carrying on a peace propaganda during the progress of a popular war was left to the old forces of morality, backed only by a journalist, a politician, or a preacher, here and there, together with such scratch allies as they succeeded, for other 22 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR reasons, in attaching to the cause. Bitter experience caused many to say, with one of these, “ I am glad to have the opportunity of expressing my disdain for the preachers who mask as Hague Conference men in the dog days, and have developed into prancing jingoes by Christmas time.” 20 Never in the history of man- I kind had expediency such an opportunity. The Peace Crusade was launched to back the well-meant proposal of a proud master of legions, proclaimed by men who boasted their faith in arms, their pride of empire, and their jealousy for the honor of their countries ; it an- nounced that it gave no abstract pronouncement on the question of war, — whether or not it was wrong and unjustifiable, — but started from obvious facts and aimed at specific feasible ends ; it gloried in having no utopian or idealistic aim, in being nothing if not practical and businesslike ; and it was commended and set forth by advocates who ostentatiously prefaced their speeches by declarations that they were not “ peace-at- any-price ” men. The Peace Crusade, it was intimated with determination, would not, whatever else it did, “ run amok” at the idea of a supreme navy 21 — nay, it openly disclaimed every hope of abolishing war, of reducing navies by a single gunboat, or armies by a single regiment, but professed only the humble hope of persuading the nations to stop just where they were; with the result that every military power subsequently made a positive addition to its armaments, as well as accelerated the rate of increase, so that the last state was worse than the first ; and with the further result that Great Britain finally punctuated its peace speeches by WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 23 a challenge to fight. The Peace Crusade was run by the “ practical” man because it was no wild scheme of visionaries and enthusiasts ; supported by the practical man because it discounted the foolish peace man who wanted to disband armies ; patronized for three whole months by the practical shopkeepers of Europe because it was a beautiful scheme for giving peace without abolishing war. Had the genial deceit prospered, we might next have expected a beautiful ecclesiastical scheme for producing holiness without terminating the pleasing luxury of sin. That was why the Peace Crusade could be stigmatized, with reasons given, as “likely to become an organized hypocrisy,” 22 and why it so shame-/ fully collapsed. It stood for expediency, whilst noth- ing but principle can prevent war ; it was founded on opportunism, whilst war can be successfully opposed only from the ground of rightness; it represented policy, and war can be abolished by nothing short of gospel. A proposal to reduce armaments and alleviate the extremer miseries of the battlefield could not but fail; for it was to this extent a hypocrisy, — that it did not go down to the moral root ; that it was unaccompanied by any view of the inherent crime and sin of war ; and that it left the peoples subject to all the former blood lusts, panics, scares, sophistries, and crafts of wicked politicians whereby they lie in wait to deceive. Certain reviewers did not find themselves able to agree with the view of the Peace Crusade taken by the writer, partly because they did not have his intimate experience of it, and partly because they confused the 24 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Crusade with the Czar’s Rescript which preceded it, and The Hague Conference with The Hague Convention which succeeded it. With regard to the first point, the writer’s experiences were too acute and too accurate for him to mistake their significance. He was one of those who flung himself into the Crusade headlong, took a leading part in organizing it in his district, succeeded in bringing together the public men of his neighbor- hood in a town’s meeting, brought the chief crusader to address it, and kept the organization moving for a month or two. What then happened ? All the world knows that Great Britain then found herself at war. In simple faithfulness to the Crusade principles the writer deemed it his duty to invite the more prominent cru- saders in his district to unite with him in an appeal to the government to exhaust every possible resource of diplomacy before proceeding to draw the sword, only to find, with astonishment and anguish, that every single man of them refused. All were prepared to condemn war in general ; but this war — their country’s war — that was a different thing ! The writer, after lapse of time and mature reflection, finds himself unable to deduct a single syllable from his condemnation of the princi- ples of expediency and opportunism which underlay the Crusade. It had no root in conscience or deepness of earth in a sense of national guilt ; hence when tribula- tion and persecution arose because of the word the vast majority of its adherents were offended. All this with- out questioning for a moment, while indeed joyfully recognizing, that many unpaltering friends of peace rallied to the movement, contributing the force of their WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 25 convictions ; and it was due to their deeper moral per- ceptions and abiding faithfulness to moral principle that the tidal wave of the Crusade, which rose so high in the spring of 1899 and raced away out war- ward in the autumn of the same year, left behind it, high up on the shores of the British Islands, some precious residuum of peace impulse. These opinions refer expressly and solely to the popular movement of 1899 called the Peace Crusade. That movement originated in London, and was organized for the purpose of backing by popular sentiment the Czar’s Rescript of 1898. It aimed at stimulating the interest of Europe and America in the Czar’s nobly- meant endeavor to shackle the giant of militarism. The summer of 1899 brought the sequel to the Rescript in the International Conference at The Hague, and from this Conference proceeded The Hague Convention ; which Convention provides for international commis- sions of inquiry, a permanent court of, and a complete code of procedure for, international arbitration. In several cases already these provisions have kept the thirsty sword in its scabbard, and we may well rejoice, in the words of a distinguished American citizen, that “ the law of nations took a step so momentous and sublime, . . . the distinctive historical event and the crowning ^lory of the present age.” 23 While glorying in every forward step, however, it is none the less necessary to keep our feet on sound principle and our eye on the further goal. Policies of restriction cannot be trusted as if they were gospels of abolition ; and while the deeply-motived friend of peace 26 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR may not refuse his help to any restrictive movement, he will reserve his homage for the principle that alone abolishes all and every war. Never must any politic movement be permitted to turn men’s eyes away from the true and only way of escape. From “utility” comes no ultimate salvation ; for utility itself is in despair. “ These things are well known to all the rulers and nations of the world. They stand numbed .” 24 From the highest mount of expediency the situation has been surveyed by one of the versed diplomatists of Europe, who declares that the conditions are hopeless and in- curable ; that nothing can stop the ever quickening swirl of the nations towards militarism, bankruptcy, and ruin. In this fearful pass no half measures will avail, no policies or diplomacies can save us : the cure must be radical. Acceptance of the peace principle, recognition of the moral obligation to suffer rather than to sin — this or Armageddon. Light only can dispel darkness. Christ alone can dethrone Mars ; God only can displace Satan. The principles of utility, rationality, expediency, and the rest have failed. The moral nature of man Y must now be roused to a sense of the vast prerogatives with which its evolution through the ages has endowed it. “Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” # So small a good as partial disarmament is more than can be secured on the lines of expediency, which can- didly admits that it will not attempt to reduce arma- ments until such reduction can be proved to be feasible WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 27 and safe, — that is, never ; for only to the man who has faith in moral obligation and moral forces will an experiment so tremendous ever appear either safe or feasible. Partial disarmament is only another name for sufficient armament, and armed truce for armed pre- paredness ; whilst peace can be maintained only through the faith that worketh by love. But, instead of faith and love, we have a cruel jealousy which paralyzes every movement towards reduction of arms, which causes every nation to wait till its traditional enemy takes the first step, and which must inevitably keep them waiting till the momentum of accelerating increase drives them into the next great conflict. All question of partial and mutual decrease is made impossible in I advance by the jealous fear lest on the back of what- ever agreement might be come to, some Napoleon or Bismarck should arise who would grasp the thunder, shatter his half-armed opponents, and rise to universal power on the ruins of their pacific folly. The rulers do plainly see at the bottom of society discontent ripening into despair and despair into anarchy, but feel themselves powerless to divert to channels of social redemption those millions which are now devoted to engines of destruction ; for as long as force is the recognized basis of government, so long will governing bodies be compelled to make that force as great and resistless as they can. They are under perpetual com- pulsion to defend what they have already taken, and frequently can preserve that only by taking more ; so that they have no choice. That is why they are in despair. 28 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Even the rational hope of securing peace by arbitra- tion is rendered null and void by the vicious principle of expediency. Governments invariably plead a good cause, and they w6uld not be likely to consent to an arbitration which they had reason to fear might go against them, for that would bring on them — should they defy the decision — the odium of fighting in disdain of the opinion of the civilized world. If they had an obviously bad cause, they would be still less likely to court the condemnation of the civilized powers ; whilst the worst cause that ever disgraced a nation’s annals would not prevent it drawing the sword where its selfish- ness was enlisted. The politician 25 would assert that, “ You cannot arbitrate on broad questions of policy any more than on questions of national honor”; and the journalist, 26 “We know so well all the ramifications of those arbitration courts, and prefer the shorter and far more impartial arbitrament of the sword.” The long array of arbitration settlements which shed a starry brightness amid the martial gloom of the nineteenth century points to the emergence of a truer moral con- ception of the attitude of nations one towards another. The difference between an immoral act and one that is merely inexpedient is that, whilst the latter admits of definition and qualification, the former admits only of direct condemnation. That which is expedient is permissible in degrees and under conditions to be as- certained ; the immoral has only to be abandoned. The ethical admits of no modification: it is absolute. Hence it is that attempts to regulate war, being based on its WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 29 expediency and permissibility, have been essential fail- ures, and must continue to be so. Every attempt to humanize it has been attended with slender success, — the soldier on the field showing a tendency to revert to the methods natural to his trade, in defiance of the rules drawn up by the diplomatists in pacific conference. “ War is hell ” is a proposition found rather more fre- quently on the lips of its advocates than of its oppo- nents ; but whereas these latter with logical and ethical consistency deduce the inference that their duty is to abolish it, the former draw the illogical and immoral conclusion that its extremest cruelties and horrors are to be accepted and condoned, as things inseparable from a thing inevitable. “War is hell,” exclaim the angels ; “ therefore we must extinguish and put an end to it.” “War is hell,” mutter the demons; “therefore we must not be shocked by atrocities, but expect them as a matter of course, and cast no reflections upon those who keep hell going by deeds natural to it.” Unless war be held sinful in its very nature and essence, it will be found useless to impugn any particular act of war ; for if it be justifiable to kill at all, it cannot be utterly unjustifiable to kill by one method rather than by another. If morality sanctions the killing of a hostile leader, why may not policy excuse the desecration of his remains? If ethics authorize a barbarian and his hordes to be smashed, why may not politics legalize the killing of his wounded? The clerical apologist will joyfully seize upon the false premise to condone the most barbarous practical conclusion : “ If the Crusade was against war in the abstract, . . . but assuming 30 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR that war may be justified by necessity, the whole ques- tion of the policy of smashing the Mahdi becomes an open question so far as morals are concerned. ... If we can condone the slaughter of six thousand men, it appears childish to appear to scruple about the desecra- tion of a grave, if the general in command thought it would conduce to the same end as the shooting down of the living men.” 27 It is true that men do not openly acclaim these logical conclusions ; but, calling them by finer names, the soldier acts upon them, and the politi- cian, under various plausible pretexts, condones them. The most highly civilized nations have begun to take no effective thought for so much as the horses employed in battle, and the case of these beautiful friends of man is, in some respects, yet more pitiable than that of the men. The human combatants, at any rate, fight with knowledge of their deed and its consequences, and have the possibility of “ glory ” and reward to sustain them ; but these innocent creatures perish in heaps, amid the most indescribable conditions of untended anguish. If only for the sake of these most noble and lovable of created beings, it were time to abolish war . 28 Attempts to humanize war and bring it within the pale of morality are on the same plane of effort as those sometimes made to regulate other vices. To abolish drunkenness by regulating drink has not, up to the present, proved a very hopeful enterprise. To abolish drink is found to be the only way to abolish drunken- ness ; to prohibit fighting will be found the only way to prevent war. Similarly it has been found that every attempt to regulate vice has resulted in giving new WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 31 sanctions to licentiousness. To regulate fornication has been found as impracticable as to regulate drunkenness, and for the same reason, — that it is not an impolicy, but an immorality. So it has been discovered in the case of other evils, — polygamy, for example, and slav- ery, — whose passage from policy to ethics can be clearly traced, and which have been transformed from inexpediencies into immoralities by a process which admits of definition. When it has been found possible to make fornication pure, drunkenness temperate, polyg- amy monogamous, slavery free, it will be hopeful to attempt to make war moral. But just as we have dis- covered that these evils refuse to be regulated, and have thus learned that they are not mere inexpediencies ad- mitting of modification, but immoralities to be classed amongst the absolutely forbidden, — so we are com- pelled to conclude that, because war refuses to be humanized and regulated, to adapt itself to our defini- tions or conform to our theories, but insists on going its own wild way, breaking our bands asunder and cast- ing away our cords from it, therefore it demands to be transferred from the region of policy to that of ethics, to be pronounced immoral always, and not merely inex- pedient sometimes. Some earnest persons there may be who, while agreeing with the view of war here taken, may be dis- posed to hope for its entire abandonment rather from the development of personal character than from any definite change in public morals ; but the hope is surely ill-founded, for public slaughter has hitherto been 32 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR thought entirely compatible with the loftiest private morality. The advocate of peace does not claim greater personal goodness than many of the advocates of war, or some of its actual makers ; he claims only to have carried the principles of public ethics into a sphere from which they have hitherto been excluded. He merely dissents from the newspaper proposition that the conceptions of right and wrong, and their conse- quences, have to be applied with a difference to the affairs of nations . 29 By some monstrous paradox, the possession of the greatest personal gentleness does not seem to restrain its possessor from committing or abet- ting public murder. Men otherwise gentle, generous, affectionate, who would not kill a fly, who would rather perish than put so much as a cat to death in cold blood, will, when a government sounds the tocsin, go forth to slaughter the innocent without remorse, willingly per- suading themselves that the enemy are worthy of death, obedient only to the military oath that absolves them from decision, resting in a fancied irresponsibility, and calmly committing deeds before performing which in their private capacity they would suffer a thousand deaths. But perhaps the symptom most discouraging to those who were looking to the growth of personal goodness to put a period to international violence is the effect of the war fever upon the women of a nation. Amongst public experiences none is more terrible than the rever- sion to savagery of those whom men, without irony, denominate “the gentler” sex. When sentence goes forth against the enemy our women also turn thumbs WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 33 down. Women otherwise gentle and girls otherwise delicate lust for blood, just like the men ; glory in slaughter, just like the men ; drink in calumny and lies, just like the men ; vomit out hatred, malice, and all un- charitableness, just like the men; burn to spread that kind of patriotism which implies fighting. Great is the sin of our women. There is but slight hope that the spread of general enlightenment will induce the civilized world to aban- don the sword as the method of settling its disputes ; for the men and women who, in a general way, are most enlightened become often little less irrational and immoral than the rest when the bugle blows ; nor are superior education, impeccable churchmanship, and ripe culture found to dissuade men a whit better than general ignorance, nonchurchgoing, and slum life. Educated people go about in the pages of the month- lies, asking in a perplexed way how the problem of war is to be solved, — as if war could ever be solved except by being abandoned, — juggling with their own reason, acting like men who wish to believe a lie, going about begging to know the truth they are all the time shut- ting out from their minds. There is only one way of escaping war, — the simple way of immediately ceasing to wage or to prepare to wage it. Even a Hebrew psalmist had moral sense to perceive the inconsistency of those who “ talk of peace, but make them ready for battle”; and surely they are a gross anachronism after two thousand years of the Christ. The reproach of Thomas a Kempis falls heavily on the glozing 34 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR V warmongers of this generation : “ How many are there who profess to long for peace ; how few who are ready to adopt the only means of obtaining it ! ” The same men do not approach assassination or rape as problems, but as crimes; yet they will not see that armed violence must continue as long as men approach it as a problem to be solved rather than a crime to be abandoned. It is educated people who bring their knowledge of history and law to define justifiable war, and who, when the crisis does not answer to their definition, are carried away by the fiery passion of the hour, in defiance alike of the teaching of history and the decisions of law. / “There has never been such justification for an appeal to arms ” 30 will be their excited verdict upon a pitiable foreign blunder for which ample amendment follows as matter of course. It is the educated people who first define wars, then vote them, then wage them; keep- ing the less informed proletariat to it all the time by innumerable sophistries and delusions. There is no hope in mere intellectual enlightenment ; the appeal must not be to intellect, but to conscience. “It is not in a change of institutions that we must put confidence, but in a new spirit, — a change in the mind and temper of man, . . . a higher, deeper faith, — a faith which be- lieves in equity among nations, as among individuals, and looks forward in that spirit to the realization of that peace which should be indeed founded upon and allied with righteousness .” 31 “The apostle of the y twentieth century will create a national conscience on war as powerful as that which abolished slavery in the nineteenth century. It will then be clearly seen that WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 35 the appeal to the sword is positively unreasonable and immoral.” 32 It is with war as it has been with- all other movements which rose out of the political into the ethical, — such as popular education, anticorn laws, extended franchise, religious freedom, abolition of slavery, — regarding which an eminent writer on social evolution remarks that they were opposed by the intellectual and educated classes in Great Britain, and continues, “The motive force behind the long list of progressive measures carried during this period [the nineteenth century] has in scarcely any appreciable measure come from the educated classes ; it has come almost exclusively from the middle and lower classes, who have in turn acted, not under the stimulus of intellectual motives, but under the influence of their altruistic feelings.” 83 War cannot be prevented except on the ground that it is immoral, that it is contrary to human ethics, that it violates divine law, — that, in a word, it is sin. It is true that all the orthodox politicians and impe- rial preachers, the conventional people and the practical men, decline to discuss the peace principle seriously, and wave it aside as a mere benevolence, — the impulse of impractical, however amiable, people ; but the fore- going review of the alternatives confirms faith in moral force. The moralities are the only concrete moving powers in the whole world, and without them no mighty uplifting of the human spirit has ever taken place. In comparison with them all questions of intellectual enlightenment are like incandescent lamps beside 36 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR blazing furnaces, — coldly clear, but generating no mo- tive power ; all questions of calculation and expediency are like efforts to bind giants with thread, and put out hell fire with toy squirts. Let the lower motives essay the diminution of war, and demonstrate their inability to bring bloodshed to an end ; but let religion continue to urge forward that absolute ethics which has power in it to bring both public and private affairs into the same moral category and make them keep step to the music of man’s evolving spiritual consciousness. “They who defend war,” says Erasmus, “must defend the dis- positions which lead to war, and these dispositions are absolutely forbidden by the gospel.” 34 This the Lol- lards clearly perceived (like many others before them) when they petitioned the parliament of their day “that war might be declared unchristian.” 35 But since the gospel forbids the dispositions which make war, it for- bids war ; and war is therefore irreligious, war is im- moral, war is sin. If we reject the decisions of our developed moral nature, which of our gods of expe- diency, or rationality, or utility, will save us ? We must continue to wander in the wilderness created by our own immoral principles and unfraternal passions till we perish, like those ancients who could not enter into rest because of unbelief. “ How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation ? ” WAR CONSIDERED AS AN IMMORALITY 37 REFERENCES 1. Edwin D. Mead, The Principles of the Founders, p. 29. 2. Paradise Lost, Bk. II. 3. War against War, p. 140. 4. Ibid., p. 43. 5. Constituante, May 22, 1790. 6. Spectator, London, April 20, 1901. 7. Ernest H. Crosby. 8. Bishop of Derby, Punch, London, (about) November, 1893. 9. Dr. MacGregor, Edinburgh Evening News, May, 1900. 10. University Sermons, p. 10 1. 11. Rev. Bernard Snell, New Age, London, February 20, 1902. 12. Bishop of Durham, January 7, 1900. 13. Dean of St. Andrews, May 5, 1903. 14. Note on Impious Hymnology. — You have all been reading during the last months of war. A word on that. An eminent man quoted the other day somebody who, he said, was an eminent divine, a great dignitary of the church. I do not know who he was. He wrote : They say that war is hell — the great accursed, The sin impossible to be forgiven ; And yet I look beyond it at its worst, And still find blue in heaven. And, when I note how nobly nations form ’Neath the red rain of war, I deem it true That He who gave the earthquake and the storm Perchance made battle too. [Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, The Times, London, October 31, 1899] Ah, they may mock us peacemongers ! Now, turn from this — I must call it impious hymnology — [“Hear! hear!” and cheers] — turn to two sentences which I read on the same day on which I read those verses. This is after the fall of Port Arthur : “ In the streets of St. Peters- burg mournful groups and desolate faces are met with everywhere. Heartbreaking scenes have taken place at the Admiralty, where wives and sisters of the Port Arthur heroes gathered to learn the fate of their loved ones.” That is one sentence. Think of the hymn, and then of this : “ In these fierce hand-to-hand fights men grappled, raged, and tore each other like beasts, biting, clawing, and gouging each other’s eyes out.” You see it. It is not the soft closing words of pulpit and 33 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR poetic diction. That is what war is. — John Morley, M.P., Brechin, January 18, 1905. 15. Rev. R. J. Campbell, November 1, 1903. 16. Canon Tucker, Sydney Bulletin. 17. Lord Salisbury (?), War against War, p. 3. 18. Alfred Lyttelton, M.P., November 7, 1899. 19. Socialist Manifesto, Munich, February, 1899. 20. Rev. T. G. Selby. 21. W. T. Stead, War against War, pp. 1, 5, 108 et passim. 22. Michael Davitt, War against War, p. 39. 23. Edwin D. Mead, Prmciples of the Founders , pp. 23, 33. 24. John Morley, M.P. 25. Lord Milner, New Age, October 10, 1901. 26. St. fames' Gazette, London. 27. Rev. D. W. Sitwell, War against War, p. 115. 28. See M. Zola’s terrible story of the Franco-German war, La Debacle. 29. Westminster Gazette , London, October 22, 1902. 30. George Meredith, Review of Reviews, London, Vol. XXX, P- 455 - 31. Leonard Courtney, June 23, 1904. 32. Rev. J. Talalun Newton. 33. Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 236. 34. Jonathan Dymond, War, p. 33. 35. J. R. Green, Short History of the English People , p. 253. THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE NATION He asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another. I answered they were innumer- able, but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern ; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their masters in a war in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. . . . Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrelleth with another for fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is entered upon because the enemy is too strong and sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have the things which we want ; and we both fight, till they take ours or give us theirs. ... It is justifiable to enter into war against our nearest ally when one of his towns lies convenient for us, or a territory of land that would render our domin- ions round and complete. If a prince sends forces into a nation where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to death and make slaves of the rest in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living. . . . Poor nations are hun- gry, and rich nations are proud ; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance. — Swift. II THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE NATION Since Ruskin delivered himself of that noblest of human pleas for the greatest of human follies, — The Crown of Wild Olive , — the pestilent heresy that war is in some way beneficial to the moral nature of man, which had lurked, maggotlike, in the brain, has, like the gay enfranchised butterfly, almost ventured to take a place amongst the recognized and established facts of life. The facts, however, are on the side of the contrary proposition. War is wholly injurious to man’s moral nature, degrading rather than regenerating him, devas- tating rather than civilizing, and producing more and deeper evils than it proposes to remedy. In attempting to remove a political grievance, it begets moral guilt ; professing to repair injury, it produces vice ; seeking to cure the evils of the state, it causes sin in the soul. The damage it inflicts upon the moral life of a nation is the measure of its offense against the moral laws of God. As it is impossible for an individual to consent to Y combat without suffering deterioration throughout the entire range of his inner being, so necessity decrees that the nation which substitutes force for reason, and violence for moral suasion, shall become irrational and immoral to an extent that can be comprehended only by those who have passed through a war period without 4i 42 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR sharing the war passion. Actions universally repro- bated, when performed by private persons in times of peace, are transformed into national duties and acts of high patriotism when performed collectively after a declaration of hostilities. The fatal challenge at once turns honest men into knaves, peaceable men into cut- throats, and industrial peoples into hordes of brigands, y The first shot annihilates moral sense, not merely in the combatant on the field but in the citizen at home. Con- science is dismissed. The ethical factor is deliberately ruled out. The Ten Commandments are supplanted by the rules of the game. Statesmen, journalists, preachers, suspend their normal functions till the soldier has com- pleted his, and ostentatiously refuse to apply either the principles of statecraft or the precepts of religion to the case until the appeal to the brute has been decided. A declaration of war is the abrogation of sj morality, — a license to kill, lie, covet, steal, and per- form every sin which, up to the moment of the declara- tion, had been forbidden. The Decalogue is suspended. It is lawful to break all the commandments. Thou shalt not kill ? — but war has no other end than to kill. Thou shalt not steal? — but the soldier may loot, and his country annex the conquered territory. The Sab- bath shall be kept holy? — but the killing of enemies is not unholy on the holy day, and it becomes holy to march to divine worship to the blare of the trumpet and the skirl of the bagpipe, amid throngs of excited ' men and women. Everything goes. Nothing is left ; neither God nor Sabbath, neither ethics nor religion. The military Moloch devours, not our children only, TO THE NATION 43 but our moral faculties, our sense of righteousness,' our feeling of brotherhood, our religious vows. War is the sum of all villainies, and includes a corruption of moral sense that is the greatest of all its villainies. War kills ; but the murderous spirit it creates is crueler than any particular act of murder. War lies ; but the lying spirit it engenders is baser than any specific falsehood. War steals ; but the pirate spirit it fosters is meaner than any single theft. War lusts ; but the general debauchment of virtue is fouler than any one rape or violation. The glory of war is one thing ; let it be put into the scale, and let the gain of war be put in with it. Then into the opposite scale let the moral damage of war be cast. Let the balance be true. Its destructive effect upon the moral character of the nation that wages it is war’s final condemnation. Since all experience goes to show that no considera- tion of the sufferings involved in war will be powerful enough to dissuade nations from engaging in it, the appeal must now be made from utility to ethics, from the soldier to the citizen, from the body to the soul ; and the accent of condemnation must be transferred from the physical destruction of the battlefield to the moral damnation of the home land. It is the people who remain at home — the politician and the taxpayer — that truly make the war, employing the soldier merely as their hired tool ; and it is amongst them, the ap- plauders of war, that we must look to find its results displayed in their most horrid and disgusting shapes. It is in them that the savage beast rouses up with a ferocity not less than in the fighters on the field, with 44 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR a brutality of speech and appetite corresponding to the brutality of the fighter’s deed, but without the re- demptive element of danger and the touch of imagina- tive grandeur which attend him. Without being able to plead any of his excuses these noncombatants exhibit a savagery at least equal to that of the actual combatant, and glory in his bloody work without ex- periencing any of his dangers or the sobering effect of his responsibilities. It is not difficult to understand that a man who, on the field of strife, confronts the same furies in his foe is able to mask as heroic valor the foul passions which alone make his trade possible, and to excuse the crudest threats under the plea of necessity ; but what semblance of nobleness or neces- sity can they wear when vented by those who merely sit at home and pay taxes ? If we strip any scene of battle of all the excitements, exigencies, excuses fairly pleaded by those who must either kill or be killed, we expose quite naked, if yet unashamed, that love of fight, thirst for revenge, savage joy in an enemy’s wounds and death, infernal lapse into treachery and barbarity which emerge just as inevitably amongst the noncom- batants. Even if the foe resemble nothing so much as Emerson’s “embattled farmers,” an imperial poet 1 will nevertheless yell that — speech and tongue , Lack utterance now for loathing To scourge these dogs, agape with jaws afoam, Down out of life, and will insult their suffering women and children as “ dams and cubs.” “ The poorest being that crawls on. TO THE NATION 45 earth,” says Edmund Burke, in his famous letter on the American War, “ contending to save itself from / injustice, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. But I cannot conceive any existence under heaven (which in the depths of its wisdom tolerates all sorts of things) that is more truly odious and disgust- ing than an impotent, helpless creature, without civil wisdom or military skill, bloated with pride and arro- gance, calling for battles which he is not to fight, and / contending for a violent dominion which he can never exercise.” It is here that the peculiar sin and offense of war stand revealed. The murderous raptures of the non-fighters publish its infamy more than the murderous strokes of the fighters. That which breaks the heart of the peace angel is not so much the corporal un- doing of the stricken field as the brutality of the man in the street, the cowardly swagger of the music hall, the prostitution of the pulpit to a heathen deity, the blood lust fostered by theaters, inculcated in schools, preached in churches, propagated by our women, pro- fessed by our children, practised by all. It is not the infernal lyddite hurling its baleful vapors to the sky, thence spreading abroad over the fields till vegetation droops and every living thing sickens and dies, but the more infernal exhalations that come reeking up from! the hell heart of the home land till the whole atmos- phere is thick with hate and murder ; it is not the camp, the sentry on his rounds, the bugle note, the marshaling of embattled hosts, but the club, the ex- change, the school, the church, the pedagogue pouring hate into the helpless ear of innocent childhood, the 46 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR pulpiteer preaching hate where he was vowed to preach love, the journalist with his yellow sheet fanning the flame of hate, the politician piling fuel on the fires of hate, the stockjobber telegraphing hate for the sake of percentages, the mob roaring, rabid, riotous ; it is not the piled corpses of the foughten field, quiet enough at last, and harmless, but the devils of hate and murder, of cruelty and revenge, of falsehood and covetousness, ceaselessly raging, devouring, howling, all in the burn- ing hell of adiseased and demented “patriotism”: these are the repulsive forms in which the war spirit finally clothes himself, to which we point as his unconditional damnation. It is these that lay the last, heaviest, sharpest, bloodiest plait of thorns on the brow of the Prince of Peace. Here is the new ground of the cru- sade against war, the new basis of the apology for peace. The peace advocate now changes his front. Whereas hitherto it was on the field of battle that the reformer sought his arguments, he now finds them at home, in society and the church; in the degeneracy of those who, without striking, curse; without fighting, hate ; without danger, threaten ; without experiencing any of its immediate provocations or undergoing any of its perils, nevertheless delight in every base and bru- tal passion proper to war. In short, the enemy is not now war, so much as the war spirit. War inflicts moral damage upon a nation by diffusing the foulest and most malignant passions throughout its entire population. With the first blast of the bugle away goes even the white cloak of religion, and out starts the pagan as unregenerate and unredeemed as if TO THE NATION 47 no Christ had ever spoken a beatitude of mercy or given his life to emphasize it. The thing called Chris- tianity stands revealed as a very antichrist, wearing, indeed, the sacred name on its forehead, but bearing in its bosom the heart of Cain. The antichristian quickly descends into the antihuman; and the warrior nation, having discarded religion, proceeds next to throw over- board whatever humanity it may have brought up with it from the pagan ages. The sword that smites the enemy abroad also peels the veneer off the citizen at home, and lays the primeval savage bare. The hired homicide is applauded by the crowd as the finest type of humanity, and the sorning priest hastens to sanctify slaughter as the holiest of human duties. A venal journalism dips its pen in blood, and gorges the populace with gore till the very milk of human kind- ness runs red. The yellow pressman, eager to float himself to the top of his profession on the red tide, ceases not to invoke the fell monsters of revenge and massacre, till the people, grown familiar with their faces, “first endure, then pity, then embrace.” The capitalistic monger of various jingo journals will chant inspiring ditties to his readers in praise of “the baynit, the ruddy, bloody baynit.” 2 Against all this, no doubt, — a red press, a prostitute pulpit, a debauched popu- lace, — some stand could be made by the apostolic spirit. But the ultimately appalling thing is the lapse of persons in other respects humane and good, who will be found delivering themselves of sentiments that are entirely devilish, and of opinions that would grace the lips only of a thug, so that, if the listener could 4 8 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR close his eyes to the soft surroundings of the drawing- room or the saloon carriage, he could easily imagine himself the unhappy auditor of a Zulu war council. Against confessed fiends and undressed devils the peace angel could make some stand; but what strikes him dumb and desperate is the simple unconsciousness of those excellent people who congregate in clubs and churches to the part they are playing and the character they are revealing ; their inability to realize that, for all their unaffected goodness, their gentle accents, and their virtuous ways, they are at heart pitiless homicides. Their real Bible becomes the religious organ which can write, “ Until now blood has been running in tiny rivulets — the British army in the two republics must exterminate the Boer vermin, and soak the soil with their blood, that the grass may grow the quicker .” 3 Against moral stupidity and callousness like this the Prince of Peace himself wars in vain. This appalling indifference to human life deepens, by necessity, into a positive inclination towards crimes of violence. If a government, upon word given, may slay men wholesale) why should we be so distressed by accidental deaths, or so averse to taking life in single cases ? We may kill whole nations and call it patriot- ism ; but when the corner boy kills the gamin, call it murder and hang him. We carry this indifference to life so far as to come, at length, to regard the slaughter of our own countrymen with unconcern. “Nothing is changed,” says the Pecksniffian journalist, “there are only so many Englishmen the less ”; 4 while the pa- triotic war correspondent “ cares not if we lose five TO THE NATION 49 thousand men killed and wounded in forcing the pas- sage.” 6 “ Right!” echoes the gilded aristocrat. “Some people seem to think that the death of a certain number of soldiers on the field of battle is a deplorable thing,” but he does not believe “the mass of Englishmen hold that opinion .” 6 “ More than that,” chimes in the mili- tary exploiter, “ this nation . . . ought to be satisfied to give them a few lives,” even for target practice at home ; “ if they killed a man every ten years it was a thing that ought to be allowed to occur ; ... it could easily be done by insurance or otherwise, but they ought not to be prevented from learning to shoot, what- ever it cost.” 7 There are a great many mouths to feed at home; laborers are competing keenly for the same work, and merchants for the same market. Is it not a capital thing to send the superfluous people at home to destroy the undesirable people abroad ? And since, by our persistent neglect, we have turned the surplus laborer into a menace and a danger, what could be better than that, while engaged in killing off our foes, he should himself be killed off ? It is a beautiful arrangement of supply and demand! It is quite a providence! Let us be thankful! It is the best of all possible worlds! So far from fostering chivalry and the generous senti- ments, as has been claimed, war appears to destroy them completely, and to substitute for them those qualities which characterize the bully and the braggart. Before the cruel face of the war god magnanimity dies. If there is anything in the past history of a nation that leans to 50 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR the side of the magnanimous, it will be denounced as a weakness and a blunder, and politicians will weary themselves in taking precautions that the people shall never again suffer from a flow of generosity to the heart. They become a nation of churls. Take, for an example, their attitude towards the leader of the hostile people. He may, in the estimate of an unprejudiced world, be as magnanimous as his assailants are mean, may have spared the lives of those who plotted against his country, and tried every possible way of honorable peace, but it will avail him nothing. He may resemble one of the antique heroes, but the nation that fights him will not see it. Impartial judgment may put him beside the greatest patriots of the past, but his greatness cannot save him from the ridicule and contempt of those who war against him, whose audiences will receive his name with howls, whose processions will burn him in effigy, and whose poltroon press will seize on every personal defect or eccentricity, exaggerating, distorting, denouncing, till it succeeds in turning the vulgar laugh against him, or inflaming the popular mind with resentment. Politicians at play, unbending themselves amid the jocularities of a garden party, will take pop-shots at his effigy with the Morris tube . 8 The last thing he must expect is magnanimity. Or, for another instance, see the manner in which a victorious nation regards the sufferings of its foe. So far from compelling admiration or begetting compassion the sufferings of the brave appear to fire the victor with a fiendish pleasure. He owns to “feel- ing a rare satisfaction, a warm glow at the heart, when he sees the smoke of their homesteads ascending to TO THE NATION 51 heaven ; they are but human vermin ; a beast of a rebel is getting his deserts .” 9 No matter how numerous his losses, how deep his anguish, how passionate his protest, how pathetic his appeal, the uppermost, almost the sole sentiment in the breast of the conquering people will be that expressed in the phrase, “Serves him right.” With joy they read that “farm-burning goes merrily on, and our course through the country is marked as in prehistoric ages by pillars of smoke by day and fire by night. ... I do not gather that any special reason or cause is alleged against the farms burnt ; ... to save trouble we burn the lot without enquiry ; . . . only the women are left .” 10 Their savagery deepens to the solemnity of a pagan sacrifice as they learn that the enemy “ have now to watch a slow, implacable, method- ical devastation of their country, tract by tract. Day by day they fight, and one by one they fall. Comrades and friends drop at each other’s side ; sons drop by fathers’, brothers by brothers’. The smoke rises in the valley, and the home is blotted out. It is a torture long and slow, the agony and bloody sweat.” 11 What happiness in the picture of the conquering army coming down “ burning farms and taking all the cattle, . . . leaving women and children homeless, to die of hunger ” 12 — hunger to escape which “the women have to till the ground, whilst the boys and girls are sometimes in- spanned eight or ten together, to draw a small plough, in order to get some mealies sown.” 13 It is a cordial to the patriot heart to know that “ at least thirty thou- sand houses on the farms have been burnt, or destroyed. . . . Our dwellings with the furniture have been burnt 52 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR or demolished, our orchards cut down, all agricultural implements broken, mills destroyed, every living animal taken away or killed — nothing, alas! remains. The land is a desert !” 14 No punishment will appear too great for the crime of resisting the dictate of whatever minister may happen to be the mouthpiece of their pride. If he cannot be entirely proud of sending to make war on women and children the biggest army that ever crossed the sea, the citizen of a country that can do no wrong — when he reads of girls driven to escape hunger by the solitary road of prostitution , 15 of women taken from their burnt homes twelve hours after giving birth to twin children, placed in wagons and carried off by troops, to die with their children a few hours later , 16 of deaths of women and children so numerous that there is no more wood for coffins [“ The graves were three and a half feet deep only ; we saw little children engaged in filling them in ”], 17 or that thirteen thousand children have thus miserably perished 18 — will sullenly ejaculate, “ Let their men give in, then ! ” or piously opine, with a most Christian dean , 19 that the conduct of the war “ is an overflowing stream which we may hope will water the hearts of [the enemy].” The ruthlessness of the reader of battles probably often exceeds that of the fighter of them ; nor can the story of brave heads low on the ground or loving hearts broken in the home shake his fell purpose. The heart that beats behind the newspaper is not less hard than that which animates the sword ; and as, folded in the soft security of his easy-chair, the lounger cons the daily tale of blood, he gloats over defeat, delights TO THE NATION 53 in wounds, glories in deaths, applauds revenge, and con- dones cruelty with as few “ compunctious visitings of nature” as any soldier of them all. .The thought of the writhing wounded or the staring dead brings forth no prayer for mercy or for pity ; the record of farms trampled into mire, steadings burnt to the ground, cities sacked, brave men hunted like partridges upon the mountain, swells the breast and sends lumps of exulta- tion up into the throat, till the readers rush out into the night to relieve themselves with wild shouts of revelry. “And, to set forth,” says Swift, “the valor of my own dear countrymen, I assured him that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship ; and beheld the dead bodies come down in pieces from the clouds to the great diversion of the spectators.” It is thus that war hardens the heart of 1 him that consents to it, and robs him of sorrow for the slain, reverence for the weak, generosity for the defeated, chivalry for the brave. War is not so horrible in that it drains the dearest veins of the foe, but in that it drains our own hearts of the yet more precious elements of pity, mercy, generosity, which are the lifeblood of the soul . 20 This descent into the dastard touches bottom with that wholesale slandering of the foe which appears to be the inevitable concomitant of war, and of which Mr. Herbert Spencer has given instances, as well as an explanation, in his chapter on the “ Bias of Patriotism.” But instances crowd upon the attention in time of national collision. A celebrated imperialistic poet 21 — to take but one — confesses that he attended a magic- lantern entertainment given to Indians at a time when 54 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR India was supposed to be menaced by Russia, and that when any beast more uncouth and terrifying than usual ambled across the screen, it was, on his suggestion, solemnly introduced as a true and authentic likeness of those diabolical Russians and accompanied by the most horrible stories that could be concocted. The joke is bad, but the morals are worse, — and it is a mild instance of how “patriotism” keeps the Ninth Commandment. Heathendom expressly declared that no enemy was to have the truth spoken of or to him, which was perfectly consistent ; and since war cancels the Decalogue and abrogates Christianity, a certain kind of consistency can be pleaded also by Christendom. The hostilities which break every tie of humanity annul also every law of charity. The justification to kill involves also the liberty to lie. Every war may be said to involve two campaigns, — a campaign of slaughter abroad and a r campaign of calumny at home, the second of which is not less cruel than the first, and much more disgusting. As the fighters breathe out threatenings and slaughter, so the writers vomit rivers of lies like serpents’ slime ; the first shoot bullets, the second fling mud ; those take life, these destroy reputation. Such are the two complementary forces without which no long-sustained contest would be possible. The broom that blackens the foe is the indispensable auxiliary of the bayonet that stabs him ; the journalistic ink slinger is as neces- sary as the scout ; the platform libeler as important as the sentry; the parliamentary mud lark as essential as the general on the field ; the pulpit bearer of false wit- ness not less needful than the chaplain of the regiment ; TO THE NATION 55 for without all these secondary and auxiliary forces at home the primary forces of destruction abroad would never be able to complete the task of putting a nation to death. The home auxiliaries in press and pulpit, in club and school, in congress and parliament, supply the motive power, the driving force of hate, the stimulus of revenge, the incentive of pride ; the forces in the field are the mere executive of their passions. But it is cer- tain that no army would be permitted to put a nation to physical death unless the home auxiliaries had first condemned it to moral death. A nation’s character must be destroyed before it is possible to destroy its citizens, for no people would consent to kill those whom it had not first pronounced unfit to live. T he r etrig mj)f a war has to be justified to the people who wage it, and/' their spirit kept up to fighting pitch through all the months or years of its continuance ; and there is no better way of doing both than to represent the enemy as savages, monsters, vermin (“ like to the unclean race of monkeys,” as an eminent Russian representative of Greek Christianity recently described the Japanese), to exterminate whom is to perform a duty to humanity. And to achieve this is not so difficult as might ap- pear to the unprejudiced mind. It is necessary only to ignore the testimonies of men high in the offices of peace and war, — such testimonies as this: “I have lived among many nations and in many countries, and I may with all truth say this, — I know no people richer in public and in private virtues ” ; 22 or this : “ The deep- est impression has been made on me by these conversa- tions, and by the manly bearing and the straightforward, 56 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR outspoken way in which we were met ”; 23 or this : “So they were not cruel, these enemies ! This was a great surprise to me, for I had read much of the literature of this land of lies ” ; 24 or this : “ They are a deeply religious people.” 25 It is necessary merely to accuse the foe, how- ever noble, of every crime which might be supposed to unfit a creature for existence, — such as arson, murder, rape, assassination ; to get the papers to retail those manufactured atrocities often enough — and especially whenever the public mind appears to be softening; to get the pulpits to dilate on those imaginary crimes with a fine moral heat ; to get ignorant dignitaries of the church to misrepresent the enemy as having “a coarser sense of the dignity of man,” 26 or that “ their religion is a strange Calvinistic superstition that has taught them that lying and trickery should form the basis of charac- ter”; 27 and the result of these home maneuvers will certainly be to keep the temper of the home land so like a hell that the executive army abroad will have no choice but to do its work like a devil. The general in command may protest against it, paying the tribute of truth to the enemy as “ a brave and high-spirited people,” and saying, “ I hate this atrocity-manufacturing and its effects on the men, tending to make them either cow- ards or butchers’ ; 28 but there are at home a number of excellent and godly people whose sentiments require some kind of salve or opiate before they will consent to prolong a war of extermination to which, on other grounds, they are not averse ; and these Munchausen tales give them the very pretext the thing they call conscience craves. Those who have faced the enemy TO THE NATION 57 on the field may write indignantly of the attempt to paint an opposing general as brutal and dishonorable. “ Those who, like myself, have fought against him, and frequently met men who have been prisoners under him, look, I believe, with shame and indignation on the attempts made to blacken the character of a man who throughout the war has held a reputation with our troops in the field of being not only a gallant soldier but a humane and honorable gentleman ;” 29 but the “patriot” scandal monger will keep his sordid way. There is nothing new about the method. It is as old as hypocrisy. “There used to be tales told long ago,” writes Mr. H. Fielding in that exquisite flower of travel literature, The Soul of a People , “of King Thibaw, how he was a drunkard, and had orgies in the palace. We know now that there was not a word of truth in those reports. . . . How the reports ever arose I could never ascertain — certainly not from Burman sources. . . . told me that we English had invented them, . . . not one word of truth in the English reports that the king drank, ... a nation of total abstainers.” The com- plaint lodged by Benjamin Franklin in the name of the American colonists still goes to the root of the matter; the object is still to render the enemy odious and con- temptible, so as to prevent all concern for him in the friends of liberty: “ so much and so long persecuted with vehement and malicious abuse, . . . rendering us odious as well as contemptible, to prevent all concern for us in the friends of liberty here, when the project of oppress- ing us further and depriving us of our rights by various violent measures should be carried into execution.” 58 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR It is not enough, however, to present the foe in a character entirely hateful ; the nation he dares to resist must, by a necessity both artistic and moral, be presented as entirely noble and just. The feeling in the human mind for completeness, the need of balance and contrast, causes the national self to be exalted and glorified in proportion as the enemy is trodden down and maligned. That egotism which forever thwarts the aspiration of Robert Burns, “ to see ourselves as others see us,” is more hateful in the nation even than in the individual ; and some striking instances of it are given in Spencer’s Study of Sociology (pp. 208-209). “ Every one old enough remembers the reprobation vented here when the French in Algiers dealt so cruelly with Arabs who refused to submit, — light- ing fires at the mouths of caves in which they had taken refuge ; but we do not see a like barbarity in deeds of our own in India, — such as the executing a group of rebel sepoys by fusillade and then setting fire to the heap of them because they were not all dead, — or in the wholesale shootings and burnings of houses after the suppression of the Jamaica insur- rection. Listen to what is said about such deeds in our own colonies, and you will find that habitually they are held to have been justified by the necessi- ties of the case. Listen to what is said about such deeds when other nations are guilty of them, and you find the same persons indignantly declare that no alleged necessities could form a justification. Nay, the bias produces perversions of judgment even more extreme. Feelings and deeds we laud as virtuous TO THE NATION 59 when they are not in antagonism with our own inter- ests and power, we think vicious feelings and deeds when our own interests and power are endangered by them. Equally in the mythical story of Tell and in any account not mythical, we read with glowing admi- ration of the successful rising of an oppressed race ; but admiration is changed into indignation if the race is one held down by ourselves.” The same breath that libels the foe returns to inflate the libeler ; the meas- ure of scorn is also the measure of conceit ; puff fol- lows slander till every neutral person pronounces the national mood insufferable. The same columns which systematically cheapen the enemy set forth the magnifi- cent virtues of the dominant race, which degenerates into a nation of egotists never weary of extolling its own valor and setting forth its marvelous greatness. Many causes have combined to rob the most pro- gressive modern peoples of their ancient stolidity, to make them excitable, even hysterical, entirely unable to sustain their ancient reputations under the fevers, scares, panics, catastrophes, and immense vicissitudes of modern warfare. Hence if one of them succeeds in transporting a hundred thousand men across the sea, it is lost in admiration of its own feat, and sum- mons the world to witness the unexhausted maritime resources of the greatest sea power that ever conde- scended to govern it. If its troops are victorious over a small body of untrained fighters, it represents the affair as a triumph of heroism and military skill ; and men sitting at home in clubs and pothouses, ringed by the sea and lined round by ironclads, warm into ecstasy 6o MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR as if the trumpery success were all their own. Were their soldiers face to face with the combined armies of the world, no stronger terms could be invented to express their prodigious and world-shaking prowess. They strike the stars with their sublime heads. The right hand shakes the left in passionate congratulation. Exclamation chokes into incoherency ; no expletives are left, no adjectives for future use ; the vocabulary of praise is exhausted. Printers use up their entire stock of exclamation marks, exhaust every resource of leading, double leading, scare heads, flaring posters, and strain every nerve to produce by machinery a glory which was never produced by arms. Never were such men ; never such feats of arms ! Every private is a Leonidas ; every scuffle a Waterloo ! All the world wonders ! The war was worth waging if only to show that the race had lost none of its pris- tine ferocity ! It is good to know that the serpent is as cunning and the bulldog as savage as before ! But even humiliation on the field does not suffice to mortify the insane pride of a nation that has been used to conquer ; for its spokesmen find new and in- genious ways of turning defeat into food for vanity. No troops except those of that particular nation could have marched such marches, performed such maneu- vers, retreated so adroitly, or borne reverse with such sublime fortitude ! Even the proved inability to tri- umph in equal combat, purely by skill, valor, and a good ceuse, does not bring blushes to the face of a brazen patriotism ; for it immediately proceeds to pre- dict victory from its boundless numbers and resources, TO THE NATION 6l set in contrast to the fewness of the foe, the shallow- ness of his exchequer, the shortness of his provisions ! Thus we expose another element in the moral condem- nation of war. It does not even settle who is best man, — which was the strongest thing Carlyle had to say for it, — still less who has the best cause, but only who has the best weapons, or the most unappeasable ferocity, or — poorest, paltriest, beggarliest boast of all — who has the longest purse! “We, on the other hand, have unlimited resources, because we can buy what we like. Therefore it follows that ‘ reverses ’ such as that sustained by General Clements, help us, not the [enemy].” 30 It is inevitable that windy boastfulness should be accompanied by loss of self-respect, balance, and that equanimity which is the mark of true greatness. It was Rousseau — a friend of peace on principle — who yet despaired of peace on the ground of its very sanity; “for,” said he, “men are insane; it would, furthermore, be a sort of insanity to be the only sane man among the insane.” Had Rousseau seen a crowd of frenzied patriots go ■a.-mafficking, he would have written it down yet more strongly. The war fever brings on fits of hysteria, which break out on the smallest occasion, — the relief of a city or the capture of a capital. “The whole staff of the Bank of Eng- land, in the presence of the governor, assembles . . . to sing the national anthem .” 31 Devoid equally of chivalry and self-respect, mobs drunk with “ patriot- ism ” and whisky hail the news of battle with lust and license. A thousand newspapers bear witness to 62 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR this madness of a people. The streets surge with profanity, insolence, and vice ; masses of human hysteria heave to and fro as if possessed by myste- rious and uncontrollable emotions ; mixed multitudes of hooligans and stockjobbers, clerks and harlots, pickpockets and Sunday-school teachers, bagmen and factory girls, heterogeneously mingle and embrace, waving flags, tooting on tin whistles, banging inflated bladders, yelling out such scraps of patriotic ditties as their feeble brains have been able to commit to memory, rolling along in dense masses of shrieking, howling, sweating, blaspheming, dehumanized humanity, conse- crated to worship the demon of patriotism by free kisses and mixed dances in the public square, — that is how they bring the good news to the capital city ! Bishops, generals, and other respectable persons write in mighty surprise and very mild censure, not having sense to perceive that Demos is merely taking his way of ex- pressing the war passions that have been expressed in different, but not better, ways by them. The general fights ; the bishop prays ; the people drink ; and is it not a very good arrangement ? The people cannot, like the generals, be always fighting, or, like the bishops, be always praying ; and it is perfectly natural that Te Deum in Westminster should be set off by delir- ium tremens in Trafalgar Square. Demos gets drunk with a patriotism diligently fermented within him by his “betters,” and as it is not possible for him to read his curses piously out of a pulpit, he hiccoughs them without hypocrisy over the lips of the pint pot. The bishops should be consistent. When they license a TO THE NATION 63 saturnalia of revenge and blood abroad, it is absurd to boggle at a minor burst of lust and whisky at home. Demos has really more sense of the fitness of things than his advisers. It is quite proper to accom- pany bloody orgies abroad by drunken orgies at home. Having lost its morals, it is a small matter that the nation should lose its head. Still another comfortable fallacy is disproved by actual experience of a time of war, — the fallacy that war cements domestic factions by uniting them against a foreign foe. The fact is that war creates new domestic discords. Those who are driven mad by the war fiend do, as Rousseau declared, regard peacemaking as a kind of insanity, and are ready to destroy their own countryman who, as a peacemaker, lays finger on the helm of the state to endeavor to turn the ship’s head from the Red Sea to the Pacific — from blood to peace. An attack upon the first principles of citizenship follows directly upon the suppression of self-government in other lands, and the nation that has invaded the rights of another immediately proceeds to destroy its own. Mob law is substituted for the usages of a society still euphemistically referred to as “free,” and the crowds, turning from “mafficking” to riot, attack public meetings, compelling citizens to meet with closed doors or even to defend their doors by force of arm ; and proceed to assault the persons and the homes of private citizens, and to drive anti-war preachers from their pulpits for no other reason than that they ventured to express opinions contrary to the passion of the hour. The reign of violence is quietly 6 4 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR permitted by the guardians of public order and openly condoned by the legislature. Political leaders place responsibility for disorder on the heads of those who attempt to reason with an excited public, declaring that a person is responsible for time and place chosen to express views which are offensive to the great mass of the people, and must be careful not to “ ask more of human nature than all history shows that it is capable of giving ,” 32 — a standard of judgment which would make the martyrs responsible for their own murder, the apostles for the riots which frequently accompanied their preaching, and Jesus Christ for his own cruci- fixion. Exchanging diplomacy for truculence, another will express his gratification that “ the people have the spirit ... to show the world at large that the country is unanimous except for a handful of agitating scoun- drels,” and is “delighted that there has been this show of feeling throughout the country.” 33 The New York World sums up the situation in the words : “ Any band of street ruffians is now encouraged to enter the halls and break up assemblies, . . . expressing views at variance with the government policy. Such a denial of free speech is a deathblow to true freedom.” Admirable ! But how will American conduct line up with this American opinion when “ comes the tug of war” ? Not the least evil of war is that, while slaying the supposed enemies of the nation abroad, it silences or also slays the undoubted friends of peace and humanity at home. Nor, in these days of aggression and standing armies, — whatever may have been the case in days when every TO THE NATION 65 citizen and peasant became a defender against invasion, — can armed conflict be excused on the ground that it supplies counteractives to excess and luxufy. On the contrary, every modern war will be found hostile to national integrity and simplicity of character ; not merely for the general reason that a military civiliza- tion is hostile to the higher developments of citizenship, by drawing attention away from the spiritual and universal to the superficial and material, but for the special reason that it is so mixed up with territorial and commercial ambitions as to foster the greed and nourish the lustfulness of that nation which wages it. The worst evils that accompany war’s pathway — such as covetousness, cruelty, pride, vulgarity — defy every test of scale and figure, and can be estimated only by the religious sense ; but such grosser forms as lunacy, pauperism, vagrancy, drunkenness, crime, which can be tabulated by the scientist and the statistician, are proved to increase with every new campaign . 34 Mili- tarism is the loathsome fruit of an incestuous union between Moloch and Mammon, the War Office and the Stock Exchange, — a union of the basest and beast- liest powers of this world, best set forth in a paraphrase of the words of a Christian apostle : “ When lust ” — either gold lust, land lust, or blood lust — “ hath conceived, it bringeth forth war ; and war, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” Once started on the path of violence, it is impossible to say at any par- ticular point, “ Here will we halt ” ; for violence, like an avalanche, acquires momentum as it goes. The mob, the rioter, the buffoon, and the hooligan, at home, 66 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR follow in harmonious procession at the heel of the regiment, the incendiary, the spy, the pursuing cavalry, abroad . 35 Many desire no fighting, yet when they have tasted the spoil become inflamed with lust of possession, and fall upon the booty as greedily as the gayest buccaneer of them all. Over and above the military classes, whose trade is murder and robbery, there are multitudes of civilians — shopkeepers, mer- chants, miners, sailors, engineers, shipbuilders, gun- makers — who, finding that a temporary addition to their gains is now possible, become completely de- moralized. A pocketful of gold is sufficient to make them contemplate without remorse a nation’s ruin, and to positively rejoice in a red battlefield if it brings them a little more of the yellow dirt. People ordinarily Christian, who in their private capacity would not filch so much as a single spoon, are then prepared, as citi- zens, to steal an entire continent. Though the law eternal says that men shall not steal, the same judge who consigns to hard labor the hungry wretch who annexes but a single purse, will consent to his flushed and full-fed country appropriating an entire province. A wrong which commences with the passion of a few is continued through the cupidity of the many; the few declare it inevitable, and then persuade the many that annexation is the inevitable corollary. The last push of the momentum towards aggravated evil is supplied by those who, having disapproved of the initial proceedings, yet do, illogically and immor- ally, acquiesce in the consequences ; who declared the war to be a blunder and a wrong, but afterwards TO THE NATION 67 express their willingness to enrich their country by its means ; who protested against the murder, but when the murder has been committed are ready to share the plunder. It is thus that wrong is added to wrong, that murder inevitably leads to theft and slavery. Hardly are troops landed within the enemy’s borders before his lands are mapped out for possession and his farms assigned for distribution amongst the invaders. Why not? “To the victors the spoils” was the good old barbaric rule, and since the belligerent nation is ulti- mately compelled to swallow the entire barbaric code, it is matter of course that the conquered men should become serfs in the field and the women slaves in the scullery. The proudest and freest nation in the world will not be able to save itself from that horrible slide into barbarism. Even though it has boasted of being the champion of freedom and the friend of those who struggle to be free, nothing can save the liberationist from becoming the enslaver. The veil of self-deception will fall from its eyes and the mask of hypocrisy from its face ; it will become a hissing and a reproach to all the nations of the earth. In earlier ages war is a sign of ethical immaturity ; in later ages, of national decay ; but amid all the signs of decadence none is more astonishing than the incom- ing of the spirit of cowardice. After all it is fear that makes men fight — fear of loss or wrong, if not of death ; and, paradoxical though it may seem, it is the truth that a military system fosters a cowardly temper in the nation that endures it. In the act and purpose of war a people who have acknowledged the Christian 68 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR or universal ideal are necessarily, though to some extent unconsciously, enfeebled by their very short- coming, afflicted by a haunting sense of degradation, lost power, moral weakness, which, in turn, produces, surely enough, even physical shrinking and timidity. More particularly is it impossible for the horrible wars of modern civilization to go on, — wars waged against savage tribes whom modern steamships and railways enable us for the first time to get at effectively, and for the avowed purpose of finding outlets for the piratical spirit in modern politics and trade, — these “ punitive expeditions ” cannot go on without encour- aging the temper of the bully and the beast, which, in a man, is also the temper of the coward ; for they imply the slaughter of pitifully equipped hordes before machinery of most murderous power, and the maximum of death to them with the minimum of loss to the assailant. The moral law cannot be abro- gated with impunity. As we read of some who, pro- fessing themselves to be wise, become fools, so it is possible for those who boast themselves brave to be- come cowards. But it is when the possibility of strife between fairly matched combatants arises that the recreant spirit begins to show itself openly. What else is the significance of this never-ceasing clamor for armaments, and ever more armaments? We live in perpetual fear — fear of invasion, of collisions about trade or colonial expansion — and amid persistent panic incompatible with moral courage. War scares are seldom out of the newspapers, and the normal condition of every people is one of TO THE NATION 69 nervous dread. They are afraid of what a day may bring forth, feverish about the designs of this country or that, jealous of the least semblance of superiority in arms ; and there is no faith on the earth. Though history shows conclusively that it is not deficient arms but deficient morals that bring nations to ruin, they' are unable to raise themselves up to confidence in moral rectitude, in the protecting power of justice, or in the blessing of God. Though the examples of ancient empires, such as Assyria or Rome, prove that omnipotent power cannot save unless backed by excel- lent virtue, that nations go to pieces not by weak arma- ments but bad conduct, our political governors drive us to conclude that the conception of a moral government of the universe has vanished from politics : the vast proportion of their resources is devoted to the destruc- tion of men rather than the creation and development of a nobler type of humanity ; and when, by the princi- ple of reminiscence, they accidentally lapse into the language of piety, their words merely suggest that cant and hypocrisy with which the rivals in arms not unnat- urally reproach each other. The fact is that militarism is a disease which, like consumption or fever, produces certain delusive appearances of health and beauty, but brings death to the moral sense, and, in the end, to the state. The materialist may still mistake immense possessions for immense strength, and the vicious trans- late self-interest into political justice ; but infallible signs of decadence may, by those who have eyes to see, be read in the waning of moral vision, enthusiasm for liberty, power to aspire, and in the wasting effects 70 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR of the war fever which appears to attack modern nations at such short intervals. It is thus that the last defense of war falls, — the defense, namely, that it strengthens faith by bringing a people to feel their dependence on God. The reli- gious condition of every warrior people — whether stud- ied in the page of history or seen through the eye of a contemporary observer — gives the lie direct to that specious fallacy. Not only does the formal thing called “ religion ” fail to present an adequate bulwark against the invading tide of vice, cruelty, and fear, but the ethical principles of Jesus and the great teachers are openly flouted by the bolder spirits, and quietly ignored by the more timid, whilst all unite to stigmatize as a fool and a knave the man who, when the trumpet sounds, insists upon the validity of the Sermon on the Mount and those fraternal laws written upon the fleshly tables of all hearts. National religion, no doubt, retains the words “ mercy,” “ repentance,” “ restitu- tion,” in its vocabulary, but without intending them for political consumption. They are merely, like King James’ Bible, “appointed to be read in churches.” Those who have canceled the Commandments, re- scinded the Beatitudes, and wiped the Golden Rule off the slate try to hide the greatness of their fall by the volubility of their abuse, and appear to think it sufficient to brand the man who still tries to be an ethicist and a Christian as a sentimentalist, a coward, a traitor, or — last, dreaded, fearsomest nickname of all — a “ peace-at-any-price ” man! “Zeal for a public cause,” says Addison, “is apt to breed passions in the TO THE NATION 7 1 hearts of virtuous persons, to which the regard of their own private interest would never have betrayed them.” Hence it comes that the bitter tares of the war spirit are gathered from the very soil of domestic affection, and speedily stifle the kindlier growths of neighbor- liness and common citizenship. But the greatness of the pressure to succumb only enhances the obligation to stand fast in religious in- tegrity; for the only hope of national salvation is in individual faithfulness. When the great mass of a people are blinded by passion and fevered by selfish- ness, it is the more necessary for an individual to main- tain his sanity, his ethical perceptions, his religious principles, and, like salt, to preserve the body from decay. Whilst on every side righteousness is being sacrificed to a bastard patriotism, and the imagined welfare of the state is being purchased by the con- science of the individual, the just man will insist that nothing can be good that is not also right, nor any- thing expedient that is not also honest. The chief hope of a war-frenzied nation is in those persons who “ buy the truth, and sell it not ” under whatever provo- cation and inducement. The true saviors of a country are those “few names, even in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments.” 72 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR REFERENCES 1. Algernon Swinburne, Times , October n, 1899. 2. “ Ode to the Bayonet,” in The Express , London, [Mr. Pearson] : And there ’s some as backs the sabre, And some the shrapnel shell, But Tommy backs the baynit, And Jock, ’e backs the baynit, And Pat, ’e loves the baynit, And they ’ll follow it to ’ell 1 Ho ! clear the way for ’ere ’e comes, When Tommy joins the ’unt, With the stabbin’ of the baynit, The baynit, the bloody baynit, Gawd ’elp the man in front. The flashing, gashing baynit, The ruddy, bloody baynit ! 3. See New Age , May 28, 1903. 4. Spectator , March 15, 1902. 5. Bennet Burleigh, Telegraph , London, January 29, 1900. 6. Viscount Cranborne, New Age , March 20, 1902. 7. Sir David Gamble, St. Helen's Newspaper. 8. Insulting an Enemy : The following incident was described in the Cape Times of August 28, 1900, a paper which supported, and was patronised by, Sir A. Milner : On Monday, August 27, 1900, Admiral and Lady Harris gave an official garden party at Admiralty House, Simons Town, to which all the society, Dutch and English, of Cape Town were invited. Sir A. Milner was staying in the House as a guest. Amongst the amusements provided for his Dutch guests by the Admiral, and participated in by Sir A. Milner, was “ a sort of puny gallows with lines across, and from these hung some of the weirdest caricatures evolved by even the most sport-loving R. N-er. On the top row a cardboard image of Oom Paul — with top hat and Vierkleur complete — scowled at the detested Eng- lish. Near him a spectacled, baldheaded, much moustached infant in short frocks crawled on a visionary floor. To the right a very tall per- son with a stoop, a cynical sneer, and telescopic boots, had a good posi- tion on the line. Those were targets for all who chose to try their skill TO THE NATION 73 with a Lee-Metford, fitted with the Morris tube. Mr. Kruger’s present- ment was soon like a sieve, and there were scores of little round holes in the other figures. Oddly, no one seemed to care to ‘plug’ a corpu- lent Chinaman hanging next door to the infant. His Excellency made good practice with the rifle.” How deeply this incident wounded Dutch' sentiment may be gathered from the comments in the ensuing issue of the leading Dutch paper, Ons Land, and reproduced in the South African News of August 31st, which pointed out that, — “ Those who see the caricatures published by the local weekly gutter Press will have no difficulty in recognising in the Cape caricatures these of Messrs. Merriman and J. T. Molteno. The first has been for thirty years a member of the Cape Parliament, and was until lately one of the Constitutional advisers of the Admiral’s most highly placed guest. . . . In the case of the other figure, that of President Kruger, the manliness, the chivalry, the good taste and good feeling of the officers who pre- pared the figure and of the guests who shot at it, will be universally admired. An old man of seventy-five forms an excellent butt for delicate witticisms of that sort. . . . How well is this incident calculated to les- sen race-feeling and induce mutual respect and goodwill ! ” This incident was commented on with much emphasis in the Press both at the Cape and in London, but no contradiction or explanation has ever been vouchsafed by Sir A. Milner. Sir Alfred Milner as Governor, p. 17. 9. John Stuart, Morning Post, London, June 27, 1900. 10. Captain L. March Phillipps, author of With Runington. 1 1 . Ibid. 12. A trooper, Hawick News , February 15, 1901. 13. Committee South African Distress Fund, April, 1903. 14. Boer generals’ “ Appeal to the Civilized World.” 15. Letters of “Scrutator” (Cape Town) to Mornuig Leader, London. 16. Special correspondent, Daily News, London. 17. Report of Ladies' Commission on the South Africa 7 i Con- centratioji Catnps, p. 174. 18. Blue Books, see New Age, May 28, 1903. 19. Dean of Maritzburg, ibid. 20. How War impairs the Humane Sense : (a) Testimony of “An Officer in the Field,” December, 1900. It was sufficient that arms were discovered: firewood was at once collected; the wife and little children, bedridden old men and women, 74 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR were ordered out, without a moment’s respite, and the homestead burned before their eyes. It was midwinter, and the nights were inde- scribably cold ; heavy frost lay on the ground, and in these thinly peopled districts there were often no neighbors to give them shelter. It was murder, as cold-blooded and deliberate as if they had been placed against a wall and shot ; worse, indeed, because their sufferings would have been sooner over. Later on houses were burnt on all sorts of pretexts, — because De Wet had evaded our generals, and bringing his commando from a hundred miles off had captured a post on the railway; because a com- mando had marched that way and some of the men were supposed to have slept in the houses ; because some of the inhabitants were said to have given information to the enemy ; until farm burning has become the daily business of the soldiers. Now matters have proceeded so far that pretexts are no longer required. It is enough that a colonist or a Kaffir should inform a gen- eral that one of the men of a house is absent, presumably fighting. Often it happens that he has been killed in the war, and the widow has been vainly waiting for tidings of her husband ; but a patrol is sent to the place, and, if he is not found, out go the women and children ; and, lest they might find a corner of shelter in the blackened ruin, dynamite is employed to complete the destruction. This may seem incredible, but I do not make any statements which cannot easily be proved. General X- — — has recently burnt the dwelling houses in a whole tract of country, twenty miles in extent, northeast of Pretoria, for no reason whatever except that the men are said to be fighting against him. (b) Testimony of Lieutenant E. W. B. Morrison, Ottawa Citi- zen , January 7, 1901. From that on during the rest of the trek, which lasted four days, our progress was like the old-time forays in the Highlands of Scotland two centuries ago. The country is very like Scotland, and we moved on from valley to valley, “lifting” cattle and sheep, burning, looting, and turning out the women and children to sit and cry beside the ruins of their once beautiful farmsteads. During the days that followed it was our duty to go into action on the hills and cover with our guns the troops who did the burning. We did not get anything like a fair share of the loot, but I don’t think my men objected to that. We burned a track about six miles wide through these fertile valleys, and completely destroyed the village of Wilpoort and the town of Dull- stroom. The column left a trail of fire and smoke behind it that could be seen at Belfast. Some of the houses that were too solidly built to TO THE NATION 75 bum were blown up. Away off on a flank you could see a huge toad- stool of dust, rocks, and rafters rise solemnly into the air and then subside in a heap of debris. Ten seconds afterwards a tremendous roar like the report of a cow gun would rend the air, and the dust would blow slowly away. Many of the houses were surrounded by beautiful gardens abloom with roses, lilies, and hollyhocks, and embow- ered in fruit trees. As we sat by the guns we could see a troop of mounted men streaming off towards a farm. With my glasses I could see the women and children bundled out, their bedding thrown through the windows after them. The soldiers would carry it out of reach of the flames, and the next moment smoke would commence curling up from the windows and doors — at first a faint blue mist, then becoming denser, until it rolled away in clouds. The cavalry would ride rapidly away, and the poor women and children, utterly confounded by the sudden visitation, would remain standing in the yard or garden watch- ing their home disappearing in fire and smoke. (c) Testimony of various soldiers’ letters, New Age , July 4, 1900. “We have been chasing Hans Botha and capturing cattle, sheep, horses, etc., and burning down the farms and grass all over the country.” “We burnt down about thirty farms and brought in the wives and the families, and burnt all the grass and everything that came in front of us ; and they are doing the same everywhere now. We took all the cattle they had, smashed all the furniture, and then burnt the lot.” “We used to have plenty of fun. I’ve smashed dozens of pianos.. Half a dozen of us would go up to as fine a grand piano as ever I ’ve seen. Some would commence playing on the keys with the butts of their rifles. Others would smash off the legs and panels and finally completely wreck it. Pictures would be turned into targets, and the piano panels would be taken outside and used as fuel to boil our tea or coffee. ... After this we would set the building on fire.” (d) Testimony of a color sergeant, Morning Leader , Novem- ber 13, 1900. I think the war is nearly come to a close, and that brave race of people talked about called Boers has vanished. We go out once or twice a week for two, three, and sometimes five days, and have a little sniping, burn a few farms, get a few chickens, ducks, and fodder, corn, etc., and return home. We went out for five days last week under General Barton; the weather was grand both night and day. We burnt about twenty farms, ;6 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR and all the furniture inside them ; some splendid pianos and organs were burnt, and it was pitiful to see the mothers patting their little sons on the neck and pacifying them. We took over ^6000 worth of stuff from Botha’s farm, — cattle, grain, forage, wagons, etc. The young women knelt down and prayed, Bible in hand, and I assure you the tears rolled down my cheeks for a moment when I was ordered to smash and set fire to a splendid set of furniture and a piano at a house where an old lady, three nice young girls, and a boy were imploring me to spare them their furniture. But, on the whole, these five days out were a picnic to all of us. 21. Rudyard Kipling, War against War , p. 148. 22. Sir George Grey. 23. Rev. R. F. Collins, army chaplain. 24. Winston Churchill. 25. Lawrence Richardson. 26. Archbishop of Armagh, New Age , May 28, 1903. 27. Canon Knox Little, ibid. 28. Sir George Colley, War against War in South Africa , p. 263. 29. Erskine Childers, Times , March 6, 1901. The Patriotic Lie Demonstrated, by Captain H. G. Casson, South Wales Borderers, Times , April 6, 1901: The following Retiter telegram appeared in the Times , weekly edition of February 15, under heading, “The Military Situation” : “ Krugersdorp, February 2. It is stated that Dr. Walker, who was among the killed, had received three bullet wounds, but was finally dis- patched by a Boer, who battered in his skull with a stone.” As I was in command of the post captured at Modderfontein, I trust that in common fairness to the enemy, and with a view to minimiz- ing as far as possible the pain that must already have been caused, you will allow me to offer an unqualified denial to the above statement. Dr. Walker was hit once only, and by a stray bullet, on the early morning of January 31, while it was still dark ; he died the same afternoon from the natural effects of the wound. Every possible kindness was shown to the wounded by the Boers, who posted a sentry to see that no one came or otherwise interfered with them. The Boer commandant pres- ent at the time expressed to Dr. Walker his sorrow' that he should have been w'ounded, and later in the day the Boer general himself per- sonally expressed to me his deep regret for the sad occurrence, while many of the burghers, when conversing with my men, also spoke to the same effect. TO THE NATION 77 30. St. James' Gazette. 31. Times , March 2, 1900. 32. A. J. Balfour, House of Commons, March, 1900. 33. Mr. Bartley, ibid. 34. War’s Vicious Reaction on a Nation’s Character : (a) Testimony of Dr. R. S. Stewart, British Medical Journal , London, November 28, 1903. There was evidence to show that the war produced a profound though temporary modification in national character and conduct. . . . The lunacy population has increased with marked rapidity in the years 1901 and 1902. Homicidal crime also showed a marked diminution during the first period of the war. The year 1900, however, witnessed a steady weakening of the (good) influence exerted by the events of the preceding quarter, until in the closing months of 1900 crimes of murder showed a distinct increase above the corresponding months of previous years. The murders of newly born children, a peculiarly female crime, showed in 1900 an increase of 6.1 per cent. “Combining homicidal, suicidal, and sexual offenses under one heading as crimes of an impulsive or passional kind,” says Dr. Stewart, the temporary decrease of these in the winter of 1899 was followed by their increase to a normal level in 1900, and in December, 1900, there was an increase of 12.5 per cent, and in the following year the increase was 9 per cent. During the first period of the war, concludes Dr. Stewart, there was an improvement of the nation’s morale , but this slowly vanished by the end of a year, and there was a return to something even worse than previously prevailing conditions, — a reaction that is likely to produce still more grave results. (b) Testimony of G. Shaw Lefevre, The Speaker, London. It was an unpleasant surprise to him “to find how largely pauper- ism, drunkenness, vagrancy, and crime had increased.” In 1900 there was 1 pauper to 42 of the population; in 1901 the number increased to 1 in 40; in 1902 to 1 in 38.4. Returns for 1901 showed a large increase of prison population ; and in drunkenness a very large and continuous increase, against considerable reductions in previous years. The average of vagrants relieved in workhouses increased 20 per cent in 1902, and, as compared with ten years ago, 100 percent. Mr. Lefevre says, respecting the causes, “ Can it be doubted that they are inti- mately connected with the late war ? ” He mentions the increased taxes, higher prices, falling off of employment. Beyond these, however, we cannot avoid tracing the moral degeneration caused by war, which is, after all, the most serious part of the cost of war. 78 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 35. How the Foreign Campaign perpetuates itself at Home : The Real Thing: Morning Leader, June 11 (extract from a letter in the Boston Guardian and Lincolnshire Independent, dated Heilbron, April 17) : The first day out from here was quiet, but we burned all farms, native kraals, outbuildings, and other places that might afford shelter for the Boers in bad weather ; we also killed all fowls, ducks, geese, and pigs, turkeys or any kind of poultry, and collected all horses, cattle, and sheep into herds, and drove them along with us, and I could not help thinking what a waste it was to kill good things for the sake of killing, after we had halted; but it was grand sport chasing young cockerels and chopping geese’s heads off, hearing pianos play as they were rolled upside down on to a fire lit in the middle of a room, piling pictures and brackets, etc., on a deal table and then putting a straw mattress under- neath to start the blaze. On the second day we had over twenty fires on the go before nine in the morning, and had got about six or seven miles from our last halting place when we got a check for a couple of hours, as we had to clear the front before we could get any further. Next morning . . . we destroyed the nicest residence I have seen in the country. I forget his name that used to live at it, but he was next in position to the President of the late Orange Free State Republic. It took us all the afternoon to get it all destroyed. The threshing machines made the best fire, but the most interesting part for me was to see the explosion of a traction engine that worked all the farm machinery. It was built in England, and it was over an hour from the time the fire was lit before the boiler burst. The Realistic Drama: Morning Leader, June 15: On Tuesday last Hull gave a welcome to a contingent of its volun- teers returning from South Africa. Some of the incidents of the recep- tion are to be found in the Hull News of the following day : “ The first two items in this programme of destruction were the breaking up of an Italian’s street organ and an ice-cream cart. The latter vehicle soon suc- cumbed to the attacks of the destroyers, and the “freezer” disappeared mysteriously. The organ, however, presented greater difficulties, and it must have taken the mob over half an hour to completely disintegrate it. Meanwhile the owners of these itinerant storages of ice cream and music decamped — perhaps not unwisely. The disorderly element of the crowd then proceeded to set fire to the remains of the piano-organ. This took place near the entrance to the station booking office, and the sparks from the burning materials flew in all directions. Luckily nothing of an inflammable nature was near or the damage done might have been extensive.” Ill THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE CHILD In our early years we know war only as it offers itself to us at a review. . . . War, as we first see it, is decked with gay and splendid trappings, and wears a countenance of joy. It moves with a measured and graceful step to the sound of the heart-stirring fife and drum. Its instruments of death wound only the air. Such is war ; the youthful eye is dazzled with its ornaments ; the youthful heart dances to its animated sounds. It seems a pastime full of spirit and activity, the very sport in which youth delights. These false views of war are con- firmed by our earliest reading. We are intoxicated with the exploits of the conqueror, as recorded in real history or in glowing fiction. . . . Particularly by the study of the ancient poets and historians the senti- ments of early and barbarous ages on the subject of war are kept alive in the mind. The trumpet which roused the fury of Achilles and of the hordes of Greece still resounds in our ears ; and, though Chris- tians by profession, some of our earliest and deepest impressions are received in the school of uncivilized antiquity. ... We become recon- ciled to it as to a fixed law of our nature ; and consider the thought of its abolition as extravagant as an attempt to chain the winds or arrest the lightning. — Channing. Ill THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE CHILD Amongst other deities, the ancient Ammonites wor- shiped a fire god called Moloch; and this monster was supposed by his worshipers to require various atrocious forms of sacrifice, beginning with simple mutilation and rising through different ordeals by fire till they culminated in the burnt offering of living chil- dren. According to tradition the image of this misbe- gotten deity was constructed in the form of a gigantic man surmounted by a calf’s head, all of brass, hollow, with outstretched arms; and when this dreadful creation had been filled with fire, red hot, flames issuing, the child was placed in the wide-extended furnace-palm of the hand, as an offering of peculiarly sweet-smelling savor to Moloch. The blandishments of this benign deity were such that even the Israelites were unable to resist them, in spite of the severe penalties exacted by their law; and Jeremiah tells how, in his day, they “ built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech.” The military Moloch, to whom modern Christendom dedicates the greatest proportion of its wealth, the largest number of its children, and the highest prin- ciples of its morality, is not, like his Ammonite original, 81 82 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR exclusively a fire god, but also a blood god, a lust god, and a famine god; for he requires sacrifice by the vari- ous methods of burning, blasting, dismembering, bleed- ing to death, starvation; demands occasional lust orgies, and the permanent surrender of purity on the part of a large number of those engaged in his service; and, worst of all, consumes in his hellish fires that love, pity, mercy, forgiveness, chivalry, which are at the heart of all true religion and ethics, and are increasingly essen- tial to the faiths of all modern men. This last decree is not that which impresses the imagination grown familiar with his rites, but to those gifted with ideal faculty it appears truly the most horrid of all; for to present the bodies of our sons to the military Moloch is a crime inferior in rank and dire results to that of sacrificing their moral nature, ethical development, and promise of expansion of ideal powers. But, by methods which the lively words of William Ellery Channing have pictured to the dullest sense, we have been so success- ful in popularizing the worship of this baleful god that great numbers of children, as soon as they are of age, offer themselves as sacrifices, and march off to be run through, blown up, starved, rotted by disease, whilst all the rest, young and old, applaud them as the great- est heroes imaginable ; just as, according to an old his- torian, three hundred Carthaginian children freely offered themselves to the fire god in order, as they supposed, to preserve their city from capture. But the fire god did not save Carthage ; neither can its blood god save Christendom. Without saving the state we sacrifice the child. We do not even have the satisfaction TO THE CHILD 83 of the rapt De Quincey in his mysterious “ Dream- Fugue”: “ O, baby! shalt thou be the ransom for Waterloo ? Must we, that carry tidings of great joy to every people, be messengers of ruin to thee ? ” We now know that Waterloos mean ruin to all. Very early in the life of the child we begin to indoc- trinate him with the military idea. While yet he lies in the cradle, we not improbably stuff into his hand some warlike effigy, whose fierce aspect and gaudy coloring may arrest his attention and silence his cries. The nur- sery is invaded by hosts of toy soldiers, toy weapons, toy battle scenes ; and the thoughts of mere infancy are directed to subjects which give him immense delight though he cannot understand them, and which are, on that account, more likely to create those immovable prejudices which most strongly buttress the war system. The wooden war horse merely anticipates the charger ; the tin sword, the steel that lets out the soul ; the toy cannon, the devilish enginery of maxims, pompoms, lyddite shells ; the leaden regiment, the battalions, corps, earth-shaking armies of the future ; and it is by playing the game mirthfully on the nursery floor that he is trained to play it murderously on the red field. The miniature soldier slays imaginary foes, whilst the little general in petticoats disposes the order of the battle and thus develops those sentiments which make future conflicts inevitable. In times of actual collision this demoralization of the child proceeds with the same fatal momentum that is displayed in other spheres of national character. It is not only the government that declares war, but the nursery, whose occupants catch 8 4 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR the war fever in a form extraordinarily virulent for creatures so small, and display wonderful sharpness in picking up scraps of war news from papa’s newspaper comments across the breakfast table, and derive ardor and encouragement from mamma’s smiles at their patriotic zeal in slaying the imaginary foe. In view of the stakes involved by the actual clash of nations, all this may seem merely amusing to the unwakened mind ; for on this question our social ethic is in much the same stage as it was two generations ago on the drink question, when foolish parents smiled admiringly upon the young hopeful who could take off his glass of wine like a man. But no ethicist can view the warrior child as other than a portent, full of menace to the citizen- ship of the future, whose very games react upon his moral character. The thoughtless may smile at the suggestion, the hardened sneer, the wicked openly scoff ; but all who reflect upon the plastic nature of childhood and the terrible fascinations of soldiering will readily admit the intimate connection between the nursery and the field of battle. Turning his back upon the nursery, the child is next introduced to the school, where he receives a more thorough indoctrination in martial arts and sentiments. The same spirit that demoralizes a nation and desecrates the foster ground of infant innocence frequently per- vades the schoolroom also, and sets the old-time brute to ravin at the evolving angel in the character of the child. The foul vapors from the field where manhood is being destroyed penetrate even to the temples where childhood is being reared, and the young humanity, TO THE CHILD 85 which was designed to take tone and color from the clear airs of innocence and love, must thenceforth droop and darken. The parent is, perhaps, indifferent to the character of the school attended by his child ; or is himself infected with the war fever, and willing that his child’s mind should be poisoned by the “ patriotism ” of the hour. If, on the other hand, he deplores this state of affairs and desires to protect the moral nature of his offspring, he is forced to confine his efforts to the coun- teracting influences of home, for he knows that, if he were to make formal and public protest, “patriotic” teachers would make it unpleasant for his children, “patriotic” pupils would subject them to petty perse- cution, and “ patriotic ” school boards would make light of all his complaints. Hence the “patriotic” school- master has it all his own way, with appalling results. Though there are honorable exceptions, and though the codes present some barriers to the incoming, flood, it is not uncommon for a teacher to neglect the usual sub- jects in order to declaim on the passing incidents of the campaign, to forsake the settled findings of history in order to dilate upon the distorted and ephemeral bul- letins from the front. Study of historical character is replaced by newspaper sketches of the generals in the field, who are represented as immaculate and heroic lead- ers of armies the most heroic and immaculate in the world, whilst at the same time the enemy is subjected to every kind of abuse. Essays which ought to be pre- scribed upon the nobler themes of literature or history are directed to the sieges, reliefs, marches, retreats, vic- tories, defeats of the campaign, the respective characters 86 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR of the combatants, their habits in peace and war; whilst opportunities are given to indulge the foulest misrepresentations retailed by a reptile press which has, for the time, become the text-book of the semina- ries of learning. Even the deaf mute, in whatever way his pitiful symbols admit, may be stuffed with the per- versions that form the stock in trade of the “ patriotic ” instructor’s contemporary annals . 1 Were their effects upon the morals of youth less disastrous, some amusement might be extracted from the eccentricities of the scholastic profession acting un- der the bias of patriotism. One instructs his class in drawing caricatures of the enemy ; another gives object lessons upon the cowardly and ineffective methods of warfare falsely alleged against them ; a third quenches his thirst from a cup having the enemy’s effigy on one side, which, being kept carefully next the class, is, according to order, duly howled at ; whilst an inspector regales a public meeting with the pitiful spite he has taught an innocent child to set down in its essay . 2 Their very songs are changed into hymns of battle. Whereas formerly young voices were tunefully raised to sing of home and nature, of love and peace, of inno- cent joys by stream and meadow, war time finds them exercised in songs of the camp and the red field, of revenge and blood, of the bayonet thrust and the cav- alry charge ; the ballads of battle which time and the glamour of genius have made classic are pressed into the feverish and excited patriotism of the hour, and even the ephemeral trash of the music halls is not counted beneath the dignity of the musical lesson in a TO THE CHILD 8 7 seminary of learning . 3 In a divine ecstasy of “ patriot- ism ” one even turns a sacred song into a hymn of praise to the generals in the field, and is not afraid . 4 A time of war is a time of reaction, of relapse to the ideals of lower ages, and hence it finds a nation’s schoolmasters instilling a narrow and antiquated thing called “ patriotism ” into their pupils, instead of those fraternal and cosmopolitan principles which ought to characterize an age of universal travel, missions, and commerce. Children are told that it is base to think their country might be wrong, treacherous to disagree with the quarrels of their government and to wish them failure in securing the triumph of injustice, cowardly to grieve when the soldiers of their country have suc- ceeded in killing a large number of those engaged in defending the just and right. The machinery of education can even, in the hands of the unformed in- structor, become an instrument of terrorization and per- secution. Thus, a “patriotic” teacher asks an infant class whether any entertains sentiments friendly to the enemy, and upon two of them confessing to that crime, proceeds to rate them soundly for disloyalty to their country, and to bully them into recanting. In a higher grade school two girls are set tasks for no other fault than confessing to similar sentiments, and, by direct incitement of the teacher, are hectored for days about the playground, their persecution terminating only when a school manager, hearing of the affair, calls at the school. Another War-Office sprout masquerading with a teacher’s diploma causes the children to march, two by two, past the Union Jack, doing reverence as 88 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR they pass, and when some refuse, rails upon them for disgraceful behavior . 5 The inspector backs the master, the master the assistant, and a military government backs them all. If a former pupil has signalized himself in battle, he will be held up to the school as a proud example, and his name writ large on the distinction board ; if a bugle boy has, haply, shot three of the enemy with his own hand, the scholars will be encour- aged to get up a subscription in order to present the little homicide with a watch . 6 It is thus that the poison spring of militarism takes its rise in the school, and the academies of learning are perverted into a means of corruption. Thus culture turns to cruelty, education to demoralization ; reason is ingulfed in frenzy, and ethics in passion ; and a government which at one time controlled the army alone, leaving the church to control the school, finds new cause to bless the day it was driven by zealous educationists to con- trol the school also. It is the history lesson, however, which gives the war-smitten pedagogue his greatest opportunity, and is even more mischievous than the irregular excursions just described, since its place is permanent and of great honor. The approved methods of writing and teaching history are much to blame for the low ethical ground permanently occupied by Christendom. Certain half- playful traits of schoolboy character assume a new gravity to those who have seen them worked out into the developed passions of a time of war. Boyish boast- fulness has never been esteemed a serious fault, except when it evolved into its natural fruits of bullying ; but TO THE CHILD 89 it is becoming clearer that it may have fruits yet more baleful in the man’s bloodthirstiness, especially when watered by the history lesson. Even the moralist may have been disposed to smile upon the notorious patriot- ism of the schoolboy as a harmless vanity, but he is now coming to see that, encouraged by the master’s comment upon history, it may be the parent of that martial zeal which at once demoralizes the individual and endangers the peace of nations ; and, at the risk of being thought a moral pedant, he is compelled to ask whether it is any longer necessary to deliberately cor- rupt childhood for the sake of a fancied security to the nation. So far from rebuking any display of national vanity in his bellicose pupils, the master too often en- courages it, not knowing, or not caring, that he may destroy the habit of the student by grafting on to it the temper of the jingo. It has been said that the youth of Germany were prepared for war with France by a course of training continued through many relays of school children , 7 and it will be to the eternal renown of the French instructors if, instead of preparing young France for a renewal of the conflict, they — as seems indeed to be the case — instruct the rising generations in the principles and advantages of peace. Thus the historian prepares the way for the general, the peda- gogue for the warrior ; and once more is illustrated the universal law that the idea creates the deed, that the mind has to be corrupted before the members can com- mit sin. In the very nature of the case, schools and schoolmasters should busy themselves creating preju- dices in favor of peace rather than strife ; of reason, 9 o MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR love, moral suasion, rather than aggression, intoler- ance, and force; and this, except under the influence of militarism, would be generally conceded. But the per- verting power of militarism has been great enough to turn the history book into a laudation of battles and battle makers, exaggerating the benefits of war and misrepresenting its effects upon the characters of the combatants . 8 For one page devoted to the peaceful triumphs of the explorer and the philanthropist, a hundred have been given to the faded exploits of the military conqueror, encouraging the young in the delu- sion that no career is so glorious as his and no position in a nation’s life so honorable. Among sixty-three lan- tern slides issued to illustrate the romance of a reign, the London School Board included twenty-three royal and fifteen military subjects ; no portraits of David Livingstone, John Ruskin, or Lord Shaftesbury ; but Cecil Rhodes, in company with Roberts, Kitchener, Napoleon, and similar men of war . 9 A change for the better is, no doubt, coming over the writing of history, but the process requires to be hastened. A nation’s annals should embrace more than the crimes of its kings and the rebellions of its aspiring nobles ; and if they must include instances of manslaying, it should be in order to reprobate instead of glorifying them, to turn the manslayer into the villain instead of the hero of the human tragedy. After four centuries it should now be possible to emulate Erasmus, that prince of humanists, who, when institut- ing a course of instruction in Christian principles, set aside the panegyrists of Achilles and Caesar, — whom TO THE CHILD 91 he described as mere “raging brigands,” — reserving them for very special uses, remarking that such histories might be injurious in the highest degree. The “ heroes” must now be plainly described as anachronisms — in plain language, “back numbers ” in the story of human progress. History must be rewritten from the stand- point of humanity. The prejudices which lead to admi- ration of bloody deeds must be extirpated. Teachers, mothers, and all those who make first impressions on childhood, must impress hate of war, and a sense of the value and dignity of human nature and life. In propor- tion as history is written from the religious and humani- tarian standpoint, instead of the pagan and patriotic one, it will become a record of the growth of human- ity in the arts of peace ; and it will be the aim of such writers to trace the approach of nations to their moral ideals through every stage of advance, reaction, frus- tration, and renewal. It would then be considered infamous to teach a child to despise life when it was incarnate in an “ enemy,” and alone noble to enjoin reverence for all human beings. The human types held up before the mind of generous and aspiring youth would be those of the saviors, not destroyers, of their kind, — the antique sage and modern inventor, the saint of old and altruist of to-day, the prophets, apostles, and martyrs of the formative periods, and the reformers, philanthropists, slum workers, explorers, and living martyrs of the age we live in. No longer called upon to admire the “sum of all villainies,” they would give their minds to the contemplation of humanity and goodness ; would learn to put the virtuous who retain 92 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR their virtue amid every inducement to vice far above him who merely displays brute courage against odds which might tempt him to cowardice ; would no longer emu- late the fighter who saves his life by taking bis brother’s, but the workman who nobly dies to save a mate from danger, or manfully plies his tool to minister to the comfort and well-being of society ; and, if they were called upon ter choose, would push past the Tamerlanes and Caesars of the history books, to range themselves with those moral heroes who counted not their lives dear unto them, if they could by any means save some. If we reflect upon the contradictory nature of the instruction which — in order to placate the military spirit — we impart to our children, the degradation it implies will become more apparent. Whether by reasoned com- ments on history or excited diatribes on contemporary combats, children are taught to abandon all the prin- ciples fostered by their other studies, to unsay the moral precepts they have been taught to apply to every other subject, and to accept the crude, abnormal, and inhuman theories of morals that come to the surface in such disordered times. In one class they are en- couraged to rely on moral power, in another to exalt brute force ; one subject stirs the aspiring angel within them, another tramples him beneath the hoof of the brute ; so that a coherent system of morals and a char- acter harmonious with itself become impossible. The conflict in the child’s spirit becomes even more harmful if his parents chance to hold opinions antag- onistic to the military system and to whatever martial TO THE CHILD 93 frenzy happens to have run off with the sense and morality of the nation ; for he will be compelled to receive instruction contrary to that which he receives at home ; to hear those principles praised which his mother has taught him to abhor, or those sentiments insulted which his father commands him to reverence. What could be more hurtful than to introduce into the tender mind of childhood this discord between home and school, parent and teacher — nay, between class and class, book and book, subject and subject ? Could any- thing be more exquisitely contrived to destroy the very foundations of faith than a hopeless schism in a child’s mind, a conflict between ideals, a clash of authorities ? It is here that the war demon produces demoralization more swift, subtle, and complete than in any other sphere ; for though scenes of blood on the field or debauch in the street may exceed it in open and pal- pable disgust, the spectacle of an enormous number of men and women throughout the country engaged, day after day, in assiduously poisoning the wellheads of humanity is one of the most dreadful that can afflict the thoughtful mind. The ethical spirit of the modern world is increasingly offended by the prevalence of that dual morality which has one law for the individual and another for the community ; one doctrine for the church and another for the senate; one set of principles for a time of peace, and quite a different set for a time of war. But the demand for a harmonious and coherent ethic would become importunate if it could bear in upon the public mind a sense of the disastrous effect of militarism upon 94 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR child morals. The citizen who carries, with growing discomfort, two Sinais in different departments of his mind — or, to speak more correctly, a Sinai in one department and a Calvary in another — would hasten to shape his ethic into a consistent unity if he realized that he was splitting childhood into two halves ; giving one part to Cain and another to Christ ; printing the Lex Talionis upon one lobe of the brain and the Golden Rule upon another ; forcing the half-conscious soul of innocence into an uneasy feeling that it has to choose between its Old and its New Testament, — between Joshua and Jesus, — or, somehow, to reconcile them. This fatal duplicity is encouraged by the schoolmaster when he gustfully details incidents involving successful stratagem, spying, ambush, and similar arts of legiti- mate warfare ; for the children soon begin to suspect that they are not to apply to this business the same rules they have been taught to apply to their personal conduct. When they grow older they may perchance read from the pen of a Commander-in-Chief 10 that while the mottoes, “Honesty is the best policy,” and “Truth always wins in the long run,” formed very pretty headlines for their copy books, it is a mistake to “ keep hammering along ” with them, for they have no place in the career of a soldier ; and they may be tempted to argue, in a vague kind of fashion, that everything they wrote in their copy books is open to the same repudiation, and hence to conclude that chastity, jus- tice, truth-speaking, mercy, commercial integrity, are equally, under special conditions, subject to suspension or repeal. It is thus that we introduce that fatal schism TO THE CHILD 95 into child nature which inevitably tends to the produc- tion of hypocrites and liars. Infinitely nobler was the frank heterodoxy of the barbarian fourth-century bishop, Ulfilas, who, when translating the Bible into Gothic, left out the Book of Kings, lest the story of the Jewish wars should yet further inflame the too combative temper of his flock. Similar orthodoxy of heart was displayed by Erasmus (to quote the father of the Ref- ormation again) when he selected only certain portions of the same literature for the instruction of youth, stipulating that even these should be interpreted in their allegorical sense. If we teach our children two contradictory codes of morality, how are they to decide which to follow, or when to follow one rather than the other ? Will they not be likely to choose that which is more convenient and profitable ? Will they not learn to put expediency before principle? Will' they not feel, in their own youthful way, that religion is merely a thing to be preached and prayed about, but not to be practiced unless when convenient ? Could anything more ruinous to the moral nature of childhood be de- vised than this hopeless inconsistency ? Are we not, for the sake of imagined political good, plunging our children into the slimy and noisome pit of cant, hum- bug, and hypocrisy ? That pedagogue who should be discovered inculcat- ing the principles of intellectual atheism into his pupils would be universally condemned and summarily dis- missed from a position he had disgraced, for it would be counted a thing monstrous and unnatural to de- liberately undermine the religious faith of an innocent 9 6 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR and unsuspecting child. But is it any nobler to steadily sap a child’s faith in morality, truthfulness, consist- ency, in the obligations of the higher nature and the imperative duty of obeying Christ ? And is not this what we do when we teach that under other conditions it is right to kill, lie, steal, boast, glory in slaughter and rejoice over suffering, trample down harvests, burn up homes, make other children fatherless and the mothers of other children widows ? Is not this to sap the very bases of humanity ? Does not this filter the very quint- essence of immorality into the inner soul of childhood ? Must not this nourish a moral atheism compared with whose active venom intellectual unbelief is only a dry husk — a meaningless, inoperative shell? Supposing it were possible to teach a child not to believe in God, but to believe in truth, honor, mercy, brotherhood, love (it may be impossible ; we cannot here discuss whether it be possible), would not that be more profit- able than to successfully teach him to believe in God while disbelieving in all those moral qualities which faith pronounces peculiarly godlike ? Without saying whether it would be feasible to compass the first of these ends, it is certain that we are triumphantly achieving the second. The gentle author of the Songs of Innocence testifies against us : |S He who mocks the infant’s faith Shall be mocked in age and death ; He who shall teach the child to doubt, The rotten grave shall ne’er get out ; He who respects the infant’s faith Triumphs over hell and death. TO THE CHILD 97 The vast corruption of child character wrought by militarism through the school has, in these latter days, led to a further and, to some minds, more obvious evil by preparing the way of the recruiting sergeant and displaying new fields for his energy. The school has become not only a training ground but actually a re- cruiting ground for the army. The British War Office issues a circular pressing secondary schools to teach boys over twelve the use of the rifle ; issues Morris- tube carbines to schools having suitable ranges ; and supplies ammunition at cost price . 11 The inevitable next step is the formation of cadet corps in schools, with inspection by military chiefs who announce that they are there “ to see what these might become in the future as the fighting and defending material of their race.” 12 And the inevitable step into the gulf may be inferred from a single Reuter: “A most unfortunate incident occurred last week at Kasr El Nil barracks, a boy bugler, who was unpopular with the other boys of the Rifle Brigade, being maltreated by them to such an extent that he died .” 13 Not only does the peda- ) gogue instill the principles of militarism into his pupils, but he does it, and knows that he does it, with the entire consent of school boards, clerical managers, and a despotic education department, who all find in the tax-supported school a new opportunity for developing the military resources of the nation. The friends of democracy and popular education have good reason to bewail this unexpected result of their splendid struggle for universal state-aided and state- directed schools. The capture of the schools by the 9 8 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR soldier is one of the most ominous signs of the times. The militarist has long looked with wistful eye at this happy hunting ground; but the conditions were not entirely favorable till government, by its power to give or withhold grants, to prescribe the code and dictate subjects of study, made its control of the schools abso- lute ; and the growth of the “ imperial ” idea has made popularly elected boards and clerical managers alike willing to submit to whatever demands the Education Department may make. The Scottish Department has announced that its grant shall be made subject to effective physical training understood in the mil- itary sense ; masters are encouraged to form cadet corps, and to put up distinction boards upon which the glories of their soldier pupils may be blazoned. Parliaments have already been strongly urged to make military drill compulsory in all public schools, though they have hitherto refused to occupy that halfway house to conscription. The triumph of the soldier is not yet complete, but it promises well ; and, whereas the friends of popular education were wont to strive to make a path straight from the common school to the University, they have incidentally succeeded in making one from the school to the army. Thus does the enemy evermore sow tares, and a demon shadows every angel. The young idea is now, in different senses, to be taught to shoot. Even the play hour is to be exploited in the interests of Moloch, and such childish games as “I spy,” “French and English,” and “Pris- oner’s Base ” (which are old war games of scouting, capture, and recapture) are to be “ adapted to the TO THE CHILD 99 necessities of modern warfare,” and “all children ” are to be “ taught at school, partly in play and partly as work, how to handle a gun, how to shoot, and how to maneuver.” 14 The consequences of such educational ideas are so obvious that an American fighting man can state them : “ If we are pugnacious, it is natural. The ram is a very pretty little animal, but the farmers say that if you put one in the field where there is noth- ing else for him to butt, he will butt a stump, because it is his nature to. Now, it is as natural for an Amer- / ican boy to butt a stump as it is for a ram. The way we are educated, you must not be surprised if we occasionally look for stumps.” 15 The scholar is being rapidly transformed into the conscript. Mind will be more and more subordinated to muscle, industrial to military training, the book to the bayonet, moral dis- cipline to the mechanical rules of the martinet, cul- ture of the higher nature to physical equipment, and service in the spheres of citizenship to success on the field of battle. The belligerent principles indoctrinated by the teacher of the tax-supported school are abundantly watered by the keeper of the rate-supported library, who, when the war fever rages, cannot do other than stock his shelves with the printed stuff that then takes the place of literature and is greedily sought after by the ratepayers. Here also the friends of popular culture have some reason for disappointment ; for it turns out, after trial, that an institution supported by public funds is under the necessity of conforming to f public taste, even when it tends to savagery, and may IOO MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR thus become an instrument of demoralization instead of reform. A time of war reduces the sale on good literature, and so diminishes the profits that respect- able publishers are tempted to cater for the blood- . poisoned appetite . 16 The public librarian is obliged to continue the work begun by the pedagogue ; to stock his magazine room with the pictorials which, through every grade of the publishing world, nourish the blood lust in thousands of gloating lads ; and to load the lending department with the volumes which are rushed out from the red press with the double object of satis- fying the public hunger for horrors and the printers’ hunger for bread. A glance at the new books piled on the shelves in war time will show with what haste and in- genuity writers and publishers conspire to stuff the pub- lic with the blood literature they crave for, embracing not only stories of the sieges, stratagems, retreats, vic- tories, romances, legends, and lies of the campaign actually in progress, but tales raked up from every blood- stained page of antiquity and tradition. Once again the demon shadows the angel. The inevitable result of this combination of demor- alizing forces in nursery, school, and library, is not left to speculation, but is attested by facts patent to all. An ethicist here traces the responsibility back to certain causes existing in our institutions for youthful culture, and the statistician and man of affairs tabulates , the facts — explain them otherwise who may. Every outburst of military energy is followed by an increase of crimes of violence, which is never so discreditable as when it exhibits itself as “juvenile crime” committed TO THE CHILD IOI by “young offenders” between school age and re- sponsible manhood — unless when it is condoned and commended by those who were set to condemn and reform it . 17 Men cannot grow figs of thistles ; and if we deliberately train our youth in principles of vio- lence we must not be surprised to see them perform violent deeds. We cannot make silk of bristles ; and if we permit intolerant teachers to foster a persecuting spirit in their pupils we need not wonder if, when the pupils are older, they ignore the distinction between personal and patriotic, and, since they began to be persecutors for their country’s sake, end in becoming criminals for their own. From this common apostasy of all the institutions charged with the general education of the young, we naturally turn to the church, on account of its sup- posed devotion to moral principles and its specializa- tion of the religious training of the young — only to find, however, that she is engaged in assisting the degen- erate forces. Within the temple of peace we find an altar erected to Moloch. The church has, under the name of “Boys’ Brigades,” instituted a wing of the army, a training ground for young soldiers, and a recruiting ground for the drill sergeant. Under the plea of discipline and obedience she gathers them into mimic corps, decks them off in fragments of uniform, puts dummy guns into their hands, summons them by sound of bugle, sets a retired soldier to drill them, brings generals to address them and give them prizes — and then clears her throat to deny that she is preparing them as food for the rapacious maw of the 102 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR military Moloch ! Than this compromise with the army, this union between ecclesiasticism and mili- tarism, the church, in all the long catalogue of her adulteries, never committed a more gross and abomin- able act of fornication with the powers of this world. Whither, then, shall we turn amid this falling away of the moral institutions ? Who is to be the savior of the child ? The answer is, the being who bore the child. Women, as Ruskin told them in the closing passages of The Crown of Wild Olive , have the thing so absolutely in their own hands that they could stop any war in a week by the simple device of going into dead mourning, unrelieved by jewel, ornament, or any trivial lapse into prettiness. How would it be if, in their quiet yet determined way, they intimated that they would leave off nursing unless the men left off fighting, and refused to minister in the hospital if men persisted in warring in the field ? Woman has long enough stooped to be servant to the stupidity ) and minister to the inhumanity, of man. The age calls upon her to take her place at last in the fore- front of the emancipating powers. If she is not yet pre- pared to stand upon Ruskin’s terms, she can at least be true to her higher nature, declining to be mere echo to man’s lower voice, and bottleholder to his brutal combats. She must not abdicate her functions in the old abject way — like those political apprentices who, at a Women’s Political Association, refused to touch a question of peace, on the ground that their men had already decided for war ! The rough work of the world TO THE CHILD 103 has, let us say, been done by man, by his strength of arm and hardness of heart ; the higher work that remains can be accomplished only by woman, by means of her subtler ethical perceptions and larger charities. The enemies that formerly obstructed the path of upward humanity were gross and palpable, — savage beasts and savage men ; but those which survive are rather the impalpable forces of ignorance, selfishness, hate, against which woman is our predestined champion. As the mother of the race woman can achieve greater triumphs in the struggle against spiritual evils than all other forces combined. She has the training of those who will hereafter be the fighters or the peacemakers of the world. If she would set herself to eradicate seeds of international jealousy and to substitute those of universal friendship, she would do more to terminate the worst miseries of mankind than all her ministries have done to relieve them. It is time for her to arise. If the world is ever to be an Eden without a Cain, it will be by the help of Eve. >/ 104 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR REFERENCES 1. Deaf Mutes trained in the Sentiments of War (New Age, July s, 1900) : An esteemed correspondent sends us some particulars of the instruc- tion of deaf and dumb children at Queen’s Park, Glasgow : “ In the first room some little girls were busy with their ordinary lessons. One of them, whose age might be eight or nine, was specially good at lip language, and by watching her teacher as she slowly articulated little questions was able to give bright and ready answers in a tone which, though slightly peculiar, was easily understood. One of the questions ' asked was : ‘ Do you like Kruger ? ’ Answer, a short and decided ‘No.’ ‘Who is it then that you like?’ Answer, equally prompt, ‘ Baden-Powell.’ A daily exercise is to describe a picture, telling the names of all the animals or objects represented in it. Thus they are taught to connect words and images. From describing pictures they learn to make original mental pictures of their own. Here is an essay on the war, written by a boy of nine, which I had the pleasure of read- ing. ‘ A soldier gets up at four in the morning. He goes to a burn and washes his face. After that he gives his horse seeds [intended for grain] and water. Then he goes down into a trench and fights, and kills a Boer. When he has killed the Boer he goes and tells Lord Roberts. Lord Roberts says, “ That’s right,” and gives him a medal.’ ” 2. Scholars degraded by the Lessons of the Day : (a) Confession of Mr. John M’Leod, Inspector of Schools (New Age, December 20, 1900). I must conclude by telling you of an instance I met with last autumn in my official work. In a school in the west of Ross-shire I gave to a class “ Paul Kruger” as a subject for composition. Among other things, one girl of thirteen years of age wrote : “ Paul Kruger is a scoundrel, and at the same time an earnest man of prayer, because he thinks he can deceive the Almighty as he can a natural man ” [ Laughter ]. I would have thought this character of Kruger would be obvious to all as well as to this little Highland girl, but we have cranks among us who admire his piety and his patriotism, and I am sure these cranks will feel flat- tered when I say that I regard Kruger and themselves as birds of a feather [ Laughter and applause]. (b) Testimony of “ J. H. S.,” St. Helen’s (Lancashire), Morn- ing Leader , February 18, 1902. I have in my possession a child’s copy book which has been in use at a school near here, the name of which I forward to you under TO THE CHILD 105 separate cover. The teacher, by whose authority I know not, has taught the child to write in the book which I have before me, — The Boers defeated the British at Majuba in 1881. Not until the Boers are exterminated will Majuba be avenged. The Boers are very treacherous people. Such is an exact copy of what the child wrote as instructed. 3. “ Songs of Innocence ” (new version), Morning Leader. Not many days ago the Wolverhampton day schools gave a concert, and this was a verse they sang : We talk of night surprises, Of sudden fierce attacks, Of shooting Indian rebels, Of bayoneting blacks, Of fording rapid rivers, Of threading tangled brakes, And every new narration Fresh ardor still awakes. The Lady's Companion, London, had a poem signed, “ A Lady in Khaki, aged 15,” and entitled, “A Dainty Dish of Boar,” which begins thus : Take a dirty Boar, Clean him if you can, With a spice of bayonet Place him in the pan. 4. Review of the Week , London, July, 1900. 5. Ibid. 6. War against War in South Africa , p. 120. 7. War against War , p. 58. 8. Historians influenced by the “ Idols of the Tribe ” : Testimony of Burton, History of Scotlasid, Vol. II, pp. 281 — 282 Of the character in which Wallace first became formidable the accounts in literature are distractingly conflicting. With the chroniclers of his own country, who wrote after the War of Independence, he is raised to the highest pinnacle of magnanimity and heroism. To the English contemporary chroniclers he is a pestilent ruffian, a disturber of the peace of society, an outrager of all laws and social duties ; finally, a robber, the head of one of many bands of robbers and marauders then infesting Scotland. 9. New Age , March 1 5, 1900. io 6 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 10. The Soldier's Pocket Book, for Field Service. By General Viscount Wolseley, Fifth Edition, Macmillan and Co., 1886, p. 169. As several important citations are made from this military text-book, the edition from which they are taken is here given once for all. 1 1. Rev. F. W. Aveling, Herald of Peace, London, June, 1903. 12. Sir Archibald Hunter, Peace and Goodwill , London (1903), p. 59. 13. A Reuter telegram, January 18, 1904. 14. Letter to the Times, March, 1902. 15. Admiral R. D. Evans, I.oyal Traitors, p. 37. 16. Depressing Effect of War upon Literature {Echo, London, June, 1900) : At a late meeting of Cassell & Co., shareholders, the chairman made the unwelcome announcement that the business had declined and that the dividend had fallen. This fall-off began immediately upon the breaking out of the war. A shareholder reminded the Board that the war was a subject which cut both ways. Apparently, if the company is to retrieve its failing fortune, it will have to hire men to weave some popular war stories for our enthusiastic youth. 17. Magisterial Approbation of Brutality ( New Age, June 13, 1901) : Mr. Fordham, a London police magistrate, apparently strongly approves of brutality when it takes the form of fisticuffs. Last Satur- day two boys were brought before him charged with fighting. Said his “worship,” addressing the world in general, “They are English boys, I suppose, and were settling a dispute in English fashion, — with their fists.” Added his “worship,” addressing the prisoners: “From the Bench I must say you must not do this. But you may go.” IV THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE SOLDIER The other day I happened to walk through the Borovitsky Gate. In the gateway there sat an old and crippled beggar with his head wrapped in a rag. I took out my purse to give him alms. At that moment a smart-looking, ruddy young fellow, in a grenadier’s uniform, came running down from the Kremlin. On seeing him the beggar started up in a fright, and hobbled away as fast as he could down towards the Alexander Garden. The grenadier gave chase, but not gaining on him stopped, and poured out abuse after him for having broken the regulations by sitting in the gateway. I waited for the grenadier, and wherj he came up asked him if he had learnt to read. “Yes, I have. What then?” “Have you read the Gospel ?” “ I have.” “Well, have you read the passage, ‘And he who feeds the hungry . . . ’ ? ” He knew it, and listened to me. I saw that he was puzzled. Two passers-by stopped to listen. The grenadier evidently felt it rather hard that, when he had done his duty well by driving people away according to his orders, he should suddenly appear in the wrong. • He was confused, and was evidently seeking for an excuse. Suddenly a light shone in his sensible black eyes. He turned away from me as if going. “ And have you read the military regulations ? ” I answered that I had not done so. “Then hold your tongue!” said he, shaking his head trium- phantly as, wrapping his fur coat round him, he stalked proudly to his post. This was the only man I had ever met in my life who with strict logic had decided the eternal question which, in our actual social state, lay before me, and lies before every man calling himself a Christian. — Tolstoy. IV THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE SOLDIER The question whether war is more harmful to the moral nature of the combatants or of the general com- munity is like discussing whether the murderer or the man who holds the clothes be more depraved ; but it is plain that the training and occupation of the soldier, apart from any particular act of killing, subjects him to a train of influences particularly demoralizing. But since all these demoralizing tendencies reach their maximum in standing armies, in that class which takes up “ the profession of arms ” as a means of livelihood, and in the military system as we see it completely organized in modern Europe, it is chiefly from these we must draw our arguments and instances. If “war is hell” and the “sum of all villainies,” the professional fighter can hardly be a spotless saint. At this very point, therefore, the regular soldier’s occupation comes into collision with the whole trend of modern civilization, which is towards a humanistic rather than a political goal. In the industrial sphere we are coming to ask ourselves how best to make men rather than money, and to condemn whatever increases the second at the expense of the first. The ancient world was content to have a slave class to do the scul- lion work, while the new humanitarian spirit demands 109 I IO MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR that all shall be elevated to the rank of manhood and citizenship. Among the strong arguments for the abo- lition of the liquor traffic as presently carried on not the least powerful is derived from the effect of their occupation upon the health and character of barmen and barmaids. The modern world is not happy m purchasing its pleasures by the morals of its people. The ancient world, again, willingly purchased the gen- eral purity of its women by the degradation of the hetaira ; but modern society revolts increasingly against the condemnation of any section of womanhood to per- petual sin in order to purchase immunity for the rest. Viewed in this light, the professional soldier is a survival of a pagan ethic, a creature condemned to moral helotism, upon the substratum of whose brutish- ness rise the culture and humanities of the civilized races. This clash of ideals cannot continue, and the soldier, as representing the earlier and inferior, must give way before the new humanitarian spirit. We have no more right to select a class of men for special de- moralization than to set apart a class of women for special corruption. Modern democracy insists upon equal opportunity for all men ; and if the fighting man is debarred from equal virtue, it is necessary, if only for his sake, to abolish fighting. All questions of political expediency shrink into nothingness beside this question of character. Man is more than constitu- tions, the citizen than the state, the voter than the policy, the national soul than the body politic — all these latter being but agencies through which the former express their supreme importance. The Briton TO THE SOLDIER 1 1 I is more important than Britain, the Frenchman than France, the Chinaman than China. Whatever makes manhood is to be followed ; whatever mars it, renounced. The legalized killer, as the relict of an old and barbar- ous society, is now confronted by the modern concep- tion of humanity. Two types of manhood face each other for a last grapple, the prize being dominion over the future race. Caesar is making his last stand, Christ his determined advance to the throne. The issue cannot be uncertain. Barbaric survivals crumble before to- day’s humanism. The soldier cannot live in the same world with the Christ. The average ecclesiastical person is still divided in his allegiance, rendering to Caesar not only the taxes which are his but the moral ideals which belong to Christ. One of these, speaking at a missionary meet- ing in Exeter Hall, described the contradictions called “Christian soldiers” as men who fought like devils and prayed like saints, and the saying was greeted with cheers . 1 From a ravaged district another wrote, “ Soon the whole place was ablaze, . . . leaving what had been a well-kept farmhouse a mass of blackened ruins. I had a service in camp that same evening which was attended by the colonel himself, who is an earnest Christian man.” 2 Very little discrimination is required to detect the welter of confusion in which such persons lie. A book much in vogue among this very class should have taught them to be ashamed of their inconsistency, even if they never read further than the title-page ; for if they had only asked in all I 12 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR sincerity, “What would Jesus do?” they would have seen that, while it was possible to imagine him praying like a saint, they could never, in their wildest mo- ments, suppose him to fight like a devil. The “ Chris- tian soldier” superstition has, without doubt, eaten deeply into the conscience of the ecclesiastical world, being reflected in its hymnology 3 and fostered by such biographies as those of Hedley Vicars and Henry Havelock and the traditions of praying fighters like Gustavus Adolphus, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles Gordon. The psychological puzzle presented by these praying warriors is not to be solved by the cheap and superficial theory of hypocrisy, — a theory as false as it would be absurd, — but rather by reference to the war of ideals represented by Caesar, the type of brute dominion, and Christ, the type of spiritual supremacy. It is not necessary to question the Christianity of their manhood, while strongly asserting the heathenism of their soldierhood, or to deny the title of “ Christian man,” while declaring that of “Christian soldier” to be a contradiction and an absurdity as great as if one were to speak of merciful murder or truthful lying. A pro- fessional apologist 4 may extol “the high distinction the blessed Master has placed upon the soldier’s call- ing,” and declare how “ his eyes were opened to the wonderfully deep sense of religion in the army,” but a genuine evangelist 6 testifies that “soul-saving is very difficult work in camp ; their hearts are so full of bitterness and revenge.” With fighting, killing, or brute force of any kind Christianity has simply nothing to do ; a truth which might have been supposed to be TO THE SOLDIER 1 13 settled by the declaration of its founder, — “ My king- dom is not of this world, else would my servants fight.” The frightful inconsistency of those “ Christians ” who could at the same time carry against an enemy prayer and a sword, love and slaughter, forgiveness and death, and who could (according to their theology) for an earthly fault blow his soul into an everlasting hell, — this can be explained only as the persecuting apostle afterwards explained his conduct, — they “did it igno- rantly,” and “the times of their ignorance God winked at.” The divine charity will, it is to be supposed, con- tinue to regard in the same way the action of those ecclesiastics and army chaplains who carry the name of Christ into the camp of Caesar and inflict upon it the unutterable degradation of sanctifying the unchris- tian and antihuman ethics of the heathen Mars. It is impossible to take a more charitable view of those pulpit apologists for the soldier who wrest an approval of soldiering, and of the entire system of militarism into which it has grown, from the simple facts that Jesus spoke respectfully of and to such soldiers as he met, and that Paul mixed military meta- phors freely with his religious instructions. To grant the lawfulness of the soldier’s calling, it is urged, is to grant the lawfulness of war, and since Jesus did not specifically condemn such soldiers as came his way, he must be held to have approved of the soldier, and therefore of war! Try the same argument with a simple change of terms. Jesus did not in set words condemn such slave owners as he met, and Paul fre- quently employed metaphors drawn from the relation 1 14 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR between slaver and slave in his religious teaching ; consequently, Jesus and Paul must be held to have approved of slavery ; consequently, slavery is lawful, and must be perpetuated to the end of time ! But this is absurd ; and therefore the fact that Jesus did not openly condemn soldiers cannot be held to justify the continued existence of the soldier and his trade. Since this confusion of ideas prevails in the church, clearness of vision can hardly be expected in the camp. Yet when driven into a corner, the soldier is sometimes capable, like Tolstoy’s grenadier, of a logical decision impossible to his clerical apologists. Asked whether he has read the Gospels he will triumphantly retort the question whether his interrogator has read the military regulations, and if the reply be in the nega- tive will counsel him to hold his tongue ! Thus the military regulations, which the soldier has read and solemnly sworn to obey, are set above the Gospels, which he has also probably read, but without being required to practice. He is under strictest law to Caesar, — a law palpably and strongly embodied in the military regulations and scrupulously enforced by courts-martial and summary executions ; whereas he is under law to Christ only in an impalpable and remote sense, backed by no visible authority and enforced by no immediate penalties ; such penalties as are attached being, moreover, generously undertaken for him by Caesar, who, for his part, is quite willing to bear all the damnation he does not believe in, for the sake of making the poor dupe he enlists a more complete and TO THE SOLDIER 1 1 5 successful automaton. “Well, well, you are my officer, you know,” said the private (in Old Mortality ), with true military conscience, “and if anything is wrong” — “I ’ll take the blame,” said Inglis, his officer : “ Come, another pot of ale.” He will hear the saying of the Iron Duke that “ men who have nice notions of religion have no business to be soldiers ” ; Sir Charles Napier will assure him that “to overcome all feelings of religion is generally the means of making a warrior” ; Horatio Nelson will sum up his whole duty in the in- compatible precepts, “Fear God, honor the king, .and hate your enemies like the very devil the throne 6 it- self will postulate, “ If religious principles were allowed to be urged by individual officers as a plea for disobe- dience of orders, the discipline of the army would sustain an injury which might be dangerous to the state”; and from such doctrine he will readily infer that the military authorities have set up a new Sinai, whose one word is “obey,” absolving him alike from the obligations and the penalties of the Decalogue. When this point has been reached the sayings of the Gospels fall naturally and easily into their place as amiable sentiments “ ap- pointed,” like King James’ version of the Bible, “to be read in churches,” but not in any way to modify the mili- tary regulations ; and it becomes easy for gallant generals and their clerical allies to hint that the Person who declared the taking of the sword to be preliminary to per- ishing by the sword was a quite impossible individual. The general irrationality of war — that men should fight like savage and unreasoning beasts, as against 1 1 6 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR arbitration, which flings men back precisely upon their distinctive attribute of reason — has for its specific consequence the damnation of the soldier into a con- dition of sworn unreason, by which he, in set terms, abdicates his rational faculty, his moral sense, his right to hold or express opinions upon any subject connected with his employment as a hired fighter. That passive obedience which is the first and last duty of a soldier powerfully illustrates the essential immorality of his calling ; for the makers of war, recognizing that their objqcts could never be accomplished if, at every step on the way, their tool were permitted to reflect upon the rightness or wrongness of his cause, have been compelled to withhold all moral choice from him. He is like the old general in Tolstoy’s Resurrection, who “did not even allow himself to think of such things, counting it his patriotic duty as a soldier not to think of them, for fear of getting weak in the carry- ing out of these, according to his opinion, very im- portant obligations.” If, unable wholly to subdue his distinctive human faculty, he permits a doubt to haunt his mind, it must not interfere with the business on hand. His oath has relieved him from the necessity of being virtuous. Tennyson’s ringing words, which have stirred the fierce brute in myriads of hearts, have also, to those who had ears to hear, rung the knell of the sol- dier’s conscience : “ Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die,” — their one duty being to kill whom they are commanded to kill, and their one alternative to be killed by the enemy or the court- martial. If a soldier has orders to execute a dying man, TO THE SOLDIER II 7 who must expire anyhow within twenty-four hours, he will drag him from his bed and the presence of his nurs- ing wife, place him in a chair (since he cannot stand), and shoot him . 7 He will take a “rebel,” whose only crime is the crime of George Washington, — with a fatal malady also upon him, — tie him blindfolded to a chair, spite of his petitions to be permitted to stand up and look death in the face, and, fifteen to the file and ten paces off, will blow the side from him, fling him into a hole with the broken chair atop, and march away to the sound of merry music . 8 The persons against whom the command is issued make no difference — “ theirs not to reason why” — whether against African Mashonas, Boer farmers, Soudan Arabs, Filipino patriots, Irish Nationalists, or Yorkshire strikers, among whom may be his own father; he must stab or shoot according to order, without so much as thinking about justice, piety, right. A European war lord passes the word for all when he says, “ I may call upon you to shoot down or bayonet your own relatives, — father and mother, sisters and brothers. My orders in that re- spect must be executed cheerfully and without grum- bling. You must do your duty, no matter what your hearts’ dictates are .” 9 So schooled, he is prepared (though all will not declare it so frankly), like George Fox’s captain of militia, to “obey his superior’s com- mands ; and if it were to crucify Christ he would do it; or execute the great Turk’s commands against the Christians, if he were under him.” 10 When he takes the king’s shilling he swears to serve the king, right or wrong, and, which is worse, without asking whether 1 1 8 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR he is right or wrong; for while it is always immoral to violate conscience, it is a more hopeless and terrifying form of immorality to deliberately abjure conscience — to swear that one will not so much as own a conscience. From the pages of Westward Ho! — that prose epic of a fighting Protestantism — Charles Kingsley con- temptuously dismisses one of his characters thus : “This book is a history of men — of men’s virtues and sins, victories and defeats ; and Eustace is a man no longer; he is become a thing, a tool, a Jesuit, which goes only where it is sent, and does good or evil in- differently as it is bid ; which, by an act of moral suicide, has lost its soul in the hope of saving it ; without a will, a conscience, a responsibility (as it fancies) to God or man, but only to ‘ The Society.’ In a word, Eustace, as he says himself, is ‘dead.’ Twice dead, I fear. Let the dead bury their dead. We have no more concern with Eustace Leigh.” In this fearful passage one has only to substitute the words “soldier” for “Jesuit” and “army” for “society” to make its application to the military system complete. Equally, they do not think — they obey . 11 And it would be interesting to inquire how much history would be left if the historian, having precisely the same grounds, dismissed the soldier from his pages in the same sum- mary fashion as the romanticist dismisses the Jesuit! or how much romance would be left if the novelist were to eject the soldier along with the Jesuit ! Happily, however, for fiction, if not quite so happily for ethics, the novel writers have declined to be consistent, and have given us many a parallel to the blunt declaration TO THE SOLDIER HQ of Major Bellenden in Old Mortality: “I am no politician, and I do not understand nice distinctions. My sword is the king’s, and when he commands I draw it in his cause.” An immense volume of evidence bears us irresistibly to the conclusion of Tolstoy — himself a soldier — that “military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of complete idleness, i.e. absence of all useful work ; frees them from their com- mon human duties, which it replaces by merely conven- tional ones to the honor of the regiment, the uniform, the flag ; and, while giving them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into conditions of servile obedience to those of higher rank than themselves.” A self-respecting man would rather be a toad under a harrow than a human thing un- der the blasphemous authority of a military martinet, whether corporal or Kaiser . 12 If, in the following passage from Zimmerman, we substitute “soldier” for “monk,” “army” for “order,” and “barracks” for “cloister,” we shall completely understand what Tolstoy means by the depraving effect of artificial obedience upon the natural virtues : “The partial attachment of a monk to the interest of his order, which is often incompatible with that of other citi- zens, the habit of implicit obedience to the will of a superior, together with the frequent return of the wearisome and frivolous duties of the cloister, debase his faculties and extinguish that generosity of senti- ment and spirit which qualifies men for thinking and feeling justly with respect to what is proper in life and conduct.” 13 120 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Debasement of faculty is, in truth, one of the most distressing results of military training. War is not only the great stupidity, but the cause of stupidity in those who wage it ; so that, without generalizing too roughly, it may safely be asserted that hired and drilled fighters are the most stupid class of men in the world. The same high authority who gave us the Soldiers Pocket Book u assures us that officers may possibly be “ men of weak minds ” ; even a general may be “ useless and impossible,” and his men may know their commander “to be a fool.” Testimonies from those who have seen the Great Stupidity per- formed before their eyes are abundant : “ I have seen mere lads leading men into action who, in point of brains, were not fit to lead a mule to water, and others who, in regard to manners, were scarcely fit to follow the mule.” 15 When captured, “they behave in a most unsportsmanlike, ungentlemanly, foolish manner, . . . draw offensive caricatures of [their captors], . . . are rude and cheeky to the officials, boasting of what their fellow-soldiers will do to them when they take [the Capital], Their chief offense, however, is in speaking to and shouting at the ladies and young girls who walk past the schoolhouse.” 16 Virtue apart, it is plain that his oath absolves the hireling even from the necessity of being rational. A more important question, however, arises as to the effect of this military temper — this deliberate and reasoned abdication of reason, this dutiful renunciation of morals — upon the general community. Into every section of society go these lay figures with the blinded TO THE SOLDIER I 2 I eyes, suspended reason, suppressed conscience, effaced moral nature, reacting everywhere as icebergs upon the moral temperature of communities and dead weights upon the uplifting spirit of man. Testimony enough is afforded on this point by the hideous dilemma in which persons find themselves who, in time of a war, are compelled to question its justice. Condemning and opposing the affair on its demerits, they are yet logically forced to acquit the men who carry it through, landing themselves in a moral inconsistency more painful and harmful than any flaw in logic. Denoun- cing an act, they yet acquit the actor ; stigmatizing it as a crime, they cannot brand the doer as a criminal ; deploring many of the incidents as positively fiendish, they continue to speak of the perpetrators as gentlemen and Christians, — and thus encourage the spirit which regards the army as a fetich against which, as such, no whisper must be spoken. The result is to entangle even military magnates in such confusions that while one eulogizes the army as “heroes on the battlefield, gentlemen on all other occasions,” 17 another denounces “the dissolute riffraff of the London pothouses,” 18 of whom the stout Jack Falstaff might speak the word, — “Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well as better.” Regarding their doings on the field, a military apolo- gist 19 will impudently assert that “any officer or soldier who had been in action, or who had ever seen any service, would tell them that there never was a British soldier who committed an act of cruelty or oppression” ; but the famous imperial poet 20 who set 122 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR out to make the soldier epical and ended by showing him beastly will give the true analysis : “ Speaking roughly, you must employ either blackguards or gen- tlemen — or, best of all, blackguards commanded by gentlemen — to do butcher’s work with efficiency and dispatch. ... A blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious to kill — and a little punishment soon teaches him how to guard his own skin and perforate another’s.” Yet even decent people will plead the soldier’s oath in extenuation of his vilest deeds, — such is the dulling, stupefying influ- ence of the military system upon the civilian mind itself. We must not, forsooth, blame the butcher (the word is Kipling’s — we thank thee, Jew, for teach- ing us that word !), for he had to obey orders ; he had taken the oath. But shall we not blame him for taking such an oath, for swearing to be a butcher ? ’T is there the trouble lies. The training of the soldier is a deliberate and con- sistent education in the arts of violence, in the charac- teristics of the brute as against those of the man. When some great generals lapse into public speech they make their meaning plain in good set terms. They declare their determination to foster the fighting instincts of their countrymen by every means in their power. They are in favor, they say, of any society that will keep fighting going on all over the world, and resuscitate it wherever it ceases . 21 It was by the sword — such is their pious creed — that their country made itself great, and by the sword its greatness must TO THE SOLDIER 123 be upheld. The pity is, that such persons imagine themselves to be good patriots, and to show a proper spirit of manliness ; they do not see themselves as mere uniformed and epauletted cannibals. Various forms of the handbook, or Vade Mecum , 22 are also issued from time to time by those in authority, in which the soldier may read what is expected from him in the art and ethic of war — set forth in little maxims and sententious counsels designed, for the most part, to foster the belief that, by his military oath, he is freed from the humanities and moral obligations which bind the common man. True, there is some mention of “ moral qualities,” but they are found to resolve them- selves into good spirits and courage. Faith, love, mercy are never so much as hinted at. But he will there find it written that “ his duties are the noblest that fall to man’s lot ” ; that “ soldiers, like mission- aries, must be fanatics,” and must “ despise all those of civil life” — that is, those who keep them; the army that begins as the paid tool of civilians ends by setting its foot on the breast of the civil powers. “ The soldier is a peculiar animal, that can alone be brought to the highest efficiency by inducing him to believe that he belongs to a regiment which is infinitely superior to the others around him.” “ Make a man proud of himself and of his corps.” Dress also is announced to be “of much more con- sequence than civil ministers imagine” — for “the better you dress a soldier, the more highly he will be thought of by women, and consequently by himself.” We may well pause here, and press the question home 124 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR upon our minds, whether we are justified in purchasing empire, territory, rule, trade, by the deliberate corrup- tion of millions of our fellow-men. Let it be assumed, for the moment, that armies are necessary to good government ; are we entitled to buy the blessings of civil life by the systematic demoralization of the entire military caste ? But the Soldier s Pocket Book goes a step farther in its authoritative plan of corruption, for it approves the fact that “ the soldiers of an army are, as a general rule, of one class in all respects ; are in the prime of youthful manhood, full of fire, passion, and recklessness, and not brought into contact with the sof- tening influences of old men and respectable women.” 23 It is here we touch the bottom rung in the process of brutalizing Kipling’s “butchers.” The vast majority of them are denied the humanizing influences of domes- ticity, and are avowedly encouraged to seek the society of women only amongst the lowest of the sex. In this direction it might have been thought the barrack room tended steadily enough with all its stimulus to idleness, licentiousness, disease; for even Kipling, who knows, assures us that “ single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints.” But the military authorities are not content with the natural gravitation of the barracks ; they must expedite the process by encouraging its en- slaved victims to avoid the company of respectable women . 24 Thus it is that ever below the deepest deep opens a deeper still; for on the heels of this abomina- ble crime follows the most dreadful contagious disease, and upon that, again, either openly or by stealth, the contagious disease Act , 25 plunging into hell 26 whole TO THE SOLDIER 125 hecatombs of victims, male and female, in order to secure the small boon of permitting the governing classes to sit securely on their seats of authority. “I need not enlarge,” says Richard Cobden, “upon the direct moral evils of such places [barracks]. One fact is enough. Real property always falls in value in the vicinity of barracks. A prison or a cemetery is a preferable neighbour.” Alas ! what curses war drags behind it ! It must not, of course, be thought that every soldier falls a victim to the seductions so carefully planned for him by his superiors ; many contrive to resist the corrupting influences of their environment through the force of early training or innate goodness, and succeed in retaining some por- tion of their manhood, even when they have parted with their freedom. When by these means he has been carefully edu- cated in brutishness the drilled automaton deteriorates into a tool for the accomplishment of the real purposes of his destroyers, — fit for any villainy under the name of patriotism, any brutality which danger converts into bravery, and any cruelty which can be justified by the plea of necessity. His rulers play craftily upon “the longing for distinction which is the mainspring to all military feeling,” and incite him to every kind of ad- venture with the promise that he shall be “ petted and rewarded,” if he show a sufficiency of that animal “courage” which “in a man is the highest of all virtues.” 2< After his native humanity has been re- duced to a minimum by the schooling of the barrack 126 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR room he is prepared to have the remaining fragment seared by the discipline of the camp and made callous by the practices of the battlefield. At the very barrack-room door (the preface of the Soldier s Pocket Book) he will be assisted to conjure up visions of “the wild life one has to lead in the field when cut adrift, perhaps entirely, from civilization,” and of the days when he may hope to see “ shot fired in anger.” He steps upon the inclined plane which leads downward through every kind of cruelty to man and beast, and touches bottom in such characters as “ Hell-Roaring Jake,” the general who instructed his subordinate to “ make Samar a howling wilderness,” to “ kill everything over ten,” “everything that was capable of bearing arms,” — who on his own admission had been guilty of deeds which an American news- paper, The Nation, pronounced to be “ unspeakably fiendish barbarities.” 28 When his comrades have been slain in fair fight it will appear admirable to nurse the spirit of vengeance till “neither death, nor hell, nor things above, nor things below, will hold him back from his blood feud .” 29 When his comrades have “stabbed and murdered prisoners and wounded just like a lot of Sioux,” the enemy will retaliate by vows to “ wipe that regiment off the rolls, no mercy and no quarter.” 30 To gain a spiteful advantage over his foe he will inflict the most repulsive and heartrending cruelties upon the helpless and unoffending creatures of the field . 31 Truer word than that of Sherman, the American general, was never spoken : “ War is cruelty ; and you cannot refine it.” 32 TO THE SOLDIER 127 Writers of poetry and romance have dwelt too exclu- sively on the brighter side of the soldier’s career, — his scorn of danger, recklessness of life, prodigality of blood, cheerful endurance of hardship, good comrade- ship, and esprit de corps; have assumed that these qualities were always displayed in worthy causes, and have touched the darker side with light and hasty pencil. It is this lower side which, though necessarily rejected by the rhymer and romancer, must be contem- plated unsparingly by the student of ethics . 33 An army is by no means a school of chivalry, for it assumes, to begin with, that the cause it fights for is just ; infers, in the next place, that the enemy is an aggressor and a traitor ; and proceeds, in the end, to adopt the most unchivalrous methods of getting the advantage over him. “We have had to burn down two pretty farms because the women would not give the general information he wanted ; . . . they got half an hour to clear out. . . . We have been burning all the farms we came across. From one kopje we saw twelve farms blazing, — some of them very pretty homesteads .” 34 “In ten miles we have burned no fewer than six farmhouses ; the wife watched from her sick husband’s bedside the burning of her home a hundred yards away. It seems as though a kind of domestic murder were being committed. I stood till late one night and saw the flames lick round each piece of the poor furniture, — the chairs and tables, the baby’s cradle, the chest of drawers containing a world of treasure, — and when I saw the poor housewife’s face pressed against the window of the neighboring house my own heart burned 128 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR with a sense of outrage. The effect on the Colonial troops, who are gratifying their feelings of hatred and revenge, is very bad. They swarm into the houses, looting and destroying, and filling the air with high- sounding cries of vengeance.” 35 “The nearer to [the Capital], the greater becomes the desolation, . . . for a hundred miles ... an absolute wilderness. It was here that the long-pent-up fury of Mr. Atkins was finally let loose ; here that the disasters and disgraces of . . . were wiped out in blood and fire ; . . . every night as the demoralized [foe] sought refuge in the hills . . . they looked back and saw miles of broad patches of flame . . . where their crops and home- steads had been twenty-four hours before .” 36 “[The foe] are simply our antagonists in the field, and because we cannot catch them ... we devastate their land and destroy their means of future livelihood. This is not war — this is revenge ; and a mean, sneaking, and cowardly revenge it is .” 37 The generous writer of these last words spoke from the warm dictates of his heart rather than from the facts of history. War upon women and children, or rather war upon men through their women and children, is one of the commonest devices of a campaign of subjugation. For the war god is not at heart a hero : he is a cowardly assassin — a ravisher and an incendiary . 38 The maxims for soldiers, already referred to, include rules directly contradicting the home-grown chivalry expressed in such proverbs as Never kick a man when he is down; for they require a beaten and retreating foe to be harassed by every pos- sible means. When that “ flying hell of horse and foot TO THE SOLDIER 129 and guns,” so vividly pictured by Browning, has swept and broken him, the soldier is instructed 39 to “run after him, hammer him with guns, charge him with cavalry, harass him with mounted infantry, keep push- ing him and hitting him from morning until night, . . . pursue him to the bitter end.” There is a “time to crush him with a hail of bullets. . . . Don’t rest satis- fied until you have pinched him well, given his main body a good kick. Hold on stoutly like a bulldog, . . . turn round and worry him again ; and if you cannot seize him in front by the collar, try to catch him by the breeches behind.” It is in accordance with these exalted principles of chivalry that when the enemy asks an armistice to bury his dead, it is to be refused ; if he seeks honorable terms, he is met by the peremptory demand for absolute and unconditional sur- render. A commander “ should not for a moment allow any absurd and false ideas of humanity or sentimental notions about chivalry to influence his decision. . . . Never allow any high-minded, chivalrous feelings to carry you away and grant really favorable terms to a well-beaten enemy.” This is called following up a victory, and is defended as being war. That is just the point : it is war ; and it is not chivalry. Honor and truthfulness have also been usually asso- ciated with chivalry, and therefore with war as a form of chivalry ; but though there is an artificial product called military honor, it is quite compatible with delib- erate falsehood, and espionage of the meanest kind. The common talk of the barracks and the camp 130 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR familiarizes the recruit with the fact that his employers, even in times of peace, keep whole swarms of spies to worm military secrets out of the officials of other governments, and spend enormous sums of secret money in suborning, bribing, and corrupting the serv- ants and soldiers belonging to other armies. He will thus be prepared for any act of deception the military authorities may require. He will hear of a great officer 40 going about among a disaffected populace, where he can “trust nobody, . . . not men, certainly not women," and therefore bribing children to be the unconscious destroyers of their fathers, for “ the children are the only safe draws. What I do is to stuff my pockets full of sweets, go out for a walk, and talk to the chil- dren. They tell you where their papas have gone.’’ The maxims for soldiers will be a valuable auxiliary in this process of turning an honest man into a uniformed liar. He learns the great distress of his superiors that “ we will keep hammering along with the conviction that Honesty is the best policy , and that Truth always wins in the long inn. These pretty little sentences do well for a child’s copy book, but the man who acts upon them in war had better sheathe his sword for- ever,” 41 and that is a consummation the powers of the world cannot contemplate without dismay. Arrived on the field, the sworn dupe will receive practical lessons in the art of scientific falsehood, will find strategic lying carried to the pitch of a fine art. The ninth commandment follows the eighth into the limbo of discarded moralities, and the Bible packed into his knapsack by a churchgoing mother is overlaid by TO THE SOLDIER 13 I the Pocket Book provided by a war-waging general. In this military pentateuch he will find a commander encouraged to spread false reports in order to deceive the enemy, — for “ many a success has been obtained by circulating rumors of intended movements, and then doing the very reverse ” ; to write false letters for the purpose of letting them fall into the enemy’s hands, — and a dispatch bearer “ should carry two dispatches, one real, the other false,” or, “ by spreading false news among the gentlemen of the press, use them as a medium by which to deceive an enemy” ; to forge telegrams and messages in your enemy’s name, “direct- ing them to move so as to fall into a net prepared for them” ; to invent news “with a view to puzzling and misleading the enemy.” Deceit, personal, general, wholesale, raised to a height of perfection which Ana- nias might have envied ; elaborated and enmeshed till “ Lying as one of the fine arts ” starts forth a compan- ion picture to De Quincey’s “ Murder as one of the fine arts,” but requiring the genius of the same incom- parable connoisseur for its analysis and eulogy, — that is the kind of deceit fostered by military life, and which, learned there, must continuously infect every depart- ment of civil and domestic life like a black plague. Unlike its commercial namesake (which is not naturally, but only occasionally and through individual perverse- ness, false), the military process known as “ invest ment ” is always and necessarily an acted and spoken lie : “The true object of the movement should only be known to those two officers, but a false one must be found, and when within one or two days’ marches of 132 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR the place excuses must be found, and made the sub- ject of general conversation, for having deviated from the previously announced intention, the true one being denied up to the last day.” Ananias might have saved life and lands both if he had received these instruc- tions to an envoy, — “ taking care in conversation to impart to the enemy whatever impressions it may have been previously decided it was desirable to convey, and concealing under an air of extreme soldierlike frankness andvoltcbility all that it is desirable to conceal.” The commander in chief regrets that “ the word ‘spy’ conveys something as repulsive as ‘slave,’” and does his best to remove the opprobrium from that indispensable auxil- iary ; for the hired liar is as necessary to his country’s glory as the hired killer, — “a few thousand pounds is of no consequence to a nation, but if well laid out in obtaining information, it may be the indirect means of adding to the victories of one’s country; . . . gold, that mighty lever with men, is powerful enough to unlock secrets that would otherwise remain unknown ; ... it is always best to pay informers and spies by results ; . . . all [spies] should be petted and made a great deal of, being liberally paid, and large rewards given them ; . . . his police, by means of spies, should keep him well informed of all that passes among the inhabitants ; . . . with good spies in the enemy’s camps, they can send their information by a trusty peasant, who can pass without suspicion,” — and so on through pages of pre- lections whose single object is to remove the home- made morality of an ill-taught youth, and substitute a code of morals which has a war office for a Sinai, a field TO THE SOLDIER 133 marshal for a Moses, and a Decalogue with all the “nots” ostentatiously rubbed out. Here are plans for organiz- ing entire corps of spies, personators, informers, de- serters, bribers, corruptors (“ should be given plenty to drink if he likes to have it, in the hope of being able to extract news from him when liquor has untied his tongue ”), and all manner of liars ever gotten beneath “the blanket of the dark” by the “father of lies.” An army is here proved to be a school of deceit, wherein the very old Serpent writes the headlines, and Beelzebub brandishes the birch ; for to falsehood in all its shades and grades it adds the further sins of hypocrisy and blasphemy. The same Bible which forbids the doing of evil that good (even your “ country’s victories ”) may come is made the grand instrument of fraud. “ It is a good plan to write secret correspondence in lemon juice across or along the edge of a newspaper or the pages of a book, which, like a Testament, would excite no suspicion. . . . Bona fide spies should always have about their persons some means of proving themselves to be whom they represent, — a certain coin of a certain date, a Bible of a certain edition, a Testament with the third or the seventh leaf torn out," etc. The eighth commandment being formally cleared out of the way, “looting comes easy to most soldiers ; very few men distinguish between meum and tuum ; ” 42 and an army quite naturally becomes a band of robbers. “They make great hauls, — watches, clothes, money, and jewellery .” 43 Men put on duty nominally to prevent loot- ing, loot ; and commanding officers dispatch large cases home by government vessels . 44 Arrived at a beautifully 134 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR furnished house, the officers secure all “ they can make use of, ... I secure a Bible, . . . after getting all we want out of the house, our men put a charge under it and blow it up. ... It was a lovely house .” 45 The warrior’s appetite for Bibles is to be noted as a psycho- logical curiosity. He is so greedy of the “ word of the Lord” (though, alas! only for its cash or curio value, or because it contains the family register of a dead foe and his vanished household) that benevolent people 46 at home “ desire it to be known that they will be glad to arrange for the return” of the stolen Scriptures, and some scores are, as a matter of fact, sent back to their former owners. Which, in turn, starts another curious psychological puzzle, — why benevolence should care to restore a man’s Bible after war has destroyed his household gods, and even starved his wife and chil- dren to death ; and whether the war-blasted solitary would care to receive back his Bible from the hands of his destroyer. In such a case the book of inspiration might well prove to be the book of expiration — of faith ! The reasoned immoralities of war being such, it is natural that its actual performances should plumb yet deeper depths of baseness. Spite of international cove- nants, the popular saying, All' s fair in love and war , does, to this hour, represent its methods, — all rules, conventions, treaties, being blown to the winds under the pressure and passion of the fight. The records of any campaign will supply evidences that a commander does not scruple to go beyond the formal rules of the TO THE SOLDIER 135 game if it promises him an advantage, or when the laws of warfare solemnly drawn up by the nations conflict with the exigencies of the position. He is ready to break an arrangement made with the enemy, throwing the blame on the shoulders of some subordinate ; to break promises given to civil populations as well as to combatants, tamper with prisoners’ letters, organize and arm savages against a white enemy under the pre- tense of “defending their own territory,” permit orgies of rape, rapine, and murder under the guise of “ looking for rebels”; to manufacture expanding bullets, — declar- ing that when these and a thousand similar wiles are “ to our interest ”... any means to that end is ad- visable.” 47 The nations have universally selected the effigies of the nobler creatures for their emblems, — the lion, bear, eagle, — which, had they voice, might de- cline the patronage of wiles and cruelties of which they were incapable ; and though the meaner beasts might, with greater justice, be selected for the place of honor, they, in their turn, might protest that they were un- worthy to patronize the fighting man, whose treacheries infinitely exceed anything within the compass of the mere brute. If the courage of the lion is displayed, not less is the fierceness of the tiger and the cunning of the fox ; if here the brawny honesty of the bear, there, also, the sly rapacity of the wolf. If his best friend could not affirm the harmlessness of the dove, his worst enemy dare not deny the wisdom of the serpent. The snake in the grass lies not more cunningly in ambush than the lurking soldier, neither does the wildcat spring with crueler thirst to blood. If valor displays itself 136 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR manlike out here in the open, craft sneaks worm- like, on its belly, down there in the cover. If in mid- field men clash together in a trial of strength not without its saving touch of grandeur, on the fringe the suborned traitor is drawing forces off, and yonder the paid spy brings auxiliaries up. If at one time men accept a challenge to stand up to fight on equal terms, at another they are lured out to be taken at a disad- vantage and fallen upon in a general massacre. Tol- stoy tells that when speaking to a cadet from the military college who had come to him for religious advice, “Towards the end of the conversation I men- tioned wine, and advised him not to drink.” He replied: “ But in military service it is sometimes necessary. . . . Why, at Geok-Tepe, for instance, when Skobeleff had to massacre the inhabitants, the soldiers did not wish to do it ; and he had drink served out, and then . . .” 48 But no people monopolizes the heart of stone ; as, for instance, this : “ By Kitchener’s orders the tomb had been profaned and razed to the ground. The corpse of the Mahdi was dug up, the head was separated from the body and passed from hand to hand till it reached Cairo. The limbs and trunk were flung into the Nile. Such was the chivalry of the conquerors.” 49 These are the arts of war, and will be defended as war. Yes, it is war, but it is not chivalry. It will be urged that these devices are inseparable from war, and are there- fore to be condoned. Yes, they are inseparable from war, — to demonstrate that and drive it home to the heart is the very object for which these pages are writ- ten. War being granted, these effects are inevitable TO THE SOLDIER 137 as burning from flame. But war as their cause is en- tirely preventable. Whatever chivalry goes with war does not belong to it ; is accident ; is displayed in purer form in the spheres of hardy toil, fraternal service, and humane sacrifice. Essentially, war is meanness. Complete indifference to human life is often, in these various ways, perfected in the soldier’s character ; he becomes inured to sights and prepared for deeds he would formerly have contemplated with disgust. Dat- ing his letter from the Christian festival of peace, he is not ashamed to indite to his friends sentiments such as these : “ The screams of the artillery horses struck by shot or shell, and the groans of wounded men were awful, and filled us with a yearning desire, which you at home cannot fathom, to get at our foes with the bayonet. Hang firing! was the thought of us all; let us stab and thrust with our cheese knives. How we grumbled and cursed at having to retire with the Dutch devils firing into our backs” ; or these : “I fol- lowed, and soon came up to him. He turned and fired. Instinctively I turned my head, and the bullet struck my helmet. The scoundrel then fell on his knees and begged for mercy. Mad with rage, I rode at him with tilted lance. It entered one cheek and came out at the other side of his head. He rolled on his back, but, to make sure, I pricked him in the stomach. As far as I know, this was the only man I killed, though I pricked several who were either wounded or apparently dead.” 60 Popular literature sedulously fosters the tradition of noble courage in connection with soldierly character, but military authorities 51 testify to a baser side : 138 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR “ The officer who acts upon the principle that all his soldiers are equally brave, will some clay find out his error to his cost, . . . men are only too fond of help- ing their wounded comrades out of fire, and when once away, it is difficult to get them back again ; . . . man for man, the Afridee, the Bedouin Arab, the Zulu, and the Maori is braver than many of the men in every regiment, in every army” : there are “malingerers” and “ skulkers of all ranks.” Desperately as its advo- cates may plead, warfare is the worst possible remedy for these and other ethical defects ; but on the con- trary tends, in the words of a British general, to “ turn the men into cowards or butchers.” From recruit to field marshal the art and practice of war exhibits one continuous process whereby a fellow-creature is de- graded from a man into a soldier. Everything con- nected with it tends to blunt the soldier’s sensibilities, deaden his remorse, and impair his sense of the sanc- tity of life. He sees comrades bleeding to death on the field or rotting in hospital ; they fall out of the ranks, and he marches on leaving them to certain death. The commanding officer is himself compelled to disregard the sufferings of the wounded in times of stress ; they were taken out to fight, not to be nursed. The private does not blame the general for this ; he knows it can- not be otherwise, — that if the general’s choice lies be- tween fighters and invalids, ammunition and mattresses, batteries and ambulances, guns and drugs, horses and nurses, he must, in every case, choose the former, and permit the latter to take their chance. “ An army or a fighting force, no matter how small, should not have TO THE SOLDIER 139 its action hampered by having to care for the welfare of sick or wounded men ; . . . never allow your men to fall out to pick up wounded men; . . . the wounded must take their chance till the operation is finished.” 52 The splendid machine does not murmur ; and the stoi- cism with which he meets his own lingering doom comes to be matched by the unconcern with which he regards the doom of comrades, and the stolidness with which he inflicts it on his foe. When the foe has “ fled in a thick mass, and the mounted infantry has pursued them for twelve miles, shooting from the saddle, . . . hardly less than three or four hundred killed,” 53 his ardent soul will, with the comprehending hate of a Caligula who wished that his enemies had but one neck, long to “get the beggars all in a heap, and then drop a few lyddite shells among them,” 54 or he will play the hero in an epic such as this : “ The other night, when ordered out at midnight, we proceeded in deadly silence, with bayo- nets fixed, with instructions not to shoot, but to use bayonet and butt — and take no prisoners. We take no more notice of shrieks for mercy than we would of the cawing of crows. You won’t be able to understand these things over there, but they are the correct thing here.” 55 Thus he plies his sword like a sickle, shoots with compunction as slight as if men were ninepins, and at last finds terms in which to justify the slaughter of the wounded on the field or the murder of those who have flung down their arms and begged for quarter. The Soldier s Pocket Book (which may be regarded as his New Testament) starts him on the gory path of the assassin and the butcher by its plain instructions 140 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR that “ with all savages, to kill its warriors is invariably the most efficacious policy, and it should therefore be regarded as of primary importance.” 56 But the policy of massacre extends itself to peoples other than “ sav- ages,” as the annals of every war bear ample and melancholy proof. Every military people have their version of the Soldier s Pocket Book, or New Testa- ment ; and there was never a war of any magnitude since the world began that had not its necessary accom- paniments in the massacre of wounded and the orders “Take no prisoners.” This one red vignette shall stand for symbol of the whole : “ The ‘ Cease fire ’ [at Eland’s Laagte] had sounded several times on the summit, but the firing did not cease. I don’t know why it was. Perhaps the Boers were still resisting in parts. Certainly many of our men were drunk with ex- citement. ‘Wipe out Majuba!’ was a constant cry. But the Boers had gone. The remnants of them were struggling to get away in the twilight over a bit of rocky plain on our left. Then the Dragoon Guards got them and three times went through. A Dragoon Guards corporal who was there tells me the Boers fell off their horses and rolled among the rocks, hiding their heads in their arms and calling for mercy, — call- ing to be shot, anything to escape the stab of those terrible lances through their backs and bowels. But not many escaped. ‘We just gave them a good dig as they lay,’ were the corporal’s words. Next day most of the lances were bloody.” 57 The horrid facts drive us to the same conclusion as Swift’s : “The trade of a soldier is held the most honorable of all others ; because a soldier TO THE SOLDIER 141 is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who had never offended him, as possibly he can.” It is in the nature of such a creature that no consideration of the gross amount of suffering is per- mitted to move him aside from the immediate thing commanded ; the bit of work cut out for him and his company has to be done ; and done it is with as little fear as pity. The daughter of the farmhouse may sit down to the piano and play “Home, Sweet Home” to him; but that cannot soften a war-hardened sinner; and presently he will carry off the father a prisoner, and send the smoke and fire of that home in clouds to heaven . 58 In action, he has no more ruth of being killed than of killing. He will narrate how, after some faulty sighting, he at last hit his foe: “ I hit him right in the forehead, and he fell over. Doctor, you should have seen it ; it was a dream ; it was the happiest day of my life .” 59 M. Verestchagin, the famous Russian battle painter, who defined war as “ the antithesis of all morality, of all humanity,” nevertheless declared that it “ has all the excitement of a well-organized and very dangerous sport. I have killed people myself in battle, and I can say from experience that the excite- ment, and even the feeling of satisfaction in killing a man, is the same as when you bring down game in hunting. For man as he is war, it can be said without exaggeration, is a very attractive business .” 60 Drunk with excitement, the fighter is frequently unable to tell what he has done. Electric brutality thrills him to the marrow of the bone, turning what should be horror into “glory,” — that delirium graphically described by a 142 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR great general: “We all ran forward at a good pace under what seemed to be a well-sustained fire from the enemy’s works. I could see a considerable number of them on the top of the parapet or stockade, and above all the noise one heard their defiant shouts of ‘Come on! Come on ! ’ in the Burmese tongue. What a supremely delightful moment it was ! No one in cold blood can imagine how intense is the pleasure of such a position who has not experienced it himself ; there can be noth- ing else in the world like it, or that can approach its inspiration, its intense sense of pride. For the mo- ment your whole existence, soul and body, seems to revel in a true sense of glory. The feeling is catching, it flies through a mob of soldiers and makes them, whilst the fit is on them, absolutely reckless of all con- sequences. The blood seems to boil, the brain to be on fire. Oh, that I could again hope to experience such sensations! I have won praise since then, and com- manded at what in our little army we call battles, and know what it is to gain the applause of soldiers ; but, in a long and varied military life, although as a captain I have led my own company in charging an enemy, I have never experienced the same unalloyed and elevat- ing satisfaction, or known again the joy I then felt as I ran for the enemy’s stockades at the head of a small mob of soldiers, most of them boys like myself .” 61 Sometimes the occasion is so terrific and overpowering that sensation is transcended, the satiated nerves re- fuse to feel or transmit the concussions which paralyze the shattered air, so that “ the sensation of being in the midst of this scene of death was calm and sweet. The TO THE SOLDIER 143 thought of death was not present. When the first shell burst upon our battery we forgot our dreams, our thoughts, our griefs, our joys, and there was but one sensation, — that of sweet, unutterable serenity, and this lasted to the end.” 62 On more ordinary occasions his senses are preternaturally sharpened, so that, as a popular officer owns, he feels buoyed up with a feeling of elation, but also “with a cruel undercurrent which the Kaffirs so aptly describe as seeing red.” Kaffir, we thank thee for that word! The embattled fighter is a being who sees red, — the blood is in his eyes as well as on his hands, fills soul as well as sense, and it is only when worked up to this height of frenzy that he is able — according to the strong lines of Byron — to perform All that the mind would shrink from of excesses ; All that the body perpetrates of bad ; All that we read, hear, dream, of man’s distresses ; All that the devil would do if run stark mad ; All that defies the worst which pen expresses ; All by which hell is peopled, or as sad As hell. Inflamed by the passions which he has been taught to regard as the working of his noblest instincts, fired with military ardor, thirsting for revenge, burning to sustain or enhance the reputation of his regiment, maddened by calumnies carefully circulated against the foe, per- suaded and persuading himself that they are vermin fit only to be exterminated, he is ready to see justice where formerly he would have seen cruelty, heroism where once brutality, necessity instead of murder and revenge. When reduced to this besotted condition 144 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR all means will seem lawful that promise a victorious issue ; he is prepared to add the cold, calculated cruelties of a Torquemada to the hot blood lust of a Tamerlane; the Inquisition will be set up within the camp; and the astonished sun will look down upon the spectacle of the most civilized and Christian nations of the world putting their captives to the torture. 63 No comparison is possible between the man he was and the fiend he now is. Formerly “an officer and a gentleman,” he will now write gustfully how the lancers got in among the enemy in the twilight and enjoyed “the most ex- cellent pig-sticking for about ten minutes, the bag being about sixty,” 64 and in the phraseology of a rat catcher describe the losses of a brave enemy as “total bag . . . 68 1 .” 65 Aping his superiors, the private will entertain his loving friends at home with tales of how “man-hunt- ing is a better game than football,” “ pig-sticking the best of sports,” whilst “ shooting [foes] is like shooting rabbits,” and he is “enjoying himself very much.” 66 Once a brave man, now a brute beast ; once merciful, now a monster; once sober, now drunk with blood; once honest, now a looter of the living and a stripper of the dead ; once virtuous, he makes acquaintance with respectable women at last in the way of rape and ravishment. 67 The wounded colonel will prop his back against a tree and exhort his men to “exterminate the vermin.” 68 The stakes being life and death, chivalry and religion disappear, and the latent savage emerges thick with primeval slime. “ Give ’em hell, boys ! ” are the words with which he heartens his comrades on to the fight ; and, true to the figure, the reporter tells TO THE SOLDIER 145 how they “fought like demons and yelled like savages.” He tells how, after the battle, they put the wounded prisoners “ through the mill,” and shot the unwounded after they had been made to dig their ozvn gi'avesP Discovering a “sniper,” they “fairly riddled him with bullets,” then “got to work on him with the bayonets,” lastly “tore his arms and legs off.” 70 When the gen- eral tells him that all prisoners taken will have to be fed out of his own limited rations, he takes it as “a pretty plain hint that he is to take no prisoners, but kill all.” 71 To the martial mind, a rebellious popula- tion is only “ pacified ” when the natives lie (peacefully enough at last) in their quiet graves . 72 If it were the case that war’s repulsive brutalities were confined to the creatures who welter together amid the sweat and blood of the cockpit, war would, however disgusting to the ethical and aesthetic senses, be able to plead that the actual sinners were also the only sufferers ; but (not to speak of the fact that these same sinners have mothers, sisters, wives, whose hearts they are breaking in the home land) they emerge from the cockpit to overrun the invaded territory with sword and torch, famine and plague, bringing similar deaths and ruin upon the noncombatant population. They trample down growing corn, burn homesteads, break dams, turn women and children out into blackened and foodless deserts, or keep them captive on half rations, solely to strike at the combatants and bring them to submission through their domestic affections and miseries. Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn. 146 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR “ We burn ” [the houses], declares a gallant officer, “ because your men won’t give in ; if that won’t do, we’ll burn the women next .” 73 Burning, in truth, might be the kinder method when — as testified by numerous witnesses who might be multiplied a hun- dred fold, and not in one war only but in a thousand — the alternative is such deeds as these : “ Our prog- ress was like the old-time forays in the Highlands in Scotland two centuries ago. . . . We moved on from valley to valley ‘lifting’ cattle and sheep, burning, loot- ing, and turning out the women and children to sit and cry beside the ruins of their once beautiful farm- steads .” 74 ... “I gave the inmates — three women and some children — ten minutes ; my men then fetched bundles of straw. The women cried, and the children stood holding on to them and looking with large frightened eyes at the burning house. We left them a forlorn little group, smoke and flame stream- ing overhead. The people had thought we had called for refreshments, and one of the women went to get milk. Then we had to tell them we had come to burn the place down.” 75 . . . “Told a woman and two daughters to take a few things and quit in ten minutes. We then set the whole place on fire. They dropped on their knees and prayed and sang, weeping bitterly the while. One of the poor women went raving mad.” 76 . . . “ When the flames burst from the doomed place the poor woman threw herself on her knees, tore open her bodice, and bared her breasts, screaming, ‘ Shoot me, shoot me, I ’ve nothing more to live for, now that my husband is gone, and our farm is burnt, TO THE SOLDIER 147 and our cattle taken ! ’ ” 77 . . . “ What is that hell- hound — I ask pardon for the expression, but I can give him no other title — Colonel Butler doing now? Did he not, in the last summer, go up the forks of the Susquehanna and lay desolate every little township and settlement he could find ? ” 78 This is war ? Let it be war : then war is not chivalry, war is not courage ; war is despicable meanness and cowardice. War, is it ? Be it war : then an army is a manufactory for monsters, a school for cowards ! The case is seen to be the more desperate when we reflect that the evils connected with the corruption of the soldier’s character do not pass away with a cam- paign, but endure and carry their baneful leaven into the abodes and years of peace. “ It is not generally known,” says a military authority, “ that in a battle many of the men engaged become temporarily insane, . . . will butcher the wounded and even turn on their own com- rades. . . . This temporary insanity (the medical offi- cers call it “war madness”) comes from the mind being overstrained. ... Now when we consider what our soldiers went through in [a certain campaign] one ceases to be surprised at the murders and crimes of violence committed by some of them since their return.” 79 Surely. To say that a man can kill, wound, ravage, plunder, and then return to his friends as mild and unselfish as he went away, is to state a moral impossibility. Like a certain other evil of which Robert Burns spoke, warfare “ hardens a’ within, and petrifies the feeling.” Brutishness and violence tend to become habitual, and exhibit their presence long after the 148 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR occasion which first evoked them has passed away. It has, as a matter of fact, been noted that after all great wars crimes of violence tend to increase in the lands to which the soldiers return. The newspapers record that the arrival of soldiery invariably marks the com- mencement of a series of disorderly scenes. 80 How can it be otherwise? Years of obedience to a visible and inexorable authority, of alert eagerness to shoot or alert anxiety to avoid being shot, of weariness on the march and excitement on the field, — these cannot fail to react in a restlessness of spirit, a tendency to lawlessness, disdain for the tamer methods of civil life and security, and a corresponding demoralization to the civil population. A laborer is charged with neglect- ing to maintain his wife, and the defense is that he had been serving abroad and had been “ demoralized by the war.” 81 It is a typical case, and might be illustrated a hundredfold. A fatal riot occurs, and three soldiers are condemned to death. Appeals are presented in favor of reprieve, and are based upon the theory that “ having been taught to take human life on every possible occasion, they were so accustomed to killing that in the heat of the moment it became the most natural thing for them to do !” 82 The very acceptance of the soldier’s trade tends to bring the conscience of civil society down to the military level. Thus the baleful circle is complete. We deliberately set men apart and train them to do the works of the devil, and then wonder that hell gets loose ! If a nation is so wicked as to prepare for war, it need not be sur- prised that it has to fight, nor so foolish as to complain TO THE SOLDIER 149 of the excesses of the combatants. What it sows it must reap. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles. The price we pay for corrupting the soldier is our own corruption. The political greatness of a na- tion is ill founded upon the demoralization of a class. If only for the nation’s sake, it is time to abolish the soldier ; if only for the soldier’s sake, it is time to abolish war. REFERENCES 1. New Age , May 24, 1900. 2. Rev. Norman Bennet, Matichester Evening News, Novem- ber 17, 1900. 3. “ Hymnsof the British Army: 1 Onward, Christian Soldiers.’” Preeminently “ the ” song of praise of the British Army. Many years ago the writer attended the church parade service in the little garrison town of G . Most of the men had, unfortunately, come to church unprovided with their “ Hymn Books Ancient and Modern,” — a little weakness common with Tommy, one must add in all fairness, — and were therefore unable to join in the singing of a hymn, just announced, with the regimental choir. The chaplain looked crestfallen, nay appeared to seem sorrowful, when he saw that the choir of band boys were having it all their own way ! Up jumped old Colonel M — • — , the kindly, and popular with the men, commanding officer, and in a sotto voce exclaimed to the preacher, “ Let ’s have No. 391, Hardy ! the men all know it.” This saved the situation, for 391 it was in all sincerity, as the grand old strains echoed and reechoed throughout the building, blended with the rough voices of the men to the tune of “ Onward, Christian Soldiers ! ” — Ex-Soldier, Newcastle Daily Chron- icle, April 26, 1903. 4. Canon Knox-Little, New Age, May 28, 1903. 5. Salvation Army officer, War against War in South Africa, p. 186. 6. George IV : Letter of Captain Thomas Thrush to the king, 1841. 7. Daily News, August 6, 1902. 8. Soldier’s letter, Reynolds' Newspaper, London, January 24, 1902. 150 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 9. The Kaiser, Coticord, London, February, 1905. 10. Journal of George Fox , Vol. I, p. 469. 11. The Soldier’s Creed, quoted from memory, from some fugitive source : “ Captain, what do you think,” I asked, “ Of the part your soldiers play? ” But the captain answered, “ I do not think; “ I do not think, I obey 1 ” “ Do you think you should shoot a patriot down, “ Or help a tyrant slay?” But the captain answered, “ I do not think ; “ I do not think, I obey ! ” “ Do you think your conscience was meant to die, “And your brain to rot away?” But the captain answered, “ I do not think ; “I do not think, I obey!” “ Then if this is your soldier’s creed,” I cried, “ You ’re a mean, unmanly crew ; “And for all your feathers and gilt and braid, “ I am more of a man than you ! “ For whatever my place in life may be, “And whether I swim or sink, “ I can say with pride, ‘ I do not obey ; “ ‘ I do not obey, I think! ’ ” 12. Human Toads and Military Harrows: When the Dreyfus case was engaging attention in France a book was published containing allegations of amazing brutality against the noncommissioned officers of the French army. Though it was gener- ally admitted that the charges were true, the author was punished for making them. We remember that at the time the German press com- mented with much self-satisfaction on the subject, pointing out that the attitude of the German officers and noncommissioned officers towards the men under them was totally different, and was indeed quite benignant and fatherly. Since then the world has learnt a good deal, particularly in connection with the trial of an officer who recently murdered a private for failing to salute him, and the still more recent trial of an officer who committed the indiscretion of dealing with these subjects in a novel. In the trial reported to-day a lieutenant of infantry has been convicted of 618 cases of maltreatment and 57 cases of improper treatment of soldiers under him, and a sergeant in another regiment has been convicted of 1520 TO THE SOLDIER 151 cases of maltreatment and 100 cases of improper treatment. The num- ber of offenses in each case suggests pretty plainly how very bad things must be in the German army before they are noticed as exceptional. The Military Court expressed the opinion that Franzky had behaved with the brutality of a cattle driver. The evidence of a large number of witnesses showed that he habitually struck his men with a cudgel or whip, spat in their faces, and tortured them in every possible way, being especially cruel to Poles. The men deposed they were so afraid that nobody ventured to complain. Another sergeant has been sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for squirting ink at ladies in the street. Dundee Advertiser , December 17, 1903. 13. Solitude , Vol. II, p. 284. 14. Soldier's Pocket Book , pp. 128, 134. 15. War correspondent, Daily News. 16. Scribner's Magazine , New York, August, 1900. 17. Lord Roberts, New Age, November 14, 1901. 18. Major Rasch, Times, October 15, 1901. 19. Colonel Kingscote, Times, January 16, 1899. 20. Rudyard Kipling, “Drums of the Fore and Aft.” 21. General Gatacre, Norwich, 1899. 22. Soldier's Pocket Book, pp. 4, 5, 271. 23. Ibid., p. 177. 24. Marriage discouraged : Permission to marry Mil not be granted unless: (a) a vacancy exists on the married establishment ; (6) the commanding officer has satisfied himself as to the woman’s character; (c) the soldier, if below the rank of sergeant, has (i) ^5 in the savings bank, (ii) seven years’ service, exclusive of boy’s service, (iii) two good-conduct badges. — New Army Orders, September, 1902. 25. Prostitution encouraged : Extracts from Circular Memorandum sent to all the cantonments of India by Quarter-Master General Chapman, in the name of the com- mander in chief of the army in India (Lord Roberts), and from other official documents (see The Queen's Daughters in India, pp. 17-19): “ In the regimental bazaars it is necessary to have a sufficient number of women, to take care that they are sufficiently attractive, to provide them with proper houses, and above all to insist upon means cf ablution being always available. 152 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR “ If young soldiers are carefully advised in regard to the advantage of ablution, and recognize that convenient arrangements exist in the regimental bazaar (i.e. in the chakla, or brothel), they may be expected to avoid the risks involved in association with women who are not rec- ognized (that is, licensed) by the regimental authorities.” The official record of what followed as a resoalt of effort on the part of underofficials to carry out the instructions of the commander in chief (Lord Roberts) is truly shocking, as might be expected. The officer in command of the Second Battalion Cheshire Regiment sent the following application to the magistrate of Umballa cantonment: “ Requisition for extra attractive women for regimental bazaar, in accordance with Circular Memorandum, 21a.”" “ These women’s fares,” it continues, “ by one-horse conveyance from Umballa to Solon will be paid by the Cheshire Regiment on arrival. Please send young and attractive women as laid down in Quartermaster- General’s Circular, No. 21a.” Another commanding officer writes: “ There are not enough women ; they are not attractive enough. More and younger women are required.” Yet another commanding officer writes : “ I have ordered the number of prostitutes to be increased to twelve, and have given special instructions as to the four additional women being young and of attractive appearance.” 26. The Hell of Harlotry: The total number of admissions to hospital of cases of venereal disease amongst the Indian troops rose in 1895 to 522 per 1000; and the number of men out of service, owing to these maladies, was 46 per thousand per day. — Lord George Hamilton, House of Commons, January 25, 1897. No record is kept of the sufferings of the women. 27. Soldier's Pocket Book , p. 6. 28. New Age , May 15 and 22, 1902. 29. War against War in South Africa , p. 214. 30. Ibid., p. 219. 31. Horrors perpetrated upon Animals : (a) Testimony of a trooper, Daily News , August 17, 1901. After a day’s rest we left that place in a shocking state. We killed thousands of sheep, and put them in every house. The stench in a week will be horrible. It is to prevent [the enemy] from returning. ( 'b ) Testimony of Mr. Lawrence Richardson (personal letter). I had this confirmed by [officers on both sides] ; . . . told me how, having caught some prisoners, he made them carry these rotting car- casses out of the houses before letting them go. TO THE SOLDIER 153 (c) Testimony of a volunteer, Truth , London, December 11, 1901. One day I saw them bringing in about two thousand sheep and Angora goats, which they got in a heap and told off a lot of niggers and soldiers to kill. They got sticks and stones and other primitive weapons, and started to bash into them. About five o’clock the men went back again to their squads. At eight half of the “dead flock” were standing up again, some with horns smashed off, some with eyes gouged out, others with injured backs, many tongueless. About this time I saw a lot of niggers, armed with sticks, going down to do the job over again, and until morning the air was filled with the sound of the beating of sticks and the shrieks of maimed goats and sheep. 32. “ War’s Hellish Panorama,” New Age, November 22, 1900. The scenes I have witnessed during the three days since the steamer left Blagovestschensk are horrible beyond all powers of description ; it is the closing tableau of a fearful human tragedy. What I have seen is nothing compared to what others must have witnessed. Two thousand persons were deliberately drowned at Morxo, 2000 at Rahe, and 8000 in and around Blagovestschensk: a total of 12,000 human beings. Twelve thousand corpses were encumbering this river, among which were thou- sands of women and children. Navigation was all but impossible last week. Every moment the boat had to plow her way through a tangled, mangled mass of corpses strung and lashed together by their long hair; the river’s banks were literally covered with them, and in the curves of the winding stream were to be seen dark, putrid, smelling masses of human flesh and bone surging and swaying in the steamer’s wake and wash. In vain the captain ordered “ Full speed ahead”; the sight, the smell was ever with us. This is Russian work. But a Reuter's telegram tells us that several Russian papers “comment indignantly upon the acts of vio- lence, destruction, pillage, and profanation,” committed by German forces in China. And, indeed, letters from German soldiers at the front are sad enough reading. The Berlin correspondent of The Morjiing Leader tells us that letters are published which describe the men as reveling in the cruelties mentioned in the previous accounts: “They talk of ‘tickling fourteen Chinamen’ with bayonets, of giving eight more ‘blue beans (i.e. bullets) to swallow,’ and similar cold-blooded atrocities. Our boat, loaded with about fifteen tons, is towed by Chinamen. When the China- man refuses to pull he is belabored with a bamboo stick or simply shot down. We stop at the villages and towns on the way and take what- ever we want, — fowls, eggs, pigeons, grapes, etc. ; if the Chinamen show signs of objecting we fix our bayonets. One man can easily shoot a hundred Chinese; when you aim at them they fall on their knees and 154 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR shout ‘ Leidi, leidi, leidi.’ There are thousands of corpses floating about in the river, and the stench is awful.” The same journal “also gives currency to a letter from a China warrior in Pekin who wrote that his battalion was ordered to bind the Chinese prisoners together by their pigtails and shoot them.” 33. Professional v. Ethical View of Warfare: The following appeared in The Tablet , London (Cardinal Vaughan’s organ), for January 5, 1901. Sir: Under the heading “Letters from the Front,” you print in your issue of last Saturday an incident that I think calls for some comment. The writer — presumably an English officer — calls it “a good story,” and is evidently proud of it; yet it is actually sickening in its cowardice and brutality. A Boer fought for his side until the kopje where he stood was taken. He then threw down his rifle and asked for his life, and for answer got a coarse jibe, and was spitted, unarmed, on the bayonet of an English soldier. May I ask if this is not a case of foul and cowardly murder? It is said that the soldier was a Connaught Ranger. I am sorry if it is so, but I daresay you will find brutal blackguards in an Irish as well as in an English regiment in whom the instincts of the wild beast are roused by war ; but it is surprising to observe such a deadening of the moral sense amongst the officers of the army as that they send around as “a good story” amongst themselves, a deed which is only worthy of savages. But what is most surprising of all is that you, a Catholic journalist, should so far forget the very elements of Catholic principles and Christian feeling as to publish, evidently with exultation, so abomi- nable a crime. Perhaps it may assist you to see this foul deed as others see it if you ask yourself, What more right had the English soldier to insult and murder that single, unarmed Boer, who surrendered, than De La Rey would have had to put a bullet through the brain of one of the officers of the Northumberland Regiment who surrendered the other day ? Is it the code that Englishmen are to get quarter — and goodness knows they have sought it often enough for glory in this war — but they are not to give it ? In requesting you to publish this letter I have to say that my pur- pose in writing it is to undo, as far as one ecclesiastic may, the scandal which I believe you are giving, as the editor of a journal which is almost officially Catholic, by the savage and ruthless tone which you have taken towards brave men who are making as glorious a stand for freedom as the history of the world records. — I am, sir, your obedient servant, Edward Thomas, Bishop of Limerick. Christmas Eve, 1900. TO THE SOLDIER 155 34. A volunteer, Dundee Evening Telegraph, January 26, 1901. 35. Special correspondent, Manchester Guardian, May 8, 1901. 36. George Griffith, Daily Mail, London. 37. Charles Williams, Morning Leader. 38. The War God as a Coward — Witnesses: (a) Captain Ritchie. V.R. — Public Notice It is hereby notified for information that unless the men at present on commando belonging to families in the town and district of Kru- gersdorp surrender themselves and hand in their arms to the Imperial authorities by 20th July, the whole of their property will be confiscated and their families turned out destitute and homeless. By order, G. H. M. Ritchie, Capt. K. Horse, Dist. Supt. Police. Krugersdorp, 9th July, 1900. (h) General Hamilton, November 1, 1900. The town of Ventersburg has been cleared of supplies and partly burnt, and the farms in the vicinity destroyed on account of the fre- quent attacks on the railway line in the neighborhood. The Boer women and children who are left behind should apply to the Boer com- mandants for food, who will supply them unless they wish to see them starve. No supplies will be sent from the railway to the town. (c) “General X,” December, 1900. You were given a week’s supplies, at the end of which time you were informed that you would have to find your own food. Your men are still fighting, and if the women and children want food, they had better get it from the Boers, or make their relations surrender. You will not be given food of any sort by us. 39. The Soldier's Pocket Book, pp. 287, 317, 35 1, 375, 300, 301. 40. Daily News, quoted by The Coming Day, London. 41. The Soldier's Pocket Book, p. 169. 42. Rev. Father Timoney, Sydney Catholic Press. 43. Porter Smith, New West?ni 7 ister . 44. Truth, August, 1902. 45. Soldier’s letter, Sydney Telegraph. MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 156 46. New Age, February 12, 1903. Organized Looting, Natal Mercury, September 27, 1901 : Waldon’s Scouts, Headquarters, Platrand, Transvaal. A few good men required to join above corps. Maximum term of service, three months. Seventy-five per cent of all loot taken divided among officers and men. Horses provided by government. Good profits assured. Early application for membership necessary. Vacancies rapidly filling. Full particulars from William H. Waldon, O. C. Waldon’s Scouts, Platrand. Or from T. H. P. Moncrieff, Newcastle, Natal. 47. Concord , May, 1903. 48. Peace and Goodwill (1903), p. 85. 49. The River IVar, Winston S. Churchill. 50. Hull Daily Mail. 51. The Soldier's Pocket Book, pp. 6, 7, 1 16, 123, 190. Degradation of Men into Soldiers : Testimony of a colonist, Birmhigham Daily Gazette. Now that we are getting a respectable crowd of Tommies here, there will be some tall work, and up to now there has just been sufficient done to whet Tommy’s feeling for revenge. And you talk of butchers — you want to see Tommy on the war path to realize what men are, and let him loose on any foe, God help him (the foe), for I never saw such demons. To see him at home and in peaceful times and see him at work you would not recognize him as the same man, if “ man” you can call him. He fights like a very devil; drinks like a fish; thieves with the best; and swears lumpy and strong. Even our own people have had such a lesson of Tommy’s qualities that they are anxiously waiting to see what he will do to a foe. He smashes and wrecks everything that he comes across, steals everything that he can lay his hands on, breaks into houses and ransacks everything from floor to ceiling, eats up all and sundry, —sheep, pigs, fowls, fruit, etc. Oh, he ’s a beauty ! During our confabs on them I stick up for him, on the lines that if you want some material to fight for you, you must put up with the other side of the game. A fine gentleman would not do Tommy’s work so thoroughly as a rough would, and does — if at all. TO THE SOLDIER 157 52. The Soldier's Pocket Book , pp. 1 15, 387. 53. Reuter, May, 1904. 54. Soldier’s letter, New Age , August 9, 1900. 55. A trooper, Reynolds' Newspaper, February 3, 1901. 56. The Soldier's Pocket Book, p. 414. 57. H. W. Nevinson, war correspondent, Daily Chronicle, London, November 20, 1899. For ampler confirmation see War against War in South Africa, pp. 116, 1 1 7, 120, 137, 139, 204, and No. 29, p. 7. Take no Prisoners. — Witnesses: (a) A British officer in command, January, 1901. Lord Kitchener, having as he thought caged his enemy, sent secret instructions to the troops to take no prisoners ; that is, if the Boers, surrounded on all sides, find themselves unable to resist and hoist the white flag as a token of surrender, they are to be shot down to the last man. But I will be more definite. I received the order personally from a general of the highest rank and holding one of the first positions in South Africa; and the order was repeated twice, so that there could be no mistake. Not only this, but I found that all the other senior officers were aware of the order ; what their private opinions and intentions were I do not know, but I heard no word of condemnation. (h) Lieutenant G. R. Witton. S.S. Runic, October 20, 1904. Dear Mr. Easton : I have heard that it has been reported, much to my prejudice, that I was concerned in the murder of the German mis- sionary Hesse. I wish to give this an emphatic denial, as at the time of Hesse’s murder I was from twelve to twenty miles distant. Who mur- dered him is a mystery to me, but at the time I was under the impression that he was most probably shot by a Kaffir. As regards the shooting of the Boer prisoners, the only man I shot was one man I shot in self- defense. The orders to take no prisoners came from headquarters and were given to Morant by Captain Hunt, who in due course passed them on. Had Hunt and Morant not obeyed, they were liable to be shot themselves. (c) New Age, April 24, 1902. There can be no doubt in the mind of one who has read such reports of the case as have reached us that the massacre of prisoners by irregu- lar corps has been a common occurrence. Perhaps the most damning 158 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR evidence of the way in which these irregular corps have acted was that offered in defense of the accused. Lieutenant Hamman testified that when he was a trooper in the Queensland Mounted Infantry on one occasion his squadron took some prisoners and was reprimanded by Colonel Craddock for taking them. It was in evidence that Brabant’s Horse received orders to take no prisoners. Lieutenant Philip declared that the Queensland Mounted Infantry were in disgrace on one occasion for bringing in prisoners caught sniping. Instructions were given in Colonel Garrett’s column that Boers taken in khaki were to be shot. In his defense Morant stated that Captain Hunt had quoted to him as precedents for not taking prisoners the action of Kitchener’s and Strath- cona’s Horse. The judge advocate did not question the evidence; he merely rejected the plea of justification. “ The contention that other corps had done similarly did not make two wrongs right.” (d) Various : Methods of Barbarism, p. 23 ; Private C. Chadwick, the Third Grenadier Guards. The Boers cry for mercy when they know they have no chance of shooting you down, but we take no notice of the crying, and stick the bayonet through them. Private G. Washington, of the Second Battalion of the Cold- streams, says of the four battles fought by Lord Methuen : In the last two fights we used the bayonet freely, as we advanced, and the Boers appealed for mercy in vain. Private W. S. Tarrant, writing from Estcourt to his parents. When the Boers are caught they beg for mercy, but they have not been getting much from us of late, only from the officers. Driver F. Clark, the Sixty-Fifth Howitzer Battery. I know our troops won’t have any mercy on them. It is only the officers that stop the men from killing them right out. I have seen a few put out of their misery. Montreal Herald. Letter from Bert Holland, Canadian Mounted Rifles, to his parents in Ottawa describes the shooting of the “ worst sniper ” in the district. Driven into a boggy spot, and his horse getting stuck, “ he pitched his rifle away and threw up his hands, supplicating for mercy. The boys rode up within one hundred feet of the old wretch, and commenced firing. At first they shot him through the arms and legs, then through the stomach, and when they thought they had sufficiently punished him they TO THE SOLDIER 159 put a volley through his heart, fairly riddling it. Then they proceeded to his house, where they found his son hiding under the bed with a bandolier on and a rifle in his hand. They took him into camp, and the chances are he will be shot.” The right to demand quarter at the last moment was denied by General Ian Hamilton in a speech at Bath, reported in the Times of March n. Describing the final scene at Elandslaagte, General Hamil- ton said that the Boers had made a desperate and determined defense. “ But when our men came right up to them they stood up. Of course they had by all rules forfeited their lives then." But he went on to say that they did n’t use the bayonet, which he seemed to regard as an exceptional and altogether uncovenanted mercy on their part. A correspondent writing in the Daily News on this subject claimed that the point of view of General Hamilton, and indeed of all soldiers as far as the writer knew, was expressed in a passage written by a cor- respondent who signed himself J. B. A., in which he described General French’s ride into Kimberley. He said: “When the Boers had emptied a few saddles, they put up a white flag; but the work of cavalry cannot be stopped at the goal itself. All the Boers there — some say thirty-two, some say thirty-seven- — were spitted." The writer goes on to defend this. Massacre of Wounded. — Witnesses: (a) R. L. Bridgman, Loyal Traitors , p. 129. General MacArthur’s official report of the Filipino casualties between May 5, 1900, and June 30, 1901, included the terrible list of 3854 killed and 1193 wounded, while of the Americans 345 were killed and 490 wounded. His report for the period between November 1, 1899, and September 1, 1900, was that 3227 Filipinos were killed and 694 wounded. During the same time there were 268 Americans killed and 750 wounded. General Wheaton gave the casualties for northern Luzon for April, May, June, and July as 1014 Filipinos killed and 95 wounded, while the Ameri- cans had 36 killed and 63 wounded. For the last four months of 1899 the Americans had 69 killed and 302 wounded in the Luzon campaign. In the first four months of 1900 they had 130 killed and 325 wounded. The Filipino casualties for May, June, July, and August of the same year, in the same campaign, were 1313 killed and 222 wounded. John T. McCutcheon, who is quoted as a reliable witness, wrote under date of Manila, April 20, 1899: “ There has now begun a time of terrific slaughter ; for, since the insur- gents have adopted their guerrilla methods of attacking weak parties of Americans and boloing men who get outside of our lines, a feeling of intense bitterness has sprung up among our soldiers. It is the old cry, i6o MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 1 The only good Indian is a dead one,’ repeated with a deep thirst for revenge behind it to strengthen it. It is the spirit of ‘Take no prison- ers ’ and ‘ Kill everything in sight ’ that has accounted for some of the terrific slaughters that have occurred during the last two months.” (b) Winston S. Churchill, The River War. There was a very general impression that the fewer the prisoners the greater would be the satisfaction of the commander. The unmeasured abuse heaped upon the Dervishes by the newspapers, and the idea, laboriously circulated, that they were avenging Gordon, led many of our soldiers to think that it was quite correct to regard our enemy as vermin, unfit to live. The result was that many wounded Dervishes were killed. . . . The statement that “the wounded Dervishes received every delicacy and attention ” is so utterly devoid of truth that it tram scends the limits of mendacity and passes into the realms of the ridiculous- For fuller details, see War against War , p. 6. 58. Soldier, Morning Leader, November 13, 1900. 59. Sir Frederick Treves, May, 1900. 60. Herald of Peace, May, 1904. 61. Lord Wolseley, ibid., January 1, 1904. 62. An officer, Central News. St. Petersburg, December 19, 1904. The Russky Slovoe publishes the following description of the Russian retreat on Mukden by M. Memirovitch Danchenko : “ I remember this retreat as a nightmare. Nerves are completely shat- tered. The men start and become uneasy for the least thing. Hill and dale remain in the power of the enemy. We say farewell to them the while we urge on our exhausted steeds. Without exaggeration, one has a veritable craving for sleep, for forgetfulness, for the loss of conscience and memory. Riding past the mute witnesses of the horrors which had just happened, past the dead bodies lying all along the road, we envy those who are already blind and deaf. For them no more defeat, no more torment upon torment, no more hopes doomed to disappointment, no more need to write home descriptions of our shame, finding some explanation for it to allow those who are dear to us to accept our retreat. Mukden is ankle deep in mud. It is a pestilent ocean, where, like un- happy ships, are to be run strange and clumsy vehicles, drawn by men — rickshaws; and at this moment I hated the two-wheeled instrument of torture. The ocean of mud was to me a hell, and I felt a hatred of the unfortunate Chinamen dropping with fatigue. We bit our lips and went whither we could. We stretched ourselves out for a deep sleep, from which we awoke with a horrible thought, — ‘ We have retreated again,’ TO THE SOLDIER l6l — and then began once more the sorrowful probing of one’s moral wounds. Comrades were awakened to continue the bitter, violent argu- ment, almost a quarrel, well knowing that each was longing to burst into tears. With a full knowledge of the situation, I really did not expect a decisive victory, at all events I had my doubts; but it seemed to me nevertheless as if something terrible and unforeseen had struck my heart.” — Press Association Special. 63. Torture of Prisoners {Concord, May, 1903) : Charles S. Riley, a sergeant in the Twenty-Sixth Volunteer Infantry, thus described to the Senate Committee the torture of a native town officer by men of the Eighteenth Infantry by command of Captain Glynn and under the direction of Lieutenant Conger and Dr. Lyon: “ The presidente was tied and placed on his back under a water tank holding probably one hundred gallons. The faucet was opened, and a stream of water was forced down, or allowed to run down, his throat. His throat was held so he could not prevent swallowing the water, so that he had to allow the water to run into his stomach. He was directly under the faucet, with his mouth held wide open. When he was filled with water, it was forced out of him by pressing a foot on his stomach or else with the hands. This continued from five to fifteen minutes. This unhappy man was taken down and asked more questions. He again refused to answer, and then was treated again. One of the men. of the Eighteenth Infantry went to his saddle and took a syringe from the saddlebag, and another man was sent for a can of water holding about five gallons. Then a syringe was inserted, one end in the water and the other end in his mouth. This time he was not bound, but he was held by four or five men and the water was forced into his mouth from the can through the syringe. The syringe did not seem to have the desired effect, and the doctor ordered a second one. The man got a second syringe, and that was inserted in his nose. Then the doctor ordered some salt, and a handful of salt was procured and thrown into the water. Two syringes were then in operation. The interpreter stood over him in the meantime, asking for this second information that was desired. Finally he gave in and gave the information.” On the strength of this confession a town having 12,000 inhabitants was burned down. See also Loyal Traitors, by R. L. Bridgman, p. 245, and War against War in South Africa, No. 29, p. 7. 64. Officer, Tunes, November 23, 1899. 65. Lord Kitchener, Report, September 9, 1901. 66. Narracooste Herald (South Africa), June, 1901. i 62 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 67. Violation of Women. — Testimonies: (а) J. M. Robertson, Manchester Guardian, December 15, 1900. A man who dared to tell them that in an army of 250,000 men there had been no serious crime, was devoid of common sense. He had in his possession an affidavit signed by two Dutch women who underwent the last extremity of outrage at the hands of British troops. This was admitted, because the soldiers were punished. ( б ) War correspondent, Morning Herald (Australia), Novem- ber 20, 1900. On the way to my mount there had to be noticed a girl of fifteen or sixteen, delicately molded, leaning against the doorpost of a barn, and weeping as though her heart would break. As I looked, a tall, well- set-up trooper went by. The girl, evidently mistaking him for an officer, approached him, and between her sobs struggled with her English to make a complaint. The reply she got was an insult foul and brutal. The actual words were so many meaningless sounds to her, but she knew she had received a rebuff. She sank to the dust at the man’s feet, with that peculiar half sob, half moan, that tells the depth of femi- nine anguish has been sounded. ( c ) New Age, November 27, 1902. Lord George Hamilton had a ghastly story to tell in the Blouse of Commons on Friday. The Ninth Lancers, after serving in South Africa, returned to India in April last. On the night of their arrival they were entertained by another regiment at the station. The same night a native was killed. Before his death the man stated that he had been assaulted by two men of the Ninth Lancers, because he failed to find native women for them. The matter seems to have been taken very coolly; it was not till some days later that inquiry was instituted. This inquiry was stated by Lord George Hamilton to have been “perfunctory.” A second inquiry brought no result. The crime has not been brought home to any one. A few days later another native was killed. In these circumstances the whole regiment has been punished. The sympathy of the “Service” members was clearly with the regiment. See also War against War in Soicth Africa, No. 29, p. 6, and What is now being done i 7 i Soitth Africa (Mr. Stead). 68. Glasgow Herald, December 18, 1899. 69. W 0 Iverh a mp to n Express, January 12, 1901. 70. Letters to Otago Witness and Zeeham Herald, June, 1901. 71. Mortiing Leader, January 19, 1901. TO THE SOLDIER 163 72. A “Pacified” Country ( Concord , May, 1903): “They never rebel in northern Luzon,” wrote a Republican con- gressman who visited the islands in the summer of 1901, “because there isn’t any one there to rebel. The country was marched over and cleaned out in a most resolute manner. The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under ground. Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records ; they simply swept the coun- try, and wherever and whenever they could get ahold of a Filipino they killed him.” 73. Miss Cronje, Times , November 17, 1900. 74. Lieutenant Morrison, New Age , May 28, 1903. 75. Captain March Phillipps, With Rimington, p. 187. 76. Tottenham Herald \ December 12, 1901. 77. E. W. Smith, Morning Leader, May 21, 1901. 78. Lord Camden, House of Lords, 1778. Cowardice of War : Rev. Father Timoney, M or ning Leader. Then began the most diabolical work I have yet witnessed. Every house in the valley, probably twenty in all, was burned to the ground. Women and children stood in groups, the children rending the air with their cries. They were allowed to move their furniture before the match was put to the building. The women were admirable. Not a tear bedewed their eyes. They stood there defiant, neatly dressed in black, with snow-white aprons and bonnets. It was only when I said a few sympathetic words to one woman that she melted into tears. “You,” she said, “do not approve of this?” “I loathe it,” was my reply. “I am,” she said, “a British subject from the Protectorate. We rented this farm from an Englishman, to whom it belongs. We have nothing in the world but these crops which your horses have destroyed, and — God help us ! ” I asked her the age of her baby, whom she carried in her arms. “ One month yesterday,” she replied, showing me the inno- cent face of the infant. “ Will you,” she said, “try to save my house from the fire?” “I shall do so at once,” I answered; and I kept my promise, but my pleading was of no avail. The woman stood there on the green sward, one child in her arms and three others hanging to her skirts, while her home was falling into ruins and the flames rose forty feet high. I told the heroic woman that I had tried to save the house. “Will you shake hands with me?” was her reply. I did so right heartily, and she called me aside to show me the relics of a new white apron. “ It was from this,” she said, “ I tore the bandages for one of your wounded 164 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR men (Beaumont). I carried him in my arms from the field, and band- aged his arm. He lay on my bed until the blankets were sodden in blood. And this,” she said, “is my reward”- — waving her hand towards the house in flames; “this is the work of the Australians. They are not soldiers, they are house burners and looters.” I begged to disagree with the woman, but her face was now livid, and her eyes sparkling with rage. “ My boy Otto,” she continued, placing her hand on his head, “ is only ten years old, but I trust I shall live to see him handle a rifle, and avenge this insult on his mother.” The next house belonged to the man whom the sentry shot on Thursday night. “ My husband was shot by one of your men last Thurs- day night,” she said ; “I am left alone with these four children. Surely the blood of my husband should wipe out the crime of which he was guilty — fighting for his country.” Her pleadings were in vain. Her house was burned down, and she looked on proud and tearless, the beau ideal of a valiant woman. But why should I weary you by repeat- ing the harassing, heart-rending scenes I witnessed that day ? There were probably one hundred women and children left homeless in one afternoon. They were ordered to leave the wooded valley and cross the Molopo River, there to live on the treeless plain. The wiseacres say that this vandalism will terminate the war. My opinion, shared by every intelligent man, is that it will prolong the war indefinitely. I might refer to the open theft which is called looting, and which is daily indulged in by our troops. The Turks would shrink from such barbarism. Even the Kaffirs do not burn houses. And I am not giving hearsays. I am just recounting in a hurried way a part of the horrors I have myself seen. 79. Herald of Peace, October 1, 1903. 80. Dundee Advertiser, June 20, 1904. Testimony of John S. Shearston (Sydney), Alliance Record : Before the entertainment was half through it was evident that a grave mistake had been perpetrated, and by 9.30 his Worship the Mayor suggested the closing of the affair to prevent more serious consequences. By 10 o’clock the “patriotic” work of the committee was nearly com- plete. ... It was a sad and humiliating sight to see many of our gallant soldier visitors lying helpless by the wayside in Hyde Park and Moore Park Road, having failed in their efforts to reach their barracks, in many instances with their splendid uniforms lying in the dirt. . . . Although I have lived and labored among them for over a quarter of a century in this city, and have witnessed in the old days awful scenes of debauchery, I have never at any time seen such a shocking and outrageous exhibi- tion of drunkenness. TO THE SOLDIER 165 81. Herald of Peace, June 1, 1903. 82. Daily Mail, April 24, 1903. Testimony of Dundee Advertiser, October 25, 1904: A somewhat singular plea of extenuating circumstances was put for- ward by an agent in a case of housebreaking which came before Sheriff Davidson at a pleading diet of Glasgow Sheriff Criminal Court yester- day. The accused, a young fellow of respectable appearance, acknowl- edged breaking into a house in Pollokshields and stealing a large quantity of articles. The agent explained that accused had been in a regiment of Lancers for eight years, during which he had served through the South African war, taking part in the defense of Ladysmith and other opera- tions. Since leaving the army he had been steadily employed, but on the day of the offense preferred against him he had been drinking. While under the influence of liquor prisoner imagined that he was still in South Africa and had been ordered to loot the house of a Boer. He thereupon smashed one of the windows and entered the dwelling, where he purloined a large number of articles, timepiece and bronze ornaments, etc. Having collected the loot, he put it into a blanket, but, as these doings took place in broad daylight and before the eyes of interested spectators, the police arrived and put a period to his operations. His Lordship, who was evidently impressed with the likelihood of the strange tale, gave the accused the benefit of the First Offenders Act. . ■ THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE POLITICIAN I confess that I dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too large for England ; having courage in the face of his countrymen to assert of some suggested policy, — “This is good for your trade ; this is necessary for your domination : but it will vex a people hard by ; it will hurt a people farther off ; it will profit nothing to the general humanity: therefore, away with it ! — it is not for you or for me.” When a British minister dares speak so, and when a British public applauds him speaking, then shall the nation be glorious, and her praise, instead of exploding from within, from loud civic mouths, come to her from without, as all worthy praise must, from the alliances she has fostered and the populations she has saved Elizabeth Barrett Browning. V THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE POLITICIAN The proper aim of the politician is — not war, but peace ; the means proper to his aims are — not arms, but reason and moral force ; and his proper work is — not making war with whatever success and acclama- tion, but keeping the peace with all the watchfulness, resource, skill, and energy which, when the .glove is flung, he expects in his generals on the field. When he fails to secure his ends by pacific means, it is in this age of easy arbitration a sure sign that they are either not legitimate or not practicable, or that he was unskillful in the way he took to compass them ; and it should never be permitted him to secure an unlawful aim or cover his own stupidity by turning a people into a collective homicide. The advocate who has lost his case must generally be admitted to have had a bad one or to have advocated a good one badly ; but neither ad- mission justifies him in challenging the opposing law- yer to mortal combat. It is only in the wider sphere of international law that this absurdity and infamy pre- vails. It is only in the case of disputes between nations that a man dares to incur sin rather than submit to a charge of error, and prefers to sacrifice the national conscience and his own to the supposed interests of a 169 170 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR nation rather than risk the petty charge of impolicy by letting interest go and cleaving to conscience. The conflicts of industrial peoples are made by their leaders, whether they be foreign ministers, party bosses, or journalists who mislead them. Before we fare onward Carlyle shall fix this upon our minds in that immortal passage from Sartor which the twin prophet Ruskin repeated in his lecture on “War” to the young soldiers of the Military Academy at Woolwich, of all places: “ What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of war ? To my own knowl- edge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain ‘ Natural Enemies ’ of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men : Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them : she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected ; all dressed in red ; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two-thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain ; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dum- drudge, in like manner wending : till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxta- position ; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word ‘ Fire ! ’ is TO THE POLITICIAN 171 given : and they blow the souls out of one another ; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest ! They lived far enough apart ; were the entirest strangers ; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen-out ; and, instead of shoot- ing one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.” When a question can be fairly submitted to a people long habituated to peaceful in- dustries, they will be found to protest vehemently against a war policy; to declare themselves for and to crusade zealously on behalf of peace. But the war- like politician thwarts their pacific aims. It is still pos- sible for a war-distracted people to take up the parable of Ezekiel and say, “ Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters : the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas.” For as it was the ruling classes of his day that wrought upon the passions of the crowd and secured the execution of the Prince of Peace, so it is the governing classes who crucify him afresh and put his pacific ideals to an open shame. Hence most of the troubles of the modern state. Under an abso- lutist form of government the voiceless and voteless masses are compelled to accept whatever conflict is thrust upon them ; but one of the disappointments of democracy is that even under a representative system they are found powerless to force their peace poli- cies upon a militant executive. The reason is that they 172 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR have put weapons into the hands of governors who can always plead the necessity of swift and secret action ; and the remedy is to be found in destroying entirely the blood-red chariot of Mars and yoking the rulers to the white car of Peace. War can be destroyed but not regulated. Cowper saw where the power to destroy it resided, saying, But war ’s a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at. War demoralizes the politician by putting into his hands the godlike power of life and death, mere pos- session of which leads to its exercise, and which can- not be controlled even by the most democratic forms of government. In his private capacity the politician is not less sane and considerate than other men ; he cannot be entirely blind to the evils of a war system, inhumanly hardened to the sufferings it involves, or enamored of waste and misery, blood and death ; and it must therefore be inferred that there is something in his official position which transforms him, which sinks principle in expediency, conscience in interest, and justice in a narrow patriotism ; something that controls him all the time that he imagines he is con- trolling it. That thing is the power of life and death. The engines of doom intrusted to his hands sug- gest uses to which they may be put — such as greater prestige or the acquisition of new territory ; and the awful consciousness of something akin to omnipotence raises hallucinations in his feeble mind ; he loses the sense of proportion between cause and effect, offense TO THE POLITICIAN 173 and punishment, human and divine, and launches in the face of the adversary who has outreasoned him those powers which can be wielded rightly only by One who can create and destroy. Armed with the divine prerogative, the political character too often assumes a tone that makes the sensitive spirit shudder, — a hardness, a coldness, a ruthless, stony, inexorable im- passivity proper only to the unconditioned existence of the Divine. It knows neither pity, love, nor fear. Proud and blasphemous as Belshazzar in the halls of Babylon, it shrinks from no cruelty that the ambition of the hour seems to require. Untouched by any sug- gestion of pity, every generous appeal falls away from its cruel disdain like a child’s arrow from the cold face of the Sphinx. When, as a result of his devastating policy, the enemy’s little children are dying in thou- sands, a minister will, amid the plaudits of his as- sembled supporters, defend the system of starvation, extended as well to the mothers as the children, and even lament such excessive consideration for the enemy — “he is not going to do anything to please Exeter Hall ... or put a difficulty in the way of the general in his work of bringing this campaign to an early con- clusion.” 1 Unredeemed by any spark of humanity or a single touch of altruism, the political mind moves towards its object with an absolute selfishness par- donable only in the blind forces of Nature. Like the jealous pagan who declared that the rival “Carthage must be destroyed,” a most Christian governor 2 is “ determined to break the dominion of ” a friendly and peaceful neighbor, going “ straight on the way i7 4 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR on which he had set out from the first, to make an end of the business once and for all,” till he ends with a “ country absolutely denuded of everything.” If reproached with the cruel and wicked bungling which has precipitated such a frightful tragedy, the bolt- bearing Jove will proudly assert that if he had an opportunity again he “would not alter one word in his dispatches.” 3 In the thought of his chariots and horse- men Pharaoh forever hardens his heart. Backed by army and navy, the war minister sits as God, And, at his heels, Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employment. War demoralizes the politician by giving him control of an instrument of tyranny greater than ought to be committed to human hands. A military system assures the governing classes of the support of vast numbers of persons in whatever martial adventures they may see fit to embark. First come the soldiers themselves — army, navy, reserve forces, and even, though perhaps to a less extent, volunteers ; then all their families and friends who have a financial or sentimental interest in their employment ; then the wide circle of the govern- ing officials with their immense social prestige ; then the vast and ever increasing numbers of civil servants through all grades; — all these persons stand either committed to support or prejudiced in favor of the war policy of their day, and persecute those who refuse to bow the knee to Baal. And as lust of power grows by what it feeds on, the politician loses no opportunity TO THE POLITICIAN 175 of increasing the extent and efficiency of his organ of tyranny, even though he sees that other nations in- crease theirs in corresponding degree. The mailed fist grows heavier, the arm that props it longer. Every new turn in national affairs is craftily turned to an increase of the fighting establishments. If times are hard, the people will be told that, whatever they may go without, they must not reduce their defenses ; if pros- perous, that their defenses urgently require strength- ening ; and at all times a scare of foreign attack is ready to be worked up, till the deluded people, in a panic, vote those supplies which really go to their own enslavement. The organ of defense against external attack is just as truly and in as great degree an engine of tyranny over the home land, — an engine always on hand, ready at the call of the ruling classes, prompt and potent to suppress free opinion, crush political lib- erty, trample down the aspiring proletariat, persecute conscience and religion. By the frightful prerogative of his office the politician can turn this engine of oppression against the very people who own it and from whose ranks it is recruited ; so that, for example, a taxpaying father is giving his son wages to be his master, and even to shoot him some day when he chances to get mixed up with a great strike. A large part of the work of the soldier in many lands has been to suppress what governors call “revolution.” The fact that this instrument of oppression can be used to promote the personal aims of the politician introduces another possibility of demoralization. To 176 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR turn these national agencies into a means of private advancement requires nothing more than inordinate selfishness directed by moderate cunning ; and whilst selfishness contemplates the alluring prospect of greater power, cunning finds means to speculate ruthlessly in the lives of one’s own countrymen and those of other lands. One who is himself a soldier and a governor testifies to “ a party working all they know for war . . . influences which are being steadily directed to the promotion of racial antagonism.” 4 None who is not divine should be intrusted with divine power. The temptation is too strong for human nature. He who should be a composer becomes a provoker of strife. The peacemaker disappears, and his place is taken by a “mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death.” Like a mad Mephistopheles, too, he sports a war like “a feather in his cap .” 5 In the present state of human morality no policy is more popular than a war (while it lasts), and an unscrupulous minister will not long be lacking in means and opportunities of compassing his end. Some loud talk about breaches of treaty, invasion of rights, political wrongs or grievances invented for the occasion , 6 will be sufficient to whip the passions of the people into foam. A pretense of patriotism will cover every plan to make a new reputation or rehabili- tate a failing one, — even to humble a rival at home or punish a too stout antagonist abroad. Our age also has its specimens of Mrs. Browning’s Statesmen draping self-love’s conclusion In cheap vernacular patriotisms, Unable to give up Judaea for Jesus. J TO THE POLITICIAN 177 Such is the nervous and panic condition produced by- bloated militarism that a schemer will have no diffi- culty in turning his countrymen’s eye from his own insolent and aggressive policy to the political defects or military schemes of a neighbor, alleging a thousand justifying pleas for whatever piratical adventure or territorial brigandage may be on foot. He is never without his excuse. We have seen him in his very workshop. We know how it is done. In the harmless act of a contemporary ruler he will be able to allege some threat to commercial interests, some menace to the political rights of a handful of colonists, or some encroachment upon imperial prerogative ; he will pro- ceed to envelop the matter in a cloud of words and a litter of dispatches ; the quarrel will, of necessity, grow till the original dispute merges into other questions, less relevant, but grosser, bulkier, more palpable to the multitude ; and then, having accumulated a mass of inflammable material, he puts the match to it in a fiery and provocative speech by which the rage of his oppo- nent is excited against him and the rage of his coun- trymen against the opponent. The result is war : the gratified schemer has his way ; and there is “ one wrong more to man, one more insult to God.” Iago inflames Othello, and Othello murders Desdemona. The baneful effect of war upon the mind of the poli- tician is seen still further in the fact that it leads him to rely on force rather than reason, making him, as a consequence, hasty, domineering, rash, and unreason- able. Proud to think of the reserves of force waiting to back his will, he struts and hectors, or, according to 178 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR his nature, denounces with a solemnity that hovers between the sublime and the asinine. Confident in the immense armaments of his country, he threatens and coerces an inferior power, in the sure belief that it will not dare to fight, and then, when it dares, is himself found quite unprepared. A famous general testifies against the conduct of a certain war as “ a shameful story, which tells of how an army may be destroyed by a ministry through want of ordinary foresight.” 7 In a more recent case it is on record that a number of gen- erals were sent six thousand miles away to a strange country without any written instructions or plan of cam- paign. The politician rests his case on bluff, and ends it with battle . 8 Impatient of the slow movements of inves- tigation and argument, the temptation to fall back on the more imposing declaration of war and the speedier solutions propounded by cannon and sword is irresist- ible . 9 Strong in the consciousness of immeasurable power, he ignores or despises the rights of other na- tions, is willing to indulge himself in conduct he would not allow in them, and falls into that temper by which he is unfitted for cool reflection, indisposed to sober judgment, and prone to harbor those thoughts of re- venge which can never be far from the man that con- trols an arsenal. If, in his private capacity, he had attempted the life of but a single person, he knows that he would have had to stand his trial before an impartial jury and a dispassionate judge ; but he also knows that he can, as a politician, get up as many deputations, interviews, petitions, as may be necessary to give the coloring he desires , 10 set nation against nation, throw TO THE POLITICIAN 179 a hundred thousand lives into the balance, and then trust to his powers of misrepresentation and irritation to pervert justice, excite prejudice, and inflame passion, till judgment becomes impossible and nothing remains but execution. His own press organ laments that “pure reason unhappily has little to do with the direction of political affairs.” 11 The place of reason is taken by low cunning, and the strategic politician, anticipating the meanness of the battlefield, schemes to drive his opponent into a false position, withholding his propos- als but pushing on his armaments, and by carefully planned procrastinations succeeds in forcing the oppo- nent’s hand, compelling him to strike the first blow, thus placing him nominally in the attitude of aggres- sor . 12 To conspire against an individual is criminal ; against a nation, glorious. From the baleful root of violence spring all those thorns of treachery, insolence, and rapacity which make the annals of the politician a moral tragedy not less mournful than the physical tragedy of the soldier. A peculiarly demoralizing element in the war system here comes into view, — it encourages shallowness and stupidity in the politician, and at the same time affords him a ready escape from his own blunders. Relying on the soldier, the politician is delivered from any neces- sity of understanding the question he is dealing with. Knowing that if the worst comes to the worst he can call in the fighting man, he can afford to be as blindly ignorant and as wickedly infatuated as history on many supreme occasions shows him to be. Delivered l8o MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR by the possibility of fighting from the necessity of understanding, he can permit himself to be hasty in policy, criminal in obstinacy, prejudiced in mind, cloudy in judgment, ignorant of facts ; for it cannot then be readily seen that he has been unable to sift evidence, to write clear dispatches, or even to ascertain the facts of the case. He writes in such terms as to lead every- body to believe the exact reverse of what he afterwards declares he meant ; and though he sees that his diplo- matic antagonist also is the dupe of his ambiguity, and knows that war will be the certain result of that mis- apprehension, he does nothing to clear it away, but proceeds to stump the country, arousing popular pas- sion against his adversary . 13 He wipes out his blunder in blood. The sword cuts the knot his bungling hand tied. It is the fatal lapse into violence, the debilitating reliance upon force, the pernicious thought that in the absence of convincing wisdom it is always possible to fall back on overwhelming strength, — it is this that produces war. War is nothing but a confession of fail- ure. Were no other condemnation of the principle of force in international affairs forthcoming, the stupidity of the men who trust to arms rather than reason would be sufficient. Enveloped in the awful pomp and majesty which the power to decree death to a nation lends him, the politician can indeed pose magnificently, can as- sume the semblance of vast understanding and the tone of unimaginable wisdom (for it is only proper that omnipotence should put on the mask of omniscience), while subsequent events and even his own admis- sions prove that these spectacular effects were entirely TO THE POLITICIAN 18 1 compatible with most moderate knowledge of the things about which he was preparing to fight. Oscillating between imbecility and blasphemy, he will deliver him- self of a “What I have said I have said,” and his min- ions of the press will murmur, “ Well done, thou good and faithful servant,” commenting in awe-stricken tones on how he “ dispensed with his usual freedom of ges- ture and almost confined his action to the slight em- phasis of his right hand. All this was consummately impressive, and brought home the sense of imperial dignity and duty in a way that seemed to elevate the hour.” 14 There are moments of candor or garrulity, however, when he confesses that he could not under- stand what was plain to all the world beside, and would as soon have expected the impossible to happen as that which all the world — -except himself — knew would happen — the government had no special information — the man in the street knew as much as the man in the cabinet — they would have as readily expected to be at war with Switzerland as with that particular coun- try — they must remember their enemy had horses — and so through every degree of ignorance and drivel . 15 Before a war which is to last three years and to cost twelve hundred million dollars he will assure his coun- try that there is “ not the slightest chance of war ; that the armed strength of the foe is the greatest unpricked bubble in the world ”; 16 and all who take a different view are treated in the same way as the distinguished general and diplomatist who testifies : 17 “I was treated with suspicion ; they would not send for me or ask me anything. Of course, at that time they were being told 182 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR it was a case of [fifty million dollars], and the whole thing over at Christmas. . . . Every officer in the army knows that ; any one who told them the opposite was called names, ridiculed, and laughed at ; he was either a fool or a knave, or, as they said of me, I was both.” It is time the political fetich were destroyed. A man who nurses the infatuated delusion that military prepa- rations are the best means of preventing national decay ; who dins his demoralizing doctrine into the people’s ear ; who sedulously fosters a military enthusiasm as heartless as his military theory is brainless, — of what foolishness is not such a man capable ? Whilst he should be cultivating far views and the mind that looks before and after, he plays fickle feather with the man in the street — as destitute of principles and as barren of ideals as he. Supposed to be borne on the tides of deep policy, he is but caught up on the surf of catch- words — swayed by the humor of the hour and carried about by every wind of doctrine — echoing the shibbo- leths and invoking the fetiches of the moment. One day he will be found blessing a peace conference be- cause it is a sign of our common Christianity ; the next declaring war and explaining that Christianity has no place in the politics of nations. By his loud and belli- cose tone he contrives to persuade his nation that he is upholding its prestige ; and then, having sown the wind, goes trustfully on his way, believing that when the time comes for the people to reap the whirlwind his part in the tragedy will have been forgotten, or knowing that, at worst, it will be his successors who will have to confess, in the classic language of a British TO THE POLITICIAN 183 prime minister, that his country has “ backed the wrong horse .” 18 After he has brought down the black storm of war he will exhort his countrymen to trust the man at the wheel, — the man who showed that he could not read the compass or see an inch before him in a nar- row sea, — nay, the very rower who brought the ship into deep waters and steered her straight into the heart of the storm. A signalman who runs two trains together is sentenced to long imprisonment, even though no lives are lost ; but the salaried incapables whose pride and stupidity sacrifice countless lives and lay con- tinents desolate are rewarded with peerages and premier- ships. Nature and God avenge themselves, no doubt ; but meantime the peoples also perish. Relying — not on the unconquerable resources of reason and morality but on violence, the governing classes constantly tend towards that combination of ignorance, arrogance, and levity, which is the sure forerunner of decay. The sage’s injunction to Rasselas will fit our case : “ My son, ob- serve with how little wisdom the world is governed.” The consciousness of possessing arms wherewith to enforce his claim demoralizes the politician by leading him to confound right with might ; whereas, if he were deprived of the false security which arms give, he would not dare to show that disregard for the rights of other people which has converted the sphere of international affairs into a zone of robbery and jobbery. It is the appeal from right to might that substitutes expediency for morals, loses the distinction between forbidden and unforbidden in considering merely the profitable and 1 84 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR unprofitable, and brings every international question to the test of a cruel national egoism. Humanity furnishes no motive, nor brotherhood, nor justice, nor peace — the national interest is all. A principle is right or wrong according to the profit of the moment ; an act is just or unjust according as it suits the programme of the domineering power. The will of the master of armies becomes the law of nations, yes, even of God ; for if other excuse be not forthcoming the warring poli- tician will fall back upon the divine decrees and assert that, right or no right, it is the manifest destiny of his people to go here or there and annex this or that. A competent philosopher has noted the periodical ad- vent of “ the morally emancipated statesman, who, when circumstances drive him to cruelty, rapacity, breach of faith, falsehood, will not waver and whine about the * painful necessity,’ but with simple decision, unham- pered by scruples, take the course that leads straight to the next stage.” 19 Necessity is the tyrant’s plea; and the politician who designs an act of injustice is certain to defend it as the manifest destiny of his nation ; whereas, if the appeal to reason were alone open to him, this pretended resignation to the will of the gods, this greed in the disguise of fatalism, this covetousness masquerading as political Calvinism, would be impossible. Mrs. Browning’s righteous politician would then hold the field : Never, for lucre or laurels, Or custom, though such should be rife, Adapting the smaller morals To measure the larger life. TO THE POLITICIAN 185 He, though the merchants persuade, And the soldiers are eager for strife, Finds not his country in quarrels Only to find her in trade. But behold the politician as, with the air of an im- maculate saint, he rises to declare that “ we seek no gold fields ; we seek no territory,” 20 but only to main- tain the nation’s influence ! Who that knows him does not also know him to mean that when he has established the nation’s supremacy by force of arms he will leave his foe not “a shred of real, independent government and that all those other things he ostentatiously declares he does not want will be added unto him ? Another will condemn a war and denounce the tortuous policy that led up to it ; will profess indignation and disgust ; but will refuse to stop it ; will see it through ; will even vote supplies to put it through ; and will then prepare to turn the others out of office, and reap the territorial harvest of the war policy he had denounced. Though he charges the promoters of the war with having lied, '• swindled, and broken treaties, he will stand in with them to fight to a finish; a people having been injured, he will help to destroy them ; a quarrel having been picked, he will become accomplice in murder. At such frightful immoralities as these do we arrive when we turn might into right. It is the appeal from right to might that fills the earth with robbery, misery, and blood. War demoralizes the politician by leading him into conspiracies and treachery to which, were there no gun and bayonet behind, he would never resort. There are i86 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR a number of citizens in every state who, with a certain journalist, avow that they desire nothing higher of their representatives than to look after their material inter- ests, without regard to “ either truth or honesty ” ; 21 and their representatives, it has to be owned, fulfill these expectations marvelously well. The politician, having sworn to his own hurt, keeps his oath only till he is strong enough to break it. “ If we were to be just for a single day,” he says with Chatham, “we should not have another year to live.” Many political transactions are thick sown with lies ; for the scheming politician knows that war wipes out the past by introducing new conditions, and that he can easily destroy the trail of his treacheries. Before a war he will stir up the wrath of his countrymen by calumnious falsehoods about the cruelty of the foe to native races ; after the war, when the lie has served its turn, he will magnanimously absolve them from the charge . 22 With equal facility he will make a breach in fact or a breach in faith. A pow- erful capitalist hatches a plot against a neighboring state ; a friendly politician makes over to him a strip of “jumping-off” ground from which his armed ma- rauders can make a swift and easy descent upon the coveted territory ; high government officials are in the secret ; the bandit officers are assured that the politi- cians know and approve ; the plot fails ; an inquiry is ordered ; all parties combine to suppress the truth lest imperial brigandage should become unpopular ; the chief conspirator is convicted of lying and blackmail ; the minister who has signed that declaration rises to declare that the liar and blackmailer has done nothing TO THE POLITICIAN 187 inconsistent with “his personal character as a man of honor” I 23 Falsehood is prompt, full, and sufficient for every crisis. When it has been determined to accom- plish by war what informal brigandage has failed to do, dispatches will be mutilated, treaties forsworn, conven- tions torn up or converted into patchwork to suit the purpose, and the state which was last year declared independent and free from all external interference is this year bullied, dictated to, and finally conquered and annexed. Force leads to fraud ; fraud again to force. Jobbery that would disgrace a Whitechapel huckster is not beneath the politician whose hand is on the sword. He will sell a national asset, receive the price, and then, while retaining the price, refuse to deliver the article for which his antagonist had, on his own confession, made “considerable territorial and other sacrifices.” Knowing that without fraud an excuse for force will not arise, it becomes the business of the bandit politi- cian to lie before fighting — which he does with such success that an opposing statesman, whose every inter- est is in keeping the peace, exclaims, “ My confidence is gone ! ” Falsehood hovers between the impudent and the sublime. When they begin war they declare they seek neither land nor gold ; they put up a solemn spokesman to assure a jealous adversary that there is no design upon his independence ; every parliamentary cat-in-pan gets up to say that to so much as coquette with the idea of annexation would be infamous ; — but no sooner has the enemy’s defense collapsed than his overtures for peace are waved aside, and the suppression of his flag is openly proclaimed with the approval of the 1 88 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR entire host of trimmers and hypocrites in press and Par- liament. Thus does force lead to fraud, and fraud to the necessity for further force. There is absolutely no limit to the mendacity of a minister who has a blunder in diplomacy or a crime in war to hush up; and the habit of lying contracted — let us say — in foreign di- plomacy invades also the sphere of home politics and vitiates the entire political life of a country. The Blue Books lie shamelessly. It sometimes takes months of persistent questioning to drag from a reluctant minister facts which intimately affect a nation’s honor. The politician’s own paper exclaims that there is no form of human credulity so hopeless as that which trusts the “ official denials ” of politicians in their own assemblies ; so that, we may infer, the representatives of the nation do not rise in their places to speak the truth but to pre- varicate, to dissemble, to deny the true and insinuate the false. Bismarck, who surely knew, declared that “ a guarantee [of the European Powers] was in these days of little value.” 24 What is the cause of this unspeakable debauchery of the political conscience ? There is but one answer, — violence, force, the appeal to arms. It is the possession of the means of constraint, and the supposed imperial necessity of committing crimes of violence, that sink the politician into such depths of deceit. If “the last argument of kings” were entirely excluded from the cate- gory of civilized possibilities, nine tenths of the immo- ralities that disgrace public life would pass away with it. The demoralization produced in the politician’s mind by war is darkly exhibited in that incredible spite, TO THE POLITICIAN 189 malignity, and meanness with which he assails the cause and character of his foe, and the scorn with which he denounces and defies the moral sentiment of mankind. As it is natural to suppose that the men who constitute a nation would not deliberately destroy those of another nation unless they thought them extremely wrong and wicked, it becomes the business of the politician to slander and calumniate his adversary by every species of misrepresentation and abuse. No libel is too foul, gross, and unscrupulous. The enemy is a liar who can- not be trusted, a slaver who oppresses the black man, a robber who plunders all who set foot across his frontier, a despot greedy of power, a miser greedy of gold, a pig who loves dirt, a coward who will not fight. His mag- nificent struggle for freedom is the death struggle of a corrupt oligarch for power. All who sympathize with him are traitors, fools, knaves. Having by these calum- nies persuaded his countrymen to turn thumbs down, the wily politician then proceeds to pour vitriolic scorn upon the moral sentiment that refuses to sign the death warrant. Foreign sentiment is mere jealousy ; home sentiment is treason. Thus are all the jury- men disqualified. Having got all his colors appropri- ately mixed and the picture shaded to his satisfaction, the war minister next proceeds to exhibit himself as a shining and immaculate angel standing out against the dark background of the enemy’s guilt. That man who is about to assert himself by superior force is under the necessity of presenting himself as a pattern of superior virtue. After “Hell-roaring Jake” has spread his orders to “ kill everything over ten,” and the “water 190 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR cure” has been administered again and again, a Pres- ident, nevertheless, can be found to declare : “ Our enemies violated every rule of war. Our warfare was conducted with singular humanity .” 25 Though the graves of twenty thousand women and children turn the “ concentration camps ” into cemeteries, a colonial secretary will felicitate himself that “ no war in the history of the world has ever been conducted with greater humanity.” 26 The preliminary to military exe- cution is, necessarily, to pillory the victim as a sinner above all others that dwell in Jerusalem and to pedestal the executioner as a saint. Whence follow cheap ap- peals to honor and justice and abundant declamation about the unstained past, the unblotted present, and the glorious future. The cant of the war platform is unspeakable and passes all bounds of endurance. A politician will play the bully to greedy and mendacious speculators ; will hatch a plot against a nation, slay their citizens, exile their defenders, burn their farms, affront their sentiment, and force into rebellion those who might have been friends, in order the more effec- tually to crush them ; and then will turn round to describe these accumulated sins and infamies as holy sacrifices in the interests of civilization and humanity. It is into such loathsome abysses of cant, humbug, and hypocrisy that the politician is unavoidably plunged when he relies on force rather than truth, justice, and reason. But the lower deep within the lowest opens when the politician, discarding right for might, openly disclaims the gospel, renounces that holy religion into which he was thought to be baptized, and openly promulgates TO THE POLITICIAN IQI wars of revenge. It is not by accident and merely in unguarded moments that he recants his Christian profession ; it is by necessity. He cannot serve God and mammon, Christ and Mars, empire and humanity. The chasm between his heathenism and his Christianity inevitably yawns more and more widely, until it defies concealment and demands acknowledgment. Then the gospel is dismissed in set terms, with the thin apology that the world is not ripe for the application of its prin- ciples. Polite concessions are made to the memory of those statesmen who attempted to incorporate the gos- pel with politics ; but the attempts are described as failures, and the country is warned against repeating the dangerous experiment of carrying “ into the prin- ciple of international policy the principle of the gospel itself.” 27 “The mischief,” it is asserted, “lies in the fact that Mr. Gladstone tried to govern the country on Christian principles.” 28 Mingling with the unholy sounds of slaughter, the saying — a yet unholier sound than they — has been frequently heard, that there is no room for the gospel in foreign policy. Let it be so, since so it must be. “ Even now are there many antichrists.” It would be interesting to learn into what language the new imperialistic heathenism would translate the Beatitudes of the Master of Christendom — Beatitudes formerly imagined to be spoken for the moral guidance of mankind, summing up the developed virtue of the human race and pointing the true path to human per- fection. How would these fit ? Blessed are the proud in spirit : for theirs are the kingdoms of the world. 192 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Blessed are they that cause others to mourn : for they shall not need to be comforted. Blessed are the imperial races : for they shall annex the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger after gold and thirst after territory : for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciless : for they shall not need mercy. Blessed are the pure patriots : for they shall eliminate God. Blessed are the peacebreakers : for they shall be able to murder the children of God. Blessed are they which persecute for wickedness’ sake : for they annex the kingdom of the persecuted. Blessed are ye, when men shall applaud you, and canvass for you, and move all manner of votes of con- fidence in you, falsely, for the devil’s sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad : for great is your reward in the House of Commons : for so rewarded they the worldlings which were before you. REFERENCES 1. St. John F. Brodrick, War Secretary, House of Commons. 2. Lord Milner, War against War in South Africa , p. 59. 3. Joseph Chamberlain, House of Commons. 4. Sir William Butler, The South African War Commission . The Working up of Wars : W. M. Crook (formerly editor London Echo'). In the whole history of England there is in my opinion no war more unnecessary and unjust than the one in which we are now engaged in South Africa. I may be wrong, but if I am wrong I cannot understand TO THE POLITICIAN 193 the ferocity with which every criticism, every claim to freedom of speech, has been suppressed. Why cannot the full light of day be let in — first, on the Raid and Mr. Chamberlain’s alleged connection therewith; sec- ond, on the exclusion of the Transvaal from The Hague Conference ; third, on the persistent refusal of England to refer the dispute to arbi- trators, even when all foreign arbitrators were excluded ? 5. Joseph Chamberlain, October 8, 1900. 6. Invention of Grievances : Capt. L. March Phillipps, With Rimington. As for the Uitlanders and their grievances I would not ride a yard or fire a shot to right all the grievances that were ever invented. I know what I am talking about, for I have lived and worked amongst them [six years]. I have seen English newspapers passed from one to another, and roars of laughter were roused by the Times telegrams about these precious grievances. We used to read the London papers to find out what our grievances were. I never met one miner, or working man, who would have walked a mile to pick the vote up off the road. No man who knows the Rand will deny the truth of what I tell you. 7. Soldier's Pocket Book , p. 1 18. The South African War Commission, p. 23, which also (p. 144) puts on record : The condition in 1899, as disclosed in Sir H. Brackenbury’s memo- randum of our armaments, of our fortresses, of the clothing department, of the transport of the Army Medical Corps, of the system of remounts, shows that the Secretary of State was either culpable for neglect, or in ignorance of the facts. 8. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, House of Commons. On June 20, 1899, Mr. Chamberlain asked for a conversation. The Colonial Secretary came to his [Sir Henry’s] room and said he wished to submit to him and those who acted with him two proposals that the Government contemplated. The first was to send 10,000 men to the Cape. He must have expressed surprise, for Mr. Chamberlain went on to say : “You need not be alarmed. There will be no fighting. We know that these fellows won’t fight. We are playing a game of bluff.” [ Sensation and great Opposition cheers .] 194 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 9. War deliberately preferred to Peace: {a) In South Africa, New Age, May 28, 1903. When President Kruger, on October 9, 1899, asked that “all points of mutual difference shall be regulated by the friendly intercourse of arbitration, or whatever amicable way may be agreed upon by this Gov- ernment with her Majesty’s Government,” no answer was vouchsafed. (h) In the Philippines, Loyal Traitors, p. 27. Weeks before the treaty of Paris had been signed, and while it was yet wholly uncertain whether the United States Senate would ratify the treaty; while the Filipinos occupied toward us the attitude of allies who had assisted us by their army in effecting the conquest of Spain, — the administration, regardless of the rights of the case, without proven necessity, and without any authority from Congress, proceeded to make war upon the Philippine people. It issued the historic proclamation of December 21, 1898, directing the military occupation of the Philippine Islands, a proceeding wholly without excuse in law or morals; and this proclamation was followed by the naval expedition against Iloilo, under General Miller, thus beginning the open hostilities against the Filipinos long in advance of the outbreak of February 4 at Manila. 10. J. R. Macdonald, What I saw in South Africa. 11. Times, April 4, 1898. 12. Plotting War while professing Peace: (a) Lord Lansdowne to General Wolseley, August 27, 1899. By using Indian troops you could have your own army corps intact, for use on whichever line might be selected. I say this because it may be possible to compel the Orange Free State to declare itself against us, and in that case you would, I take it, advance through it, and not via Natal. You ought to be in utrumque paratus, with a plan for each contingency. (h) Lord Lansdowne, House of Lords, March 15, 1901. He [Lord Wolseley] wished us to mobilize an army corps. He sug- gested to us that we might occupy Delagoa Bay. He suggested an appeal to the Colonies for contingents. He proposed that we should land 1 1,000 or 12,000 mules in South Africa. . . . I would remind him that he pressed these measures on me, as he says, in the month of June, with an expression of his desire that the operations might begin as soon as possi- ble. Why? In order that we might get the war over by the month of November, 1899. My Lords, the idea of forcing the pace in such a manner as to complete the subjugation of the two Republics by the TO THE POLITICIAN 195 month of November, 1899, was, I frankly confess, one that did not at all commend itself to her Majesty’s government. But do not let it be supposed that all this time we were sitting with our hands folded. Our great desire was, at any rate, to make the Colonies safe during the period of suspense through which we were passing; and with that object we sent out to South Africa, as the noble and gallant Viscount will remem- ber, with his concurrence and on his recommendation, large reenforce- ments. ... I dwell upon these points because I want to show that her Majesty’s government did not contemptuously brush on one side the advice given to us by our recognized military adviser. Our policy was a policy of peace, not a policy of provocation. We earnestly desired to have the country with us. We believed the country was not ready for war in the months of June and July, 1899, and we therefore contented ourselves with taking those measures which we were advised were suffi- cient to insure the safety of the Colonies in the meantime. (c) See War against War in South Africa , p. 66. (d) John Morley, Life of Gladstone, Vol. II, pp. 330-335. The sincerity and substance of his [Count Bismarck’s] reproach are tested by a revelation made by himself long after. . . . He [Bismarck] had resolved to retire if the incident should end in this shape [the keeping open of friendly negotiations with France], and the chief actor has himself described the strange sinister scene that averted his design. He invited Moltke and Roon to dine with him alone on July 13. In the midst of their conversation “ I was informed,” he says, “ that a telegram from Ems . . . was being deciphered. When the copy was handed me it showed that Abeken had drawn up and signed the telegram at his Majesty’s command, and I read it out to my guests, whose dejection was so great that they turned away from food and drink. On a repeated examination of the document I lingered upon the authorization of his Majesty, which included a command immediately to communicate Benedetti’s fresh demand and its rejection to our am- bassadors and to the press. I put a few questions to Moltke as to the extent of his confidence in the state of our preparations, especially as to the time they would still require in order to meet this sudden risk of war. He answered that if there was to be war he expected no advantage to us by deferring its outbreak. ... I made use of the royal authoriza- tion to publish the contents of the telegram ; and in the presence of my two guests I reduced the telegram by striking out words, but without adding or altering, to the following form. . . . The difference in the effect of the abbreviated text of the Ems telegram, as compared with that produced by the original, was not the result of stronger words but of the form, which made this announcement appear decisive, while 196 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Abeken’s version would only have been regarded as a fragment of a negotiation still pending and to be continued at Berlin. After I .had read out the concentrated edition to my two guests, Moltke remarked : ‘ Now it has a different ring; it sounded before like a parley; now it is like a flourish in answer to a challenge.’ I went on to explain : ‘ If in execution of his Majesty’s order I at once communicate this text, which contains no alteration in or addition to the telegram, not only to the newspapers but also by telegraph to all our embassies, it will be known in Paris before midnight, and, not only on account of its contents but also on account of the manner of its distribution, will have the effect of a red rag upon the Gallic bull. Fight we must, if we do not want to act the part of the vanquished without a battle. Success, however, essen- tially depends upon the impression which the origination of the war makes upon us and others ; it is important that we should be the party attacked, and that we fearlessly meet the public threats of France.’ This explanation brought about in the two generals a revulsion to a more joyous mood, the liveliness of which surprised me. They had suddenly recovered their pleasure in eating and drinking, and spoke in a more cheerful vein. Roon said, ‘ Our God of old lives still, and will not let us perish in disgrace.’ ” The telegram devised at the Berlin dinner party soon reached Paris. . . . An inflammatory appeal was made to the [French] Chambers. When a parliamentary committee was appointed, a vital document was suppressed, and its purport misrepresented. Thus, in point of scruple, the two parties to the transaction were not ill matched. 13. Bungling Dispatches : House of Commons, October 19 and 25, 1899. Mr. Chamberlain : The honorable member harps on the word “ accept- ance.” He must remember he asked me the question what we intended. I, myself, should have thought that the Boers would have taken it as an acceptance, but I suppose it may be properly described as a qualified acceptance. We did not accept everything, but we accepted at least nine tenths of the whole. Sir E. Clarke: Really this becomes more and more sad. [ Loud Opposition cheers .] It is dreadful to think of a country of this kind entering upon a war, a crime against civilization, when this sort of thing has been going on. [ Opposition cheer s.~\ Why, in the very next sentence the right honorable gentleman says : “ It is on this ground that her Majesty’s government have been compelled to regard the last proposal of the government of the South African Republic as unacceptable in the form in which it has been presented.” Mr. Chamberlain : In the form. TO THE POLITICIAN 197 Sir E. Clarke : It is a matter of form ? Mr. Chamberlain: Yes. Mr. Cotirtney : My right honorable friend sent an answer intended to be an acceptance. (An Ho7iorable Member : “No, No!”) My right honorable friend is quite equal to denying my statement if it is wrong. Mr. Chamberlain : Oh, well, then, I will deny it. \_Laughter and Ministerial cheers. ] I did not think it worth while to interrupt my right honorable friend because he must know that I have said over and over again a “ qualified acceptance,” and he always omits the adjective. [. Ministerial cheers . ] Mr. Courtney: You said nine tenths. [Nationalist cheers .] Is a ques- tion as to one tenth worth war? Tell us what the tenth is. Mr. Chamberlain : I do not think it was worth war. Mr. Courtney : Tell us what the one tenth was. Air. Chamberlain : Why did not President Kruger give way ? Mr. Courtney: Because you did not explain the dispatch. It was never explained to him. The whole point is, Are we to go to war on the tenth part? As to that history will judge. [“Hear, hear.”] I am too confident, unfortunately, of what the result will be. 14. Daily Telegraph , London, February 14, 1902. 15. A.J. Balfour, Dewsbury and Manchester, November, 1899, January, 1900. 16. Cecil Rhodes, New Age, May 28, 1903. 17. Sir William Butler, The South African War Commission. 18. Lord Salisbury on the Crimean War. 19. Professor Henry Sidgwick, Practical Ethics , p. 67. 20. Lord Salisbury, November, 1899, May, 1900. 2 1 . War against War, p. 2. 22. Joseph Chamberlain, October, 1899, March, 1903. Political Falsehood : W. T. Stead, Are we in the Right? p. 70. It has been my lot for many years past to mingle much with those whom I may call the artificers of empire. They are not religious men as a rule, although there are some notable exceptions. There are few questions which I have discussed so much with them as this supreme question of th? existence of a righteous Ruler of the universe. I well remember the discussions that raged over the question whether or not Mr. Chamberlain should be pressed to make a clean breast of it MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 198 before the South African Committee. I always argued strongly that honesty was the best policy in the long run ; that Mr. Chamberlain could quite truthfully minimize his admissions, and, although it would, of course, necessitate his retirement from the ministry, it would not permanently injure his career, even if in the end it did not help him to the realization of his ambitions. But my friends one and all scouted the idea. “Joe,” they said, “ was in for it, and he must lie himself out of it, cost what it might.” Some of them said they would not lie themselves, but they would not give Mr. Chamberlain away. “ He could do his own lying for himself.” So the watchword was, “Lie! Lie! Lie!” and in the pro- ceedings of the South African Committee we have the result. It was a risk, an immense risk. Any one of half a dozen witnesses might by a single incautious word have spoiled the whole conspiracy of deception. I never believed they could have got through with it. Nor could they have done so had there been one member on the committee skilled in cross examination who was not a party to the hushing up. When it was all over I was taunted with my simplicity. “ You can always trust to unctuous rectitude,” said one of my friends, “ and, when that fails, to the natural cunning of the official Englishman.” Far outside the ring of the Africans the evil lesson of that committee was eagerly taken to heart. Honesty was not the best policy. Truth was not essential in politics. “ Just see how Chamberlain came off scot- free ! Where would he have been if he had told the truth?” And the apparent triumph of falsehood poisoned the morale of multitudes of our Imperialists. That it was falsehood, that the verdict was obtained by wholesale suppression of vital evidence and flat denial of essential facts, no one who was in the conspiracy ever disputed, nor do they now deny it. On the contrary, I shall be severely handled for referring to the subject again. It is such a pity, when a lie has served its turn, to insist upon referring to so painful a subject. 23. War against War in South Africa , pp. 3, 210, 248, 292. 24. Morley’s Life of Gladstone, Vol. II, p. 320. 25. New Age, June 5, 1902. 26. Mr. Chamberlain, October 29, 1901. 27. Lord Rosebery, November, 1899. 28. T. W. Russell, M.P., November, 1899. VI THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE JOURNALIST . . . the newspaper press, that huge engine for keeping discussion on a low level, and making the political test final. To take off the taxes on knowledge was to place a heavy tax on broad and independent opinion. The multiplication of journals “ delivering brawling judgments unashamed on all things all day long” has done much to deaden the small stock of individuality in public verdicts. It has done much to make vulgar ways of looking at things and vulgar ways of speaking of them stronger and stronger, by formulating and repeating and stereo- typing them incessantly from morning until afternoon, and from year’s end to year’s end. For a newspaper must live, and to live it must please. ... It is, however, only too easy to understand how a journal, existing for a day, should limit its view to the possibilities of the day, and how, being most closely affected by the particular, it should coldly turn its back upon all that is general. And it is easy, too, to understand the reaction of this intellectual timorousness upon the minds of ordi- nary readers, who have too little natural force and too little cultivation to be able to resist the narrowing and deadly effect of the daily iteration of shortsighted commonplaces. — John Morley. VI THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE JOURNALIST Great expectations were originally formed of that which the pioneers, referring to its moral possibilities, called the “Free Press,” and Carlyle, thinking of its material resources and vast stakes, styled the “Fourth Estate.” The journalist was the modern equivalent of the knight-errant, who, with chair for horse and pen for lance, was to “ ride abroad redressing human wrong ” ; the new Arthur who would “ fell the forest, letting in the sun, and make broad pathways for the hunter and the knight ” ; even the latter-day prophet, taking the place of the sacred lawgivers, promulgating from a nineteenth-century Sinai the laws of the modern New Jerusalem. It was with this in view that the pioneers fought to get freedom for the pressman to print his opinions, suffered even to get cheap paper for him, so that he might wing his shafts of light into the darkest hovels of the poor. They were not speculators seeking new investments, but idealists desiring the spread of knowledge ; not capitalists planning to ex- ploit democracy, but democrats praying for the exten- sion of popular liberty ; not members of the Three Estates creating a Fourth to be their tool, but citizens working for the broad ends of commonwealth. Flence they sought a free press as an instrument wherewith 201 202 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR to make men free, — free from the tyranny of the older Three Estates, from their own ignorances, prejudices, and superstitions, from degrading conditions of labor and life. Nor have these great ideals been wholly lost. Here and there an Ithuriel of the pen hears the com- mand of Michael and tracks the apostate angels through chaos and the great deep. The same shadow, neverthe- less, that we have seen dogging the footsteps of other democratic institutions — as senates and schools- — is seen deepening into blackness in the rear of the modern newspaper. Not unseldom Satan corrupts Ithuriel and draws him to his own apostasy. Carlyle, who fastened its title on the Fourth Estate, did not permit its glamour to fasten on him, but, in his Frederick , warned enthusiasts that Walpole’s “fashions and conditions” of direct bribery would alter merely “according as you have a Fourth Estate developed, or a Fourth Estate still in the grub stage” ; that “you may buy, not of the Third Estate in such ways, but of the Fourth, or of the Fourth and Third together, in other still more felonious and deadly, though refined ways. By doing clap-traps, namely ; letting off parlia- mentary blue-lights, to awaken the Sleeping Swineries, and charm them into diapason for you.” Terribly has the Carlylean prophecy been fulfilled, and in worse ways ; the sleeping swineries have been charmed even into the infernal diapason of war. The pioneers, could they look up from their graves, might almost wish their work undone ; for they would see the instrument they had created turned so far from its original purpose as to work, in certain places, contrary to their aims. They TO THE JOURNALIST 203 would see a financial press bought by scheming specu- lators at home, and a political press by chartered con- spirators abroad ; the Fourth Estate grasped by the mighty hands of the other three, making them finally all-mighty; private greed successfully wresting its fruits from the commonwealth ; the already swollen tide of national pride and selfishness buoying the political ad- venturer and the financial libertine to a still sublimer vanity and egotism ; and they might be tempted to be- lieve they had let loose a curse upon the earth instead of a benediction. The demoralization of the journalist is amongst the most mournful of war’s effects. That our knight-errant should become mere bottleholder to a national bully, our princely Arthur a delighted hounder- on of savage gladiators hewing each other in the lists, our prophet an abandoned pagan beating the tom-tom Y to drown the groans of the dying, — it was surely for other ends than these that the free press was born and for which it was sent into the world. These terrible forms of evil would almost appear to be germane to the press ; they are not new ; they greatly impressed the mind of Cowper : How shall I speak thee, or thy power address, Thou god of our idolatry, the Press ? By thee, religion, liberty, and laws, Exert their influence, and advance their cause; By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh’s land befell, Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell : Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise, Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies, Like Eden’s dread, probationary tree, Knowledge of good and evil is from thee. 204 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR The end of every human epoch is a day of judgment ; a day of judgment is invariably accompanied by war; and the effect of war is to test and prove men’s spirits, ranging them on the side of good or evil, amongst the sheep or the goats, according to what manner of men the touchstone reveals them to be. It is thus that a time of war tests the journalist also, forcing whatever nefa- rious powers are latent in his calling to their highest pitch and expression, bringing them before the public eye in glaring lights, and illustrating them by the most flagrant instances. War draws out the worse side of all who succumb to its influences ; hence the common defects of a newspaper are aggravated at such periods ; the turgid, blood-swollen tide betrays its course, which we do not so readily observe when the current flows evenly and normally within the banks of common affairs. One fact revealed about the modern press, standing out black against the glare of war, is that it is a com- mercial press, whereas the men who battled for a free and untaxed paper were thinking of an educational and reforming press. The original type of newspaper man is disappearing, — the man who owned and edited his paper as small shipmen used to own and command their schooners, with the direct object of furthering a cause, taking reward only on the modest scale of the laborer who was worthy of his hire, — and his place has been taken by the capitalist who employs it to produce wealth and the ends of wealth ; even by the speculator who requires powerful organs to commend TO THE JOURNALIST 205 his schemes to the public, and the conspirator who is able to buy and dictate to the ablest pens in the market. That independent press from which our fathers hoped so much tends increasingly to become a vile servitor of scheming plutocrats who, grasping parliaments with one hand and the press with the other, lift themselves more and more towards omnipotence. Transactions which the pioneers would have regarded as political prostitution have now become legitimate business. Great newspapers are bought and sold as money-making instruments, passing with their entire staffs from those who hold one set of opinions to those who hold an entirely different set, the determining question being profit and loss instead of political principle, precisely as the same men would buy a mill or sell a mine. This is not to be set down altogether to the discredit of those journalists who, driven into a corner, sorrow- fully confess that the mercantile element dominates the modern newspaper, nor even of those who boldly avow the commercial motive, but to the fact that the whole drift of modern society is towards the hands which hold the wealth. The great daily is a vast con- cern, requiring so much machinery and so many work- ers, such numbers of writers and correspondents able to command large salaries, holding property or rights of usage in telegraphs and other expensive plants, in- volving control of such immense capital, that it cannot possibly be held by a poor man, and gravitates naturally into the possession of the capitalist class. In his great, majestic way Milton pleaded that the printing press should be made free from the domination of Parliament, 206 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR lest we should “ dishearten utterly and discontent, not the mercenary crew and false pretenders to learning, but the free and ingenuous sort as evidently were born to study and love learning for itself, not for lucre or any other end, but the service of God and of truth”; but the danger involved in “lucre or any other end” dreaded by the first Puritan has come upon us, and we require another Milton to deliver our press from the overlordship of the money bag. For when the money bag can be replenished best by war it finds its most valuable auxiliary in the hired pen. The pen becomes not only mightier but bloodier than the sword. From this fount and origin of evil flows all that is worst in the journalism of our day and all that is pettiest. Its moral and, at times, intellectual poverty arises from the fact that its members are chosen less for their attachment to principles, or their proved ability to become teachers in the realms of art and literature, philosophy and science, religion and politics, than for their knack of hitting the popular taste in style and opinion, for their smartness and opportunism, for all those heaven-sent qualities which go to make “the largest circulation in the country.” Impartiality in reporting news and judicial fairness in commenting on them are set aside in favor of snap and brightness, short paragraphs and thin thinking, undermining steadily the reading and reflective habits of their customers. This, however, is a minor evil. The supreme danger of the modern press is other than its demand on the reader’s time, the dissipation of his energies amid a hundred un- important details, the blunting of his moral perceptions TO THE JOURNALIST 207 against its staring vulgarities, or the entanglement of his reason amid endless political sophistries ; it lies in that systematic inculcation of a low ideal natural to a commercial agency, the reduction of every question to terms of expediency, the substitution of news for ethics, information for inspiration, and paying adver- tisements for honest leading articles. But it is when these mean standards are applied to international affairs that the jeopardy into which nations are brought by their newspapers becomes visible ; for an organ that has systematically wasted itself and its public upon the small ends of domestic self-interest cannot at a bound rise to those heights of magnanimity, justice, tolera- tion, breadth of view, from which alone foreign rela- tions can be amply surveyed and sanely discussed. A commercial paper naturally becomes a war paper. The journalist, by those forces he is himself largely respon- sible for creating, is driven into mean constructions and narrow interpretations, by which he yet further inflames the minds of his own countrymen and exas- perates the nation with which difference has arisen, until passion submerges reason on both sides and peace recedes toward the impossibilities. The tendencies of modern commercialism have aggravated rather than diminished the vices long since noted by Bentham when he declared: “Injustice, oppression, fraud, lying, whatever acts would be crimes, whatever habits would be vices, if manifested in the pursuit of individual inter- ests, when manifested in pursuit of national interests be- come sublimated into virtues. Let any man declare who has ever read or heard an English newspaper whether 208 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR this be not the constant tenor of the notions they con- vey. Party, on this one point, makes no difference. However hostile to one another on all other points, on this they have never but one voice — they write with the utmost harmony. Such are the opinions, and to these opinions the facts are accommodated as of course. Who would blush to misrepresent when misrepresenta- tion is a virtue ?” 1 Neither can the press of one nation claim nobler manners than the rest, for the financial motive is at the root of all alike ; and while one will gravely chide the extravagances, vaporings, and belli- cose nonsense of the foreigner, it will, when the cases are reversed, repeat them on its own account. “The efforts of [the foreigner’s] war party, malignant and con- temptible as their tactics have been in many respects, have been too successful” ; 2 yet the same censor is found steadily on the side of every warmonger amongst the governments of its own country. There is no meas- ure to the sonorous dignity with which Satan can rebuke sin, or to the screech with which he can excite it. ■ Since the stakes of commerce, through artificial economic conditions, continue to gravitate into fewer and fewer hands, it follows that the press lends itself to the same manipulations as other capitalistic concerns, — to combinations, monopolies, and conspiracies against the common good. The enormous and terrific power of a conspirator press is beginning to affect minds not commonly alarmist or particularly zealous in the cause of liberty, though the peoples of the civilized world have not yet comprehended the shape and extent of the TO THE JOURNALIST 209 terror. This latest evolution of capitalism into the newspaper ring, controlling the stops of the mighty organ of public sentiment and able to play tunes of its own choosing, with plans so vast as to include wars and extinction of states as passing details, powerful enough to seize the political machinery of a country as a means towards the exploitation of its economic resources, lawless enough to press governments with their armed forces and the taxes of their citizens into its service, arrogant enough (especially the organs of any capital city, standing in closest relation to the govern- ing classes) to give forth its voice as the voice of govern- ment, — this is a portent too vast and shapeless to be yet understood, but, like theshape of Death that met Milton’s Satan at the gates of hell, gradually becomes clearer as it uprears its horrid front against the civilized world. 1 When a group of international financiers find it de- sirable to bring about a war, their first business is to secure the press of the country or colony against which^ their mischief is devised, and since their means are un- limited they find few obstacles insuperable. Such papers as hold out against the combine find themselves sub- jected to persecution and harassment in a thousand different ways, with the result that their advertisements are curtailed, their circulation is diminished, and their influence reduced to a minimum. The next step is to import journalists who, for certain sums of money, can be relied on to voice the policy of the syndicate and fabricate such news as may be necessary for their purpose ; whilst these truly “ inspired ” pressmen, as 210 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR correspondents to the papers of the home country, will be able to manufacture opinion wherever the language of that particular nation is spoken. Credible authori- ties within their own ranks testify in terms such as these : “You are getting no truth in regard to affairs here, because the press has to write up to the feeling of the magnates. I am beginning to believe that the British press is Britain’s greatest danger in colonial affairs because of the influence that is brought to bear upon the men of the pen” ; 3 or these: “I think it is in the interest of humanity generally that we should look facts in the face, and not allow ourselves to be deceived by the narratives of special correspondents who know full well how short would be their shrift if they dared to paint, or even to sketch with the lightest touch, the darker scenes of the war. Few of them, indeed, know all that occurs, and if they did a false shame and a spurious patriotism would probably induce them to hide it. No man wishes to face the furious invective that has been poured on Mr. ; money and labor and influence in high places will be used for all they are worth to prove him a liar; and libel and persecution are all the rewards he can ever hope to receive .” 4 Even with these means, however, the re- sources of conspiracy are by no means exhausted ; for the clique are rich enough to buy control over many home papers and to secure the dismissal of such editors as decline to write to order. The machinery, being thus created, is set to work ; the bought papers, foreign or colonial, supply a stream of editorials, correspondence, news, to the squared TO THE JOURNALIST 21 I papers at home ; cable and post transmit a practically unanimous testimony and stream of information ; the general press agencies are also, for the same reasons, in the swim ; entire volumes of leading articles, con- cocted, ready-made, fully written, will be sent into every newspaper office in the land for the free use of editors and writers 5 ; and everything is ready to bring about a conflict that shall be good for business. In a much larger way than even Lowell imagined, an editor “ blows up the flames of political discord for no other occasion than that he may thereby handily boil his own pot.” The necessity for military action will be drummed into the public. It will be found easy to make impu- tations of disloyalty against sections of colonists, and of actual conspiracy against a friendly state ; and by dint of repeating them over and over again, like an advertisement, in the pages of a hundred different papers, the people will certainly be made to believe them. And since every government makes mistakes and involves some abuses, the familiar processes of suppression, misrepresentation, exaggeration, will com- monly go far to secure that exasperation of spirit neces- sary to bring about hostilities ; but when facts fail, fictions will readily be substituted, for no “ kept ” thing can be amenable to the recognized laws of honor. The newspaper at this stage ceases to discharge the func- tion for which it was created, — to be a medium, namely, for the dissemination of news, — and becomes a pam- phlet for the ends of propaganda, partisanship, popular perversion ; and this is what the conspirators term proceeding by “ constitutional ” means. 212 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR After a war has been successfully engineered the conspirators’ press is reenforced by auxiliaries of most tremendous power, — being nothing less than parlia- ment, army and navy, foreign and colonial offices, and every department of the government concerned, all of which now stand committed to see the thing suc- cessfully through, without reference to the methods by which it has been brought about. Having annexed these, the conspirators are assured of their assistance in cooking news and fabricating reports, censoring telegrams, putting opposition newspapers under martial law, mutilating dispatches, minimizing the nation’s losses and exaggerating the enemy’s, by which means the heart of the people is kept up to fighting pitch. “We have before called attention,” writes a distin- guished war correspondent, “ to the singular economy of truth in the official telegrams from South Africa, and many quite serious engagements have either not been mentioned at all or have been treated as trifles. . . . Now we are sorry to note that the weekly list of casualties has been stopped. Apparently it was having too great an effect upon the country, and it is now published only once a month, which virtually sup- presses the news altogether, and prevents observers at home from seeing what is the precise effect on our- selves of the labors of generals in this or that section of the country.” 6 When the coveted territory has been conquered and annexed, the same methods will be im- mediately resorted to ; the ring will secure a news- paper monopoly, putting its own color on public affairs, nor will there be an independent organ to utter a word TO THE JOURNALIST 213 of protest or explanation. The people, meantime, for- getting the poisoned source of their information, swal- low it all and are beguiled to their own hurt. And here arises a double loss and evil ; for those people who are alive to the danger will not believe a hireling pen even when it speaks the truth. A known baseness of motive is held to prove an opinion baseless. None believes a war paper unless he first believes in the war. A “ yellow ” press suggests a jaundiced pressman ; and the jaundiced eye sees everything yellow. Only a jingo public credit a jingo paper; for both alike see contem- porary history through the distorting medium of the war frenzy ; whilst sane and healthy minds will fre- quently reject and always doubt their interpretations. It is thus that war damages the reputation as well as the character of the journalist. When they have successfully coerced a government, the conspirators next set themselves to persuade the conscience of a people ; and as this is most effectually accomplished by representing the people against whom designs are entertained as unworthy of political liberty, they initiate a campaign of slander which, with such machinery, cannot fail of its purpose. The “ kept ” press thus becomes a “reptile” press, pouring venom into the national mind, acting over again the parts of that serpent who insinuated slander into the ear of un- corrupt humanity, and of that brother who poisoned a king through his ear preparatory to usurping his throne. The Fourth Estate assumes the horrid outline of a portentous fiction factory, turning out the completed 214 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR article in quantities so prodigious as to defy all historic parallel. In carrying on the work successfully begun, according to legend, by the father of lies, it is ably seconded by its auxiliaries in the illustrated papers, which engage the pencil of the artist, the camera of the photographer, the die of the engraver, and all the resources of modern pictorial art to carry the stream of poison through the avenue of the eye ; so that if an exceptionally healthy spirit throws off the malign influences which assail it by one entrance, it may succumb to those which bear in upon it from another. That which climbed to public favor as a medium for the dissemination of news visibly degenerates into a vehicle for the transmission of lies. Lies are manu- factured as puddlers, demon-like and in an atmosphere infernal, burn ore into iron. Falsehoods are bought and sold in open market as brokers vend shares in valuable properties. The very placards lie shamelessly, a scorn and a hissing to every passer-by. Instead of an editor sitting with his ear to the nerves of the world, receiving a stream of facts, impressions, truths, which radiate towards him from the four corners of the globe, and authentically dispatching the same to every quarter, we get the picture of a spider sedulously launch- ing films of telegraph and post, cable and telephone, to the uttermost ends of the earth, and sending through them shocks of conspiracy to paralyze the moral sense and lure the nations into a snare. The leading article beguiled us and we did fight. The strategic value of lying has been sufficiently recognized in actual warfare but not in the press which TO THE JOURNALIST 215 makes warfare possible. When a Hebrew general de- sired to capture a certain city, it is written that he first caused the priests to compass it for seven con- secutive days, blowing their silver trumpets as they went, till, on the seventh day, the people shouted their war cry, the walls came tumbling down, and the city was annexed. Similarly, when a section of modern capitalism covets any state, it first sets the priests of the press, ably seconded by those in the pulpits, to blare forth lies, till the people’s temper has been suf- ficiently exalted, at which point they set up a terri- ble clamor, the fighting man steps to the front, and the deed is done. From the financial conspirator to the bought newspaper, from the bought newspaper to the f, hired lie, from the hired lie to the criminal war, is the order of events which, like some hell-born phantas- magoria, is dimly seen to be crossing this stage of things . 7 A capitalized press renders false witness possible on a scale never before approached in the history of the world. It is possible to secure the condemnation of now a man, now a nation, on hearsay evidence, for no juster reason than that such condemnation is required by the schemers who exploit all governments, armies, taxes, democracies. It is possible now to pour in floods of letters, telegrams, rumors, of the most abominable falseness, against a people and its leaders ; to represent them as loathsome, crafty, cruel, treacherous, cowardly, hypocritical, and what not 8 ; to invent outrages and atrocities of which they were never guilty ; to get men kicked to death — in the correspondents’ column, 21 6 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR children tortured — in double-leaded type, women out- raged — in the scare heading, prisoners massacred — on the posters, till it is made to appear a virtue to sweep such wretches from the face of the earth . 9 The conspiring prints will even, with barefaced cynicism, announce that they can supply more atrocities on demand 10 ; yet the people will not see that they are being fooled. Dropping the exposed falsehood, they fly, wide-mouthed, to swallow the next, until, surfeited, stuffed, gorged, and sickened with falsehoods, they have no moral energy left to believe the truth even when it comes, but drift like dead dogs hither and thither amid the bloody froth of newspaper reports. There is something more terrible than to see a calumny launched against a nation for the sake of destroying it, and that is an obsession of the spirit of falsehood by which the different calumniators persuade themselves that they believe each other’s calumnies. A sacred writ- ing declares that when people love a lie their doom is to be given over by the Eternal to strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. But when the doomed thing is a once “free” press on the one hand, and the de- luded thing a once aspiring democracy on the other, Hope herself almost swoons into despair. It is as though Nathaniel the guileless should degenerate into Ananias, and Mary the Virgin into Sapphira, — whilst the feet of the young men that shall carry them both out are even now at the door. In times of peace the partisanship of the press is not more pronounced or offensive than that of the party man, but in war time it becomes heated, unjust, TO THE JOURNALIST 217 scandalous, cruel. When a paper holds its own against formidable competitors of opposite politics there is a reasonable guarantee that between them truth will out ; but when there is nothing to read save the con- spiring organs, we get only one side of things, and even that is dictated not by patriotism but by finance. The innocent imagine and the malevolent pretend that the extraordinary unanimity of the press in war time puts the fictions recorded and the policy defended beyond question ; whilst through every pretense of Esau’s hands, garments, and cajoling venison, the voice is the one voice of the conspirator Jacob. A perusal of the “ Rules for Newspaper Correspondents [“ those newly invented curses to armies”] at the Seat of War,” set forth in the Soldier s Pocket Book } 1 shows how the general edits the editor, and how the censor holds himself ready to practice every species of mendacity from the suppression of the true to the suggestion of the false, according to the exigencies of the military situation. It is there set forth that licenses must be obtained from the military authorities, will not be granted to those they consider “undesirable,” “retired officers will be preferred,” and they will all be “under the Mutiny Act.” “ This Press Censor will have the power of insisting that all communications . . . must be sent through him ; and he may detam or alter the communication should he deem it injurious to the in- terests of the army ” . . . “ give as much information as he may consider advisable and consistent with his duty . . . authorized to tell them everything that can be published with safety to the army . . . each 2l8 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR newspaper will send him a copy of every issue of its papers.” Thus to the picturesque mendacities of the war correspondent who, in the words of one of them, “ if he has been within a hundred miles of a battle, will cheerfully lie to you when describing that battle,” 12 are added the official mendacities of the general and the censor, who will “ detain or alter ” his message according to “the interests of the army.” Under such circum- stances no rational being expects truth. No newspaper corruption can be so disastrous to the public mind as that which comes from interested ownership seconded by censorship of the military authorities, for such a press is commonly taken as independent and unbiased, whilst all the time it is controlled, dictated to, not merely inspired but conspired, wielding all the corrupt- ing power not merely of the open lie but of the lie taken for truth. Its influence is like that of Arthur’s false queen, who being Allow’d Her station, taken everywhere for pure, She, like a new disease, unknown to men, Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd, Makes wicked lightnings of her eyes, and saps The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse With devil’s leaps, and poisons half the young. That unique position occupied by the journalism of a free country adds to its enormous mischief-making power when those harmless little ways it has acquired in peace time become embittered and accentuated by the passions and interests of war. Its present method of describing instead of reporting debates and speeches TO THE JOURNALIST 219 lends itself to manipulation of news to suit its policy. Its judgment of what is important and unimportant permits it to suppress undesired facts, speeches, meet- ings, and give prominence to those of opposite nature. A meeting will be reported without giving a line of the chairman’s address because it chances to be a reasoned rebuke of the war spirit ; but the speeches which follow will be put in if they happen to be of a different color from his. Whilst, careful of its own credit, it will print official news, it will also select from the mass of un- official but still authentic matter such fragments as suit its purpose, cleverly deciding the place as well as space assigned to such material, according to its color. It is not difficult to make the news column support the leading article. If a peace meeting gets broken up, the great fact will be recorded in several columns ; whilst a score of peace meetings, held in the same city, passing peace resolutions unanimously, will not be so much as noticed. If a peace advocate gets stoned, the event will, like the fall of an empire, have prominence on the very posters ; but if the same advocate goes to the same town, addresses a large and peaceful assembly, and gets a peace resolution passed with unanimity, the fact will receive a finger breadth in an obscure corner. If a book is published favorable to the war policy, it will be reviewed at length, with commendations; but if a different book is printed, able, responsible, in- formed, it will get a few lines. Letters from local cor- respondents are printed or suppressed in larger numbers according as they favor or oppose the war. These are some of the obvious ways in which a war paper sorts 4 220 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR its news to suit its policy and by which the people are kept in ignorance of the true drift of things. The effect upon the people who are deceived is manifest ; but what will be the effect upon the journalist who de- ceives ? The demoralization of our Mercury amongst the gods of the modern world affords, were there no other, sufficient reason to condemn war. The Fourth Estate, thus owned and edited, can be depended on to support to the bitter end whatever war is going, and every measure which the other Three Estates may count necessary to “ see it through.” “ There should be no hesitation in adopting the policy and the means necessary to attain the end in view with the utmost rapidity and completeness ” . . . “smashed on thoroughly scientific principles ” . . . 13 “indifferent to the method by which that end may be secured . . . if the work can be done better by war, then let it be by war ; war with no more lamenting of the means than a surgeon makes over an operation ; war without humani- tarian hysterics or the weak-minded rhapsodies of con- fused religion ; war at once and war in earnest ; war without hesitation, and war without compunction ; war that will be swift, short, and shattering. . . . Short, sharp, and decisive war . . . attack them promptly, crushingly, and remorselessly, walking, as it were, over them, and trampling them underfoot, until we are in a position to dictate terms at [the capital].” 14 A war press will decline to recognize any higher motive than self- interest, any higher policy than might against right, and will bring all the resources of literature and sophism TO THE JOURNALIST 22 I to justify the programme of the tiger and the shark. The word “magnanimous” is only “‘foolish’ writ large in four syllables for two.” . . . 15 “Humanity” is merely “hysterical regard for a fetich .” 16 Denying justice abroad, it is prepared to repudiate fair play at home ; advocating fire and sword against an enemy, it cannot be expected to do other than suppress his apolo- gists by thinly veiled incentives to violence and, after successful riot and assault of peace advocates, by lame palliations or bold justifications. The peace advocate is denounced as “ in the fullest sense of the word a murderer, and a traitor as well.” 17 That journalism which the pioneers sweated to make free degenerates into an engine for the suppression of free speech and the right of public meeting. No sooner does war begin to loom in the distance than, like hounds scenting blood from afar, the papers set up a clamor, in the spirit of the noisy thing they call patriotism. They work upon the nerves of a population grown excitable by the pres- sure of modern life, its pleasure seeking, its whisky drinking ; their appeal is to vulgar pride and the in- stincts of the bully ; and the only difference between them and the hooligan of the slum is a certain pomp and circumstance of language, — as when an antagonist on a certain trivial occasion is warned not “ to trade too much on the long-suffering of a proud and suscep- tible people.” 18 The practical intention is the same. Pressmen act more like corner boys getting up a dog fight than responsible citizens dealing with the life or death of nations. Open the page of modern history where one will, one meets the “patriotic” journalist 222 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR dashing oil daily upon the already flaming fires of national jealousy and discord. When unoffending Japan is being opened up, Sir E. Reed testifies : “ It is fair to observe that writers who show themselves very capa- ble of painting in the darkest colors the wrongs done to ourselves somehow fail even to notice the wrongs to which the Japanese had to submit. The insults which they had to endure — and down to this moment have had to endure — from the foreign press in Yoko- hama were of the most galling nature.” 19 A large section of the modern press tends to war as the sparks fly upward. Declamation in the leading article pro- duces delirium in an ill-balanced public, whose frenzy is further excited by cartoons exhibiting to the eye the conquering magnificence of the nation as against the mean poltroonery of the foe. The weakness of the newspaper is that it lives by its circulation, and is driven to compete for circulation with its war-frenzied contemporaries, — shriek answering to shriek, curse to curse . 20 Then arrives the age of unreason, and a lead- ing journal can be tolerated in the infamous boast printed over its title that it has “ made the war.” 21 The danger to humanity involved in an ill-balanced, ex- citable, sensation-monging, capitalized press is plainly revealed in the events that precipitate national contests ; it is one of the distinctive perils of the twentieth cen- tury. It sends the war tide throbbing through men’s veins, feeds the lust of conquest and the appetite for territory, all the time invoking reason and conscience, putting on airs of self-righteousness, till it has added the sin of hypocrisy to the sins of theft, falsehood, slander, TO THE JOURNALIST 223 and murder. In time of war it requires but a feeble effort of imagination to see reiving Rob Roy seated in the editorial chair, ably seconded by the facile Dugald Dalgetty as news editor, and De Quincey’s artistic Mr. Williams as war correspondent. The demoralizing effects of war upon a nation’s journalism are, however, brought into the terrible relief of blood and fire by the actual events of a campaign. Having frankly lapsed into paganism, it writes in terms of paganism rather than those a Christian civilization would demand. There is a type of war correspondent who can be described only by one of the class, — “men given to foul speech, drunkenness, dishonorable dealing, and disregard for the rules by which they have agreed to abide . . . men who drink themselves delirious, men whose speech would shock a pirate crew.” 22 The worst of them can be trusted to describe a single murder in terms of reprobation, yet the best of them will, when the murder is that of a nation, urge it as a sacred duty, and narrate the commission of it in words of glowing exultation. Sometimes the language is daintier, — “the reduction of their personnel by a prolonged process of attrition,” 23 — but the meaning is extermination. As it is their special business to take away the enemy’s char- acter, preparatory to the soldiers taking away his life, they insist that he should be “slain with the same ruth- lessness that they slay a plague-infected rat. Exeter Hall may shriek, but blood there will be and plenty of it, and the more the better . . . enable us to find the excuse that Imperial Great Britain is fiercely anxious 224 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR for ... to blot [them] out as a nation, to turn their land into avast shambles.” 24 The journalists of a war- ring nation frequently excel its fighting men in ferocity, declaring that “vengeance, prompt, unfailing, and un- pitying, has become the manifest duty of the com- manders ,” 25 cabling messages “with the object of giv- ing a lead to the government and [the general in the field].” 26 The progress of a campaign brings a stage when they openly advocate the murder of prisoners and the desolation of the land, assuring the soldier that he will be supported by public opinion in proceeding to these awful extremities. Day after day they raise a persistent clamor for the naming of a date after which “ we shall refuse the rights of belligerents to those re- maining in the field ” 27 . . . “ summarily hanged when caught — hanged, not shot — ... we are looking wist- fully towards [the commander ]” 28 . . . “we should like to believe . . . that [the commander] has issued orders that no prisoners are to be taken, that is to say, that no quarter is to be given ” 29 . . . “ to treat them as murderers who must be exterminated ” 30 . . . “the services of the provost marshal become more effective than those of the strategist . . . the imperial govern- ment need not be afraid to act with vigor .” 31 Far re- moved from personal contact with the harrowing scenes of the campaign, exasperated by the suspense (and perhaps expense) of a long-extended struggle, and desti- tute of that sympathetic imagination which presents to the mind a full picture of those horrors from which distance debars the eye, they will even call for action against women and children, in order, through them, TO THE JOURNALIST 225 to strike at the men on the field, for the women and children are also “ combatants ... to be dealt with on that footing,” 32 and will exhort the commander to treat a heroic leader on the other side to “ a drum-head court-martial and the nearest tree.” 33 When, goaded by their pens, the soldier harries a land by fire and sword, they will confess to “a joy of satisfaction when the smoke [of a farm] went up . . . these unkempt, ill- conditioned rebels, these human vermin, have been treated as though on a level with respectable Kaffirs ... a beast of a rebel is getting his deserts.” 34 Hav- ing thus hounded on the hired homicide to turn himself into a common murderer, they look with equal mag- nanimity on his degradation to the level of a common thief; for “next to the fierce joy of fighting, that of satisfying the primeval instinct of robber man is the highest pleasure which war affords. Add the promise of plunder to the certainty of a fight, and you increase by tenfold the efficiency of any army in the world .” 35 Thus the journalists. The religious press, however, we say, will be a refuge from these distresses, and, being edited by Christian men, will voice the Christian ethic as against the heathenism of the “ secular” press. Alas! For it turns out that the “religious” press is manned by writers who are ecclesiastics rather than ethicists, and church- men before they are Christians. It also has gravitated into the hands of the capitalists to a large extent, and, with the churches it represents, is dependent upon their patronage. One of themselves describes the position 226 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR with satirical frankness: “We must not take Christ too literally ; we are not called upon to be losers by our religion. If in business we have to compete with worldly rivals, there is no reason why we should handi- cap ourselves by a supersensitive conscience. In order to make it workable, Christianity must be worked with an alloy of common sense ; just as gold to be made usable must be mixed with an alloy of baser metal. An eighteen-carat Christianity is what the world wants .” 36 Those who oppose a war on moral or religious grounds might naturally be expected to give expression to their views in the pages of a religious newspaper, but if they try, they will, for the most part, find themselves excluded . 37 If by any chance a mildly worded remon- strance be permitted space, it will be duly discounted by the militant editor in a footnote affirming that the writer is a most ill-informed person or so blinded by peace prejudices as to be incapable of distinguishing black from white. Official assemblies of Moloch minis- ters will, by resolution and manifesto , 38 coach the literary organs of their churches, protesting against any endeavor to “ patch up peace ” and sending their official deliverances round the entire “religious” press; not seeing or not caring that they subjugate religion to politics, humanity to sectarianism, principle to expedi- ency, the church to the army, and Jesus Christ to Julius Caesar. “ Blind leaders of the blind . . . and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Any heathen reading the religious organs of a Christian people in war time would come to the inevitable con- clusion that they had entirely given up whatever faith TO THE JOURNALIST 227 they ever possessed in peace, mercy, brotherhood, had ceased to read the Beatitudes, and forgotten the Ser- mon on the Mount . 39 Week after week, month after month, he would see them pouring out articles, leaders, sermons, speeches, letters, justifying the war of the day, glorying in the heroic qualities developed in the nation by a long-continued course of slaughter, — even if the victims be worshipers of the same God and be- lievers in the same Christ, — delighted that it prepared the way for the gospel and the missionary, even that it led to more saying of prayers. Without descending to the “ secular ” press in sheer brutality, the “ religious ” press exceeds it in the dissemination of that sanctified sophistry which the ecclesiastical world appears to make peculiarly its own . 40 There is no salvation in the religious press. How then shall we be saved ? The answer can be fully stated only in terms which include the conversion of capitalism, the culture of democracy, the ethicizing of religion, the substitution of solidarity for patriotism. / Something will have been done if democracy can be warned of this new menace to its liberties, this new obstruction to its progress. The demoralization of the journalist is not the least impressive of the omens of war. REFERENCES 1. Works , Vol. II, p. 556 (edition of 1843). 2. Times , April 6, 1898. 3. A. G. Hales, Daily News, December 27, 1904. 4. W. T. Stead, What is now being done in South Africa. 228 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 5. Manufacture of Leading Articles {New Age , March 14, 1901) : The South African Association has issued a circular headed, “ The Editors’ South African Note Book : Being Notes on South African Politics for the Use of Editors.” The “ Note Book ” contains “ articles ” which editors are entitled to use “ freely.” “ Now,” asks Truth , “ what is the avowed aim of the Imperial South African Association ? To furnish provincial papers with articles gratis, which they are to use as though they were written in the offices of the papers. The editorial ‘ we ’ is inserted in order to deceive readers. For instance, one of the gratis articles commences: ‘We owe a debt of gratitude to the correspondent of the Daily Mail.' I have before me a copy of the Ayrshire Observer , in which one of the articles printed in No. 223 is inserted verbatim. There is not a hint ora suggestion that it is not written by the editor or by one of his staff under his control. We may assume that, if 223 successive numbers of the ‘ Note Book ’ have been sent to provincial editors, many as well as the inhabitants of Ayr- shire have been fooled in the same fashion. When these dupes thought that they were reading an expression of the independent views of the editor of the journal that they bought, they were really reading those of an asso- ciation formed for the express purpose of influencing public opinion in favour of the Chamberlain-cum-Rhodes policy as regards South Africa.” 6. Charles Williams, Morning Leader , October 31, 1900. 7. Specimen of the Newspaper Lie, here preserved for the Curious, like a Fly in Amber : Morning Leader, January 10, 1901. Mr. Stead telegraphed yesterday from Hayling Island : “ The Express this morning repeats the falsehood which it circulated yesterday that the British officer whose letter I published in “ Hell Let Loose ” is an officer of the Salvation Army. In reply to the challenge published in the Express yesterday, I telegraphed an emphatic denial. My correspondent holds the Queen’s commission, and is now in command of British troops at the front. But the Express suppresses my reply and repeats its falsehood. Hence this appeal to you to nail this lie to the counter.” 8. A String of Pearls hung round the Neck of Britain’s Enemy by the Newcastle Daily Chronicle (see The Editor Edited , p. 21) : The most unenlightened, the least progressive, the most tyrannical, the most corrupt, and, in a word, the worst section of the Dutch element in South Africa. . . . TO THE JOURNALIST 229 The nearest analogy that white civilization presents to the ignorant and obstinate tribes of colored barbarism. . . . A band of brigands and assassins. . . . First and foremost a bully, with most of a bully’s characteristics. . . . “ The craftiest, most hypocritical, most dishonest, most untruthful, cruellest, most ignorant, most overbearing, most immoral and stupidest race of white people in the whole world.” They have always murdered their prisoners, black or white, when they thought they safely could. . . . A horde of the most miserable scoundrels nature has produced. . . . All the vices of the Dervishes and none of their virtues. . . . Steyn is a liar. . . . Stubborn, cruel, ferocious, arrogant, cunning, treacherous, and unscrupulous. . . . Essentially an assassin. . . . He delights to kill when he can do so in security. . . . The pious pig-breeder of Dewetsdorp [De Wet]. De Wet ... a discredited brigand and murderer. . . . Ruffians and banditti. . . . A savage, and as a savage he should be treated. . . . 9. Manufacture of Outrages: Testimony of J. A. Hobson, (a) Morning Leader. I have just cut to-day from a daily paper the inclosed cablegram. It is just of a kind to inflame the sentiments of Irish Catholics, who, but for the cablegrams, would be inclined to suspect the British conduct in forcing the war. [The “ inclosed cablegram ” reads as follows :] “ Boer desecration and burning of churches. The Boers in northern Natal, before evacuating Newcastle and Dundee, defiled and desecrated the Catholic churches in these towns, and finally set fire to the buildings.” I need hardly add that this cable statement is a lie. (h) How the Press was Worked, p. 12. Cape Times of October 18th : MURDER THE ENGLISH (An Appeal in the Taal) — natives INCITED TO MURDER Maritzburg, October 18 [from our Correspondent]. — A lady who arrived here with her family from Barberton last night gives a piteous account of things in that neighborhood. She says that renegade Englishmen are rampant in the outlying dis tricts, and are threatening and bullying all whites. 230 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR A circular emanating from the office of a Dutch newspaper, printed in the Taal, calls upon all Boers, as a sacred and religious duty in the event of a reverse, to use their utmost endeavors to incite the natives to out- rage and murder all English women and children. The alarm in the isolated places is intense, and a repetition of the massacres of the Indian Mutiny is feared. [Though the Cape Times was appealed to for the name of the Dutch newspaper, and for a more satisfactory account of the circular, no more was heard of this incident : it had performed its part and passed away. This method was systematically applied.] 10. Tunes (Natal), (see How the Press was Worked, p. 16). 1 1. Soldier's Pocket Book , pp. 170, 179. 12. Edgar Wallace, Daily Mail, October 2, 1901. 13. Times, September 11, 1901, and October 23, 1902. 14. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, September 8 and 30, 1899. 15. Pall Mall Gazette, London, April 12, 1901. 16. Daily Mail, April 13, 1901. 17. Globe , London, March 5, 1902. Newspaper Encouragements to Mob Law. See War against War in South Africa, pp. 39, 322, 342. 18. Daily Telegraph, October 26, 1904. 19. Japan, Vol. I, p. 260. 20. The Warmonging Press — Instances from Various Newspapers (see Pe>nbroke Pulpit, No. 24) : “ The sands are running out 1 In a few short hours the glass will be empty, the time limit of the British ultimatum to Russia will have expired, and our diplomatists will surrender their task into the hands of the men of action. The situation will not grow more grave, simply because it is impossible that it should be graver than it is at present. There is just the chance that the Russian government will recognize its danger, and will decide at the last moment to act in accordance with the customs of civilized peoples ; but it is only a chance, and a poor one at that.” “ But there is another lesson to be taught, and we shall teach it, — a lesson to be learned, which Russia shall learn. The old plan of procrasti- nation will not serve the government of the Tsar on this occasion. We have asked for an immediate reply to our very moderate demands, and if we do not get it we shall proceed to turn back the Baltic fleet.” TO THE JOURNALIST 231 “ The Channel fleet, with steam up and decks cleared for action, is only waiting for the last grains of sand to trickle through before it sails upon its mission. Whatever the consequences may be, we may rest assured that that mission will be accomplished fully and completely.” “ The honor of the British empire has been besmirched, and British honor is a thing that Britons will fight to uphold. Russia must give these Britons the satisfaction they demand, and which all the world upholds them in demanding, or she must fight and be whipped. Which- ever method Russia elects will be quite satisfactory to Britons, but the decision must be prompt. There can be no shuffling, no delay, no argu- ment. Britannia waits with flashing eye and clinched fist, determined that the crime against her people must not go unpunished.” “ What a chance for Lord Beresford to become a modern Nelson 1 Not by putting a telescope to his blind eye, but his ear horn to his deaf ear, misunderstanding orders, and converting the Baltic fleet into sub- marines.” “ Are we going to take it lying down ? “ Such an insult and vile degradation to our flag is unparalleled in British history. “ Why should we dilly-dally with such villains ? ” 21. New York Journal (see New Age , November 10, 1904). 22. Julian Ralph, Century Magazine , New York, September, 1901 . 23. Mr. Winston Churchill, War against War hi South Africa, P- 344 - 24. Indian Planters' Gazette (see War against War in South Africa , p. 377). 25. Globe (see New Age, February 7, 1901). 26. South Africa, May 25, 1901. 27. Times, May 18, 1901. 28. Pall Mall Gazette, January 15, 1901. 29. Ibid. 30. Birmingham Daily Gazette, January 8, 1901. 31. Standard, London, October 16, 1900. 32. St. James' Gazette. 33. South Africa, April 20, 1901. 34. Morning Post, June 27, 1900. 35. Dr. Aked, Our Cowardly War, p. 9. 232 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 36. Christia 7 i World, London, May, 1902. 37. See War against War in South Africa , p. 239. 38. Ibid., p. 343. 39. Bloodthirstiness of the Religious Press. See Refer- ences, Chap. IV, Note 33. 40. See War agauist War in South Africa, p. 377. VII THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE PREACHER And soon we shall have thinkers in the place Of fighters. What ye want is light — indeed God’s light organised In some high soul, crowned capable to lead The conscious people, conscious and advised, — For if we lift a people like mere clay, It falls the same. We want thee, O unfound And sovran teacher ! if thy beard be grey Or black, we bid thee rise up from the ground And speak the word God giveth thee to say, Inspiring into all this people round, Instead of passion, thought, which pioneers All generous passion, purifies from sin, And strikes the hour for. Rise up, teacher! here’s A crowd to make a nation ! — best begin By making each a man, till all be peers Of earth’s true patriots and pure martyrs in Knowing and daring. Elizabeth Barrett Browning VII THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE PREACHER The belief that Christianity is incompatible with war, was designed indeed to abolish war, has been cherished by not a few Christians, was held by all the Christians of the first three centuries, by many through- out all the confusions of post-Nicene ecclesiasticism, and has emerged into new credibility by the ethicizing of modern religion. Millions are now prepared to make it the test of any religion that is genuine. Even John Ruskin, spite of the lamentable sanction wrongfully drawn from his Crown of Wild Olive, declared that war was not permissible to Christian peoples or kings (from which let those who quote him draw what consolation they can) ; so that those who interpret Christianity as the religion of peace, peace practicable, immediate, international, are not without buttresses on which to lean. Christianity is the religion of peace. How then is Christendom still at war ? We naturally turn to the professional teachers of religion for an answer. The paid teachers of Christendom are numbered by hundredsof thousands, — priests, bishops, ministers, cate- chists, and so on, — while their lay helpers — deacons, churchwardens, elders, Sunday-school teachers, mis- sioners, lay preachers — may be counted by the million, and it is incomprehensible that war should continue 2 35 236 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR to exist in Christendom unless by first demoralizing those formers of religious opinion. The fact also that all Christian countries alike compete in the equip- ments and spoils of war can be understood only as proof of a corrupt or undeveloped conscience. The reason why Christendom is to-day in such straits, and that so many countries wallow in debt, waste, igno- rance, covetousness, poverty, and misery unspeakable, is chiefly that the paid teachers of Christianity, with their hosts of unpaid assistants, have capitulated to the war god. The chief defaulters are not the lay help- ers, who can hardly be other than echoes of their ecclesiastical superiors ; nor the general body of wor- shipers, who go to be taught, not to teach ; but those who are emancipated from all other labor in order that they may have the opportunity of studying, investigating, proclaiming, the principles of Christianity, yet permit themselves to be overcome of an evil spirit. An American divine 1 pronounces that “Jesus was not a peace-at-any-price man. . . . There is a text in the New Testament which seems to embody the principle of the gospel of Jesus, ‘First pure, then peaceable.’” This is simply shocking, and a more or less uncon- scious accommodation to the principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, spiritual wicked- ness in high places of the church. War is never pure, but is hell ; and it can never be permissible to inaugu- rate heaven by the help of hell. If there be anywhere a sinner, the paid preacher is he ; and if he be not so much a sinner as a victim of the nefarious powers that produce war, then the measure of his fall is TO THE PREACHER 237 the measure of war’s iniquity. Just as Milton’s Satan seemed to fall a second time when, after himself sin- ning, he persuaded woman to sin, so the demoralizing influence of the war spirit is seen at its basest in the corruption of those who are pledged and paid to preach the doctrines of the Prince of Peace. Such corruption, let us cheerfully note, never has been, is not now, uni- versal, complete. Here and there a smaller Elijah refuses to bow the knee to the military Baal, a faith- ful Micaiah, though smitten on the mouth, continues to bear his testimony to the true significance of the gospel. Continuously, in this spot and that, spite of deposition and loss of livelihood, the true Christianity continues to be sounded forth in terms such as these : “ How do we feel towards the plain duty of ‘ Love your enemies ’ ? Are these precepts of the ideal church never intended, like the Commandments, or the Sermon on the Mount, to be applied more closely than is con- venient ? For centuries the church met the hostility of a pagan and unscrupulous world and never flinched. Throughout she prayed for those who despitefully handled her : throughout no revenge or bitterness marred the security of her soul. It was not till later on, when dross had mixed in, that the church took to bad and aggressive ways. . . . With what spirit do we send forth our fighting men ? The drunken revels which form the music-hall ideals of good fellowship, the excitement of the gin palace and the London streets — as if the bottle was the best prelude for the battle ; the cries to the poor lads to avenge this or that, the greedy newspapers spreading unfounded slanders against our 238 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR opponents, the insistence by which prejudice and angry ignorance have persuaded us that the enemy was but a horde of savages, who would run away at once. The whole temper of our times is so utterly antichristian that it appals me when I look out upon it all, and note the intolerance with which men hate opinions opposed to the momentary enthusiasm. We know that these noisy people, who let no voice but theirs be heard on platform, in pulpit, in the newspaper, and who will never themselves bear the brunt and pains of it, are far from being the sane mind of our [British] people. . . . There is no nobleness save that of purity and love, no gospel save that which preaches forgiveness, no joy like that of joining hands in peace ”; 2 or these: “ I, personally, refuse to think that the ‘ red-fool fury of modern jingoism’ is at all the true mind of the British people at the present time. It is an over- growth, a product cooked by deception from ignorance and excitement. The ‘Gold Terror’ is now haunting the road of human progress and is wasting the life and treasure of the world. It aims at controlling the seats of learning, ... it already controls a large portion of the press. ... It is creeping into the churches. . . . Many prominent Free Churchmen seem unable to resist the pressure brought to bear.” 3 The appalling nature of the preacher’s defection is seen by contrast with the magnificent opportunity war time affords him, than which prophet or apostle never had greater. The most stupendous episodes and the most tragic incidents rise up to illustrate and enforce his TO THE PREACHER 239 appeals ; the laws of dramatic contrast and antithesis assist to blazon upon the mind of his generation the truths he had (presumably) been preaching through all the years of peace, — against the sable background of hate to paint the angel of love ; over against revenge to set forgiveness ; against cruelty, mercy ; against murder, martyrdom ; against the sword, the cross ; against the rising storm of savagery to speak the still- ing word of peace. Even the vantage ground of the persecuted will be afforded him, the unspeakable priv- ilege of enforcing his message by suffering for it, like the glorious confessors of old. He can count on the certainty of his lay helpers and congregation bitterly resenting his opposition to a popular war, his speaking as Jesus spoke, his insistence that the kernel of the gospel is peace ; and on the possibility of their aban- doning his ministry or even thrusting him from position and livelihood. He sees one preacher rebuked from the judicial bench and the woolsack, compelled to resign his chaplaincy, and another dismissed from office and emolument, for venturing to withstand the debauched but rampant spirit of militarism ; and, reading these signs of the times, the heart of the faithful witness expands with holy zeal, for he sees that the hour of suffering is at hand and that by suffering he can teach the most impressive lessons of his ministry. The measure of his shrinking from the cross is the measure of demoralization wrought in him by that spirit which prefers the sword. A trial of strength between conflicting nations is also a trial of the preacher’s moral character; the 240 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR height of noble opportunity to which it lifts him has its counterpart in the base opportunism to which he may condescend. He may temporize like the politician, saying that it is “for all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to so handle the trouble as to commend them- selves to the larger number” ; 4 and if his opportunism is not greater than the politician’s in bulk, it is more shocking from its incongruity with his religious voca- tion. He may accept the carnal policies of the parlia- mentary world as limitations of his gospel, and hang his head like a dumb dog when statesmen, declaring that it is a root mischief to try to govern the country on Christian principles, fling Christianity incontinently out of the houses of legislation. He may soothe his conscience with the lie that war is a matter of politics, having nothing to do with the preaching of the gospel, and slide gently down into the dastard, blind equally to the humor and the atheism of his position. Between churches which cry, No politics in the gospel ! and par- liaments which cry, No gospel in politics ! the Son of Man is hard put to it to maintain a footing in modern affairs. “ Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord; thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against the shepherds.” An outbreak of hostilities reveals the fact that the pulpit, in the main, has made up its mind to speak nothing that can threaten its “influence” or diminish the number of its contented adherents. The friends of peace listen in vain for any articulate word from the ecclesiastical representatives of the Master of Christen- dom, who declare, rather, that it is not their business TO THE PREACHER 241 “to investigate the causes of war ,” 5 — which is the same thing as to say that they have nothing to do with the discovery and removal of the causes of crime, vice, sin ; or they truculently affirm that “ it is not a case for arbitration: it must be a fight to a finish.” 6 The oracles of God are silent, except when they breathe forth threatenings and slaughter. The Lord gives the word, but there are few to publish it. Few invocations of the Prince of Peace are heard, but many of the God of battles, — a worldly-wise corrective of that much overrated saying, God is Love ! Joshua the killer is substituted for Jesus the killed, and the Book of the Wars of Jahveh for the Beatitudes and Parables of mercy. By its guilty acquiescence in the spirit as well as the policy of war the pulpit invites the conclusion that it has nothing to say with regard to the duties of nations when the clash of hatred comes, and, inviting that verdict, invites either the condemnation of its gospel as a weakling that cannot remove those passions it condemns, or its own as a traitor that dare not preach the gospel it professes. In all the unhappy developments of ecclesiasticism nothing is more deplorable than its silence at times of greatest national crisis, unless we except its antichris- tianism when it does speak ; and in this reproach those churches which are free from connection with the state share equally with the political churches. The con- science of the “free” churches, so spruce and jaunty in certain spheres, lies limp and voiceless before the uplifted sword, bribed by gold, paralyzed by fear, or shielding itself under such unhistorical prevarications 242 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR as that “Nonconformity was born on the battlefield.” 7 The federated tribes of Israel slink to their tents, mur- muring some safe platitudes about peace and prayer meetings, whilst the world triumphs, the flesh riots, and the devil grins with infinite content. Those des- ultory voices which lift themselves in the wild war wilderness are angrily suppressed by the ecclesiastical powers, and its music hall becomes the true church of the frenzied nation, — its braggart song for hymn, its stimulus to hate for prayer, its measureless lies for the scriptures of truth. If appeals are made to a great body of representative ministers, they refer it to a gen- eral purposes committee — amid laughter . 8 “The very calling upon the bishops to assist in stopping the effu- sion of Christian Protestant blood created a laugh, in which they joined themselves .” 9 There will be no laughter when the thing comes up for judgment. It were hard to say which is worse, — the silence of the pulpit or the timidity or wickedness of its speech when it does find a tongue. The great mass of preachers are either dumb dogs that cannot bark or dogs that when they do bark do also bite and devour. The pulpit differs from the political platform only in its greater unscrupulousness and looseness of thought and the sanctity in which it embalms a lie. A dumb dog is bad, but a bloodhound baying upon the trail is worse. A watchman who does not cry is a coward, but a watchman who opens the gate to the enemy is a traitor to boot. What is to be said about a preacher who, when the fearful issues between the war spirit and the TO THE PREACHER 243 peace spirit are trembling in the balance, either cannot speak or speaks only to blaspheme his own gospel ? Either he distrusts his gospel, or fears it, or is igno- rant of its true nature. If he cannot speak and speak Christianly, he should be forever silent. One is at a loss to say which is the greater evil, — a pulpit that has lost its tongue or one that has lost its conscience ; a pulpit apathetic or a pulpit apostate. In solemn con- ference assembled a body of ecclesiastics affirm that whilst they deplore its evils they maintain the principle that war, “ in the last resort, when the forces of per- suasion fail, is, under present conditions of life, a right- eous means of redressing wrongs or defending rights.” 10 In the first days disciples betrayed the Son of Man with a kiss; in these late days they betray him with a — resolution. Well might he, speaking to the few faithful who mourn in their militarized Zion, exclaim, “O, what a fall was there! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, whilst bloody treason flourish’d over us.” Well do certain classes of pulpiteers merit Coleridge’s scathing epithet of “Moloch priests”: Thee to defend, meek Galilean ! thee And thy mild laws of Love unutterable, Thee to defend the Moloch priest prefers The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd That Deity, accomplice Deity In the fierce jealousy of wakened wrath Will go forth with our armies and our fleets To scatter the red ruin on their foes! O blasphemy ! to mingle fiendish deeds With blessedness ! 11 244 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR If the purpose of these lines were merely to indict the modern pulpit, it would be served by passing in review the pulpit’s shortcomings from the standard of the gospels and pronouncing its condemnation as an unveiled apostate. Justice, however, which is only another name for charity, demands a wider survey and a more discriminating conclusion. In all sin two main considerations must precede judgment, — the weakness of the sinner and the strength of the temptation ; and the object of the present writer is to demonstrate the demoralizing power of the war spirit by exhibiting its effect upon that very institution which is, presumably, mightiest to resist its influence. Terrible indeed must be the overbearing and seductive influences flowing from an agent that succeeds in corrupting the very powers designed by Providence to resist it. If we reflect how fearful and stupendous would be the malig- nity of crime were it able to corrupt all childhood, of unchastity could it debase all womanhood, of intemper- ance could it besot all abstinence, of cruelty able to bru- talize all motherhood, or of avarice sufficient to shrivel up benevolence itself, we shall be horrified to see that the war spirit is endowed with satanic power to corrupt peace herself, to pervert and dominate a church con- secrated to the very ends of peace. No other consider- ation can account for a pulpit which, not content with tacit or open complicity in a particular war, is driven, by a weak longing for consistency, to palter with the very root principle of peace. Experience proves that argument directed against the stupidity and wickedness of resorting to arms for the settlement TO THE PREACHER 245 of differences between beings endowed with brains and moral sense never fails to win approval from a miscel- laneous audience, but falls cold upon the ears of eccle- siastical assemblies. It cannot be doubted that the church, exerting herself in accordance with her prin- ciples, could make all bloodshed impossible, and could have averted every war of recent times ; yet on many such occasions the multitudes of ministers stir no finger, preach no sermon, sign no petition, sound no note that a government, willing enough to know the temper of the nation, can interpret as hostile to their project ; the result being that statesmen responsible for war are able to declare that “ the ministers of religion . . . whose profession inclines them to peace, to whatever denomi- nation they belong ... all their organizations, and almost without exception all their ministers, are heart- ily on our side ” ; 12 that the war therefore must be just. None knows better than these statesmen that no such conclusion can be drawn from the unanimity of the pulpit, which has always indorsed the war of the day ; but as an argument it is good enough, and it proves the utter prostration of the agencies of peace before the brute powers of the world. With scarcely an exception every successful war is acclaimed as a “ leading of God’s good providence, leaving a legacy for the church, creating opportunities for her work.” 13 In- deed, we are always “justified in invoking the blessing of the Most High upon the British arms, to carry out the work intrusted to the Anglo-Saxon race.” 14 The sins of the pulpit are more than omission — the paraly- sis of the peace enthusiasm ; they rise into a positive 246 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR enthusiasm for war — the commission of deeds which violate in every point the teachings of the gospels. The appalling truth has to be faced, that the church, contrary to every expectation that might be formed from her principles and the character of the Being she worships, is always and as a whole for the war of the day. It is true that when peace is the popular cry the preachers are also for peace. If there is a peace crusade on hand which excites the shallow enthusiasms of the fashionables, the preachers also will catch the excite- ments of the hour ; but when the white banner yields to the red, the pastors beat the drum for the fighters as furiously as they had previously denounced the savagery of armed conflict. No other conclusion is pos- sible than that the church follows rather than leads public opinion, and is herself the creature of public excitements and passions. While not interfering to prevent the strife of nations, she has too often com- mitted the sword into the hands of the faithful, and blessed the banners of every host that went forth to slay. In the days of her political rule she caused her minions to shed blood like water ; and though the scepter has passed from her hands, she lives to speed forth with benedictions whatever host marches from her borders to violate every law of humanity and religion. Organized Christianity divests herself of her robe of righteousness and her garments of meek humility to clothe herself in khaki. She gathers the way-going soldiers into her fold, preaches to them the bad-spel of hate instead of the god-spel of love, presents them with New Testaments bound in khaki — the Union Jack on TO THE PREACHER 247 one cover and the legend “ Peace through the blood of Jesus ” on the other (blasphemous and shocking combi- nation of the divine and the diabolical), drops the typ- ical Christ dying for his brother, and substitutes the original Cain killing his brother. As the enemy is overrun by filibusters in khaki, so is Christendom by a blatant priesthood who, upon occasion, can doff their ecclesiastical regimentals to don the semi-military garb of chaplains to their corps, march on the Sabbath day, with strains of martial music, at the head of bands of soldiery to the house of worship, and there, climbing into the pulpit, indulge in every art that can defame an enemy and fill their hearers with murderous zeal : “You go to fight men as skulking as they are cunning, as cowardly as they are ignorant ” 15 . . . “ a blow at the tyrant, the oppressor, and the murderer” 16 . . . “a brutal and degraded race” 17 . . . “utterly devoid of truthful- ness, honor, or honesty” 18 . . . “outside the pale of civilization” 19 . . . “the dirtiest and laziest people in the world ” 20 . . . “ they have a lower conception of the character of God [than we].” 21 Whilst Jesus called for special benediction upon the peacemakers, fashionable pulpiteers masquerading in his name, amid the applause of assembled worshipers, denounce them as “ imbeciles or traitors ; imbeciles if they think [the war] can be stopped, and traitors if they think it ought to be stopped .” 22 A thousand pulpits are manned by Bible bullies who cite every obsolete and bloody precedent of the wars of the Jews, and show themselves destitute equally of the elementary humanities and of the facul- ties necessary to discriminate between Judaism two 248 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR thousand years before Christ and Christianity two thou- sand years after him. As Mephistopheles mingled with the priests in the holy service, and even mounted the rostrum to preach the sermon for the day, so the war devil — whether clad in Roman frock, Anglican cassock, Genevan gown, or Dissenting broadcloth — flings khaki over all, and takes possession of the pulpit called Chris- tian, in order to preach up every vile motive and passion the Founder of Christianity came to destroy. One will not be wanting to declare that Christ himself, were he on earth, would handle a Maxim gun and shoot down our enemies for us. 23 “ The pulpits are being used every Sunday to inflame the pride and passion of our people, to dull and sear their consciences,” 24 declared a pecu- liarly unimpassioned observer of war’s madness. The pulpits voice the passion of an hour rather than the prin- ciples of an eternal gospel, the patriotism of a moment rather than a righteousness that endureth forever ; and they have their reward in a temporary applause but a permanent loss of power. This false ministry has damned itself. It merits Joaquin Miller's passionate rebuke that it has not put up the sword within its sheath : , Behold, this was His last command ! Yet ye dare cry to Christ in prayer With red and reeking sword in hand. Ye dare to do as devils dare ! Ye liars — liars great and small ; Ye cowards, cowards, cowards all ! A conjecture may even be advanced whether the churches, having almost extinguished Christianity in its relation to the great world problems, have not also TO THE PREACHER 249 extinguished themselves ; whether mankind will con- sider it worth while to preserve a lip religion that con- tinues to disgrace not itself only but the very nature of humanity ; for “ if the salt have lost his savor, where- with shall it be salted ? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.” What can mankind do with a church that peels itself like a pugilist and reveals the murdering pagan instead of the martyred Christian ; which for carnal reasons cancels the Sermon, contradicts the Beatitudes, flatly denies the gospel, repudiates every specific Christly ideal, and unseats Jesus in order to elevate Mars to the throne of conscience ? Since the passing of the first Christians the war spirit has successfully paganized the heart of the church and per- verted it to a great apostasy. “ This pugnacious pro- pensity,” wrote Richard Cobden, 25 “ reveals itself above all in the display which public opinion tolerates in our metropolitan cathedral . . . whose walls are decorated with bas-reliefs of battle scenes, of storming of towns, and charges of bayonets, where horses and riders, ships, cannon, and musketry realize by turns, in a Christian temple, the fierce struggle of the siege and the battle- field.” At frequent intervals the cross with its suffer- ing victim recedes and out of the blood-red mist emerges the foul idol of war erect on his crimson chariot ; the wreath of thorns, symbol of sovereignty by suffer- ing, changed into the snaky hair which expresses at once the cruelty and the deceitfulness of sin. Asking contributions towards a war memorial, a militant rector 26 announces that it will “ take the form of the crucified 250 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Christ, surrounded by a nimbus and the Union Jack, while at the foot, in place of the familiar figures of St. John and St. Mary, will be those of St. Stephen and St. George — a soldier and a bluejacket.” How lovely are the messengers ! A meeting is called to inaugurate a fund for building a cathedral ; it is held at the War Office ; many military officers are present ; an arch- bishop and a field marshal consent to become vice presidents ; and it is decided to erect the cathedral as a memorial to fallen soldiers . 27 But the other sects are not to be outgeneraled by Anglican bishops ; are in truth a trifle indignant, not at the crimes and miseries of the war, but at the presumption of a sect that has less seating accommodation than themselves 28 ; and the game of erecting churches out of the bones of the dead and the broken hearts of the living goes merrily on. It would appear, in fact, to be a favorite device of the clergy to exploit a war in the interests of new eccle- siastical edifices, turning the sin and shame of the war spirit to business ends. In due time, therefore, comes “a circular to all the ministers of the Presbyterian churches in Scotland, soliciting their cooperation in the collecting of a sum of money sufficient to build a church . . . in memory of the Presbyterian soldiers who fell in the recent war. The circular is signed by all the Moder- ators of Presbyterian churches in Scotland, England, and Ireland.” 29 Even the invalid soldier is taught to sing, in words whose religion is as discreditable as their poetry : Fear not, comrade, God is watching, He is with you, Christian Briton, Hasten on supports and rear guards, Swords unsheathed and fear forgotten . 30 TO THE PREACHER 251 It is thus that the Christ vanishes with his gentle visions of paradise, Abraham’s bosom, and the many mansions, — homes of the penitent, the merciful, the meek, the persecuted ; and in his room comes the rude and savage Odin with his celestial Valhalla, — heaven of the brute heroes whose nectar is the blood of their slaughtered foes. How can the world retain its belief in a church which is visibly distanced in faithfulness to gospel principles by the humanitarians who do not venture to call themselves anything more than atheists, agnostics, positivists, socialists, secularists, and what not ? How can the churches preserve mankind’s one indispensable sheet anchor — faith in the moral govern- ment of the universe — when they play fast and loose with their foundation principles ? Can the common man do aught but capitulate to unfaith, concluding that it is a devil’s world, when he sees the vanguard of the ethical army effect a cowardly retreat from the outposts ? And will he not argue that man’s hope of salvation — slight as it is — lies with such social, political, and nonchris- tian religious bodies as remain true to the notions of humanity and brotherhood ? The conclusion with which Tolstoy sums up My Re- ligion is inevitable : “ The church, formed of those who thought to bring about the unity of mankind by affirming, with oaths, that truth was in them, has long been dead. But the church composed of those who are united into one, not by promises, not by [ecclesi- astical] consecration, but by the works of truth and of good, that church is alive and will live forever. It is composed now, as formerly, not of men who cry ‘Lord, 252 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Lord ! ’ and work iniquity, but of men who receive Christ’s words and obey them. “ The men of this church know that their life is good, if they do not destroy the unity of the Son of Man, and that this good can be destroyed only by disregarding the commandments of Christ. They, therefore, cannot but obey these commandments and teach others to obey them. “ Be these men few or many now, they are the one church which nothing can overcome, and the one in which all men will be united. “ ‘ Fear not, little flock ; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’ ” In making it possible to say this the church has condemned itself. A tradition still lingers in Christendom that its pulpit exists to propagate the principles of goodwill and brotherhood, to seek peace and ensue it, to teach the duties of patience, forbearance, love ; and, by in- ference, to strive against those passions which are destructive of a nation’s moral character. But the demoralization of the pulpit destroys the comfortable tradition that we have an agency which stands between us and madness, and substitutes the disturbing thought that it merely brings the theological bias to support the political bias, adds the sanctions of religion to the most odious national crimes, and makes good-god minister to bad-devil : for if the light that is in it be dark- ness, how great is that darkness ! Many pulpiteers are completely obsessed by the war spirit. Red tides of TO THE PREACHER 253 violence surge up into the pulpit also and sweep its occupant away on the mad foam of hatred, calumny, and lies . 31 Even the religion of the foe is held up to ridicule ; it is suggested that he is “ the most sniveling old hypocrite on the face of the whole earth” 82 ; pic- tures representing him at worship are publicly hissed ; it is held witty to associate him with the more odious characters of the Bible, and pious to identify him with the beast of the Apocalypse or the devil ; by which means the pulpit slanderer contrives to do more harm to public morals during a brief season of war, than he can undo during his entire life tenancy. Does the pul- piteer turn the white light of Christianity upon a war- maddened people ? or does he require the pure light turned upon himself that he may see how utter his apostasy ? Does he remind a vainglorious and boastful people that pride goeth before destruction ? Does he not rather swing the censer of national vanity be- fore the nostrils of the faithful, to confirm and exalt that pride which has already brought on it the con- demnation of heaven ? Is it not he who speaks great swelling words about “ the greatness of [Britain] as the greatest missionary nation, the greatest civilizer of all nations, the truest exponent of political free- dom,” 33 with a quite parochial ignorance of the splendid achievements of other nations in those very directions ? The debauch of blood that accompanies battle, and the debauch of beer that follows victory, alike find him silent or mildly apologetic. Neither the martial orgies of jingoism nor the drunken orgies of snobbery — during which more whisky is consumed than at any 254 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR equal period of national history — stir him to any- thing more than an excuse which is really an approval. There is no infamy, no cruelty, which a Moloch priest, apostate from the Sermon on the Mount, will not sanc- tion or condone. His complacency is undisturbed by the opinion that “ the exigencies of the war will always require the burning of farms, and even of villages.” 34 With complete indifference to the doctrines of the Nazarene he thinks it well that the enemy should “feel that their brothers, sisters, and wives and children are suffering from it [their resistance], and then they may be brought to reason,” 35 or, with a frightful lapse from Jesus to Jehu, he shouts to “completely denude the country . . . though bare fields and blackened home- steads frown all around,” for you “ cannot cure the stubborn foe until surgical and cauterizing instruments in the shape of fire and sword scrape and burn him to the very bone .” 36 He has no rebukes for the spirit of revenge which breaks forth in approved watchwords from the lips of soldiers steaming away for the seat of war; not even when the watchword of revenge is shouted over a vastly outnumbered foe, or over wounded boys murdered where they lie by hate-flushed soldiers. If the enemy will not submit to the government’s pro- posals, “there is only one way of peace, and that is a hideous one, — suppression.” 37 The sanctification of revenge is, indeed, the vilest function performed by a war-poisoned and blood-stained church. The command to love our enemies is entirely set aside, on the tacit understanding that forgiveness and empire do not go well together, and with a secret TO THE PREACHER 255 feeling that it is lucky for the empire that it never tried to do anything of the sort. Even churches other than national are not able to divest themselves of the idea that they are in part functionaries of the state, com- mitted to its quarrels, bound to stand by the exist- ing authorities; and they endeavor to atone for hate of enemy by alleging a love of neighbor to be pro- moted by war — though even this is a thin fallacy and though Jew and pagan can do as much without a Christ and a cross. Filled with the irreligious notion that they have to police the military authorities, they do their best to prevent the pernicious doctrine of forgiveness pervading imperial politics, and pour the vials of “ common sense ” on Paul’s absurd doctrine to feed the hungry foe and give him drink when thirsty. It would be rank treason, for one thing ; and a church more anxious to demonstrate its loyalty to the throne than to the cross takes care to remove those Christian prejudices from the minds of its worshipers. If for- giveness is a duty, it has its dangers also, as the “esoteric” meaning of the Nazarene’s teaching clearly shows ; for if the king had not forgiven the debtor who owed him ten thousand talents, that debtor would not have been able to throw his fellow-servant into prison for a hundred pence : it is sometimes well to exact the uttermost farthing : history proves what evils follow when a nation shows a too forgiving spirit ! 38 There- fore, “let us hope above all that we shall have done with magnanimity .” 39 The world can be more gen- erous than an apostate church, for it says in its rough and kindly way that when a thing is over it is best 256 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR to “ forgive and forget,” but “ all this talk about ‘ affec- tionate regard ’ ” for a beaten enemy is only “ fulsome and wholesale eulogy,” and “to give them credit for goodness and excellence where there are such defects and shortcomings looks dangerously like a compromising of the eternal righteousness of God ” ! 40 Thus is revenge also placed amongst the prophets. Vengeance becomes a beatitude. The world has said that revenge is sweet ; it has been reserved for the church to say that it is also holy. Now abideth faith, hope, charity, revenge, — these four; but th^ greatest of these is — revenge. The professional teachers of the church form a class skilled in that casuistry by which ecclesiasticism has maintained its hold upon mankind, and it is not to be supposed that in their backsliding they are without defense, — which is partly a defense of war. It is pos- sible to tide over a period of moral crisis by glosses and interpretations ; and this is how the official ministry reason away the ethics of Jesus whenever they become unpopular. Ignoring certain sayings, pressing others into a foreign service, and utterly traversing the main lines of ethical religion, it is never impossible to defend armed violence in the abstract and every display of it in particular. A brave show of scripture and phi- losophy can be made over such pleas as these : that there is a place within Christianity for force ; that Jesus expected wars and rumors of wars to the very end, never censured such soldiers as came his way, employed the sword as a figure of speech ; that Peter and Paul received soldiers into the church, made friends TO THE PREACHER 257 of them, reveled in military symbols, — on which flimsy pretexts the eternal principles are abolished. Better- ing the alleged instruction of the apostles, they com- plain that there is “ still a lack of appreciation of the great work soldiers have done for the church from the very earliest ages,” and invite their hearers to “ consider the possibilities of what might be done with that great throng of men who compose the army . . . their great power to spread the grace of God ” ; for they have “ a vision of the army becoming the greatest power for good in the national life ... on the side of prayer, purity, and progress.” 41 They write books about the mind of the Master, but disown the mind which took him to the cross. They ask, What would Jesus do? all the time knowing he would forgive, not slay, his enemies ; die for, not murder, those who martyred him. Not even the suffering caused by war brings paid officialism to bay ; for, with a shuddering lapse into blasphemy, it argues that the Master was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, “ the noblest of vol- unteers ,” 42 and is unwilling to acknowledge the differ- ence between suffering inflicted and suffering endured ; between murder and martyrdom ; slaughter and sacri- fice ; violent attack and meek self-surrender ; death involuntary while attempting to compass another’s death, and death voluntary as a means of bringing the murderer to repentance. Nay, it is not enough to defend organized slaughter; for what he justifies the official teacher also sanctifies; and what he sanctifies, that he also glorifies. Their “white-haired old chaplain ” 43 hopes that the troops 258 v MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR going away will “on some quiet Sundays join together in singing a hymn he has composed for them : Lead us, lead us, God of Battles, Lead us onward in the fray ; Rest above in midnight campings, Go before in marching day.” To the returning troops another declares that a country cannot attain to full and true life till it has been con- secrated through blood. A baptism of blood is neces- sary to full nobility, — not merely a sprinkling on the vicarious heads of troops on the field, but a bath of the entire people . 44 Would it avail to ask those meek fol- lowers of the Lamb of God who pant to see their coun- tries drenched in blood, those pure exponents of the vicarious cross, why and for what ends they continue to preach a gospel of whose sense they have not even a glimmer ? or what would be the use of a gospel that was such as they would make it appear ? whether Jesus did not voluntarily shed his blood, precisely in order that there might be no more violent shedding of blood ? whether he did not live and die to make men noble ? And if men cannot be made noble without blood, what is the use of the gospel ? Or if they can be made noble by the gospel, what is the use of war ? A line from Byron 45 shall give us the pious gloss at its highest, and at the same time expose its wickedness, — a wickedness of which (it is pleasant to believe, on the evidence of later editions of his work) Words- worth repented before he died : 46 Carnage (so Wordsworth tells you) is God’s daughter; If he speak truth, she is Christ’s sister. TO THE PREACHER 259 The truth is that the double-mindedness of its pro- fessional caste is working fearful havoc with the con- science of the church. The fathers who transferred to the church the books of the Jewish Bible en bloc con- ferred a doubtful blessing upon it ; for the preachers have ever since hovered between Moses and Christ, uncertain which to prefer, or rather preferring the one or the other according to the necessities of the moment. When war is epidemic they preach Moses; when peace is fashionable, Jesus ; or they indistinguishably blend Jesus the son of David with Joshua the son of Nun. For even the fighting man “may ask doubtingly, ‘Is he with me when I go out to fight and to kill ? ’ ” but the glozing priest is by to salve his conscience : “ I would have you be sure to-day, I would have you throughout this war, terrible as it is, be sure of this, that Christ is with you, for he is the Prince, not only of Peace but of War. Christ is the Prince of War, leading the armies of heaven against the forces of evil.” 47 A double-minded preacher is unstable in all his ways. Blending the fero- cious laws and precepts of the Old Testament with the pure humanities of Jesus, they become vain in their imaginations and their foolish hearts are darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they become fools. They deliver themselves of sentiments of which these are typical : that “ war is not always wrong, . . . the Bible is full of it : there are eighty-two pitched battles described in the Old Testament, sixty-four of which were fought under the direct instruction of the Al- mighty; the New Testament, in many instances, ap- proves of these Old Testament battles .” 48 In childlike 26 o MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR ignorance alike of modern conscience and modern criti- cism another asks, “ If war is wrong, why does the Bible so often order war ? ” 49 The type is rounded to completeness by the sentiment that Great Britain [or America] is a trustee for God and his gospel, and that the trust estate can be properly maintained only by the ultimate success of the British [or American] arms. If they “died for Harrow and died for [Britain] they died for Christ.” 50 ... “ [Britain] is as true to her flag as ever. You know what is emblazoned upon her flag. It is the cross of Christ, and she is true to its teaching.” 51 It is thus that masses of men are kept from seeing the degenerate nature of the thing that is taught them for Christianity. Their pastors lead them into the blood-red fields of Jahveh when the politician gives the word, and into the green pastures of the Nazarene only when there is no scheme of national murder and robbery afoot. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that because the church abandons the ethics of Jesus, she surrenders entirely her traditional functions of doctrine, praise, and prayer. The indispensable dogmas are re- tained, the theology to fit the ethic. She still proclaims the trinity of persons; but through the glare of blood all distorted into the images of St. Ahab the capitalist, who covets the vineyard, St. Jezebel the politician, who plans murder by robbery, St. Cain the com- mander in chief, who performs the bloody business. And does not the church praise her martial trinity with blaring Te Deums whenever with a hundred thou- sand men her country defeats five thousand of the enemy ? And when it is the other way — whenever TO THE PREACHER 261 with five thousand the foe defeats her hundred thou- sand — she changes her note to Miserere and appoints days of humiliation, which are so obviously ordained to pray for the humiliation of the enemy that it is found impossible to proceed with them. Sometimes the prelates command a day of prayer ; but they carefully abstain from informing their perplexed flocks for what they are to pray. Preying abroad may be successful ; but praying at home is not necessarily sincere. If the prayer is to get itself prayed at all, it will assuredly prove to be prayer without the spirit and without the understanding also. It avails nothing to exclaim with the ancient Pharisee, “Thank God that our hands have not been stained with the blood of unrighteousness!” or to flatter self that “ we are going forth as a great, free, religious people to fulfill our awful destiny ” ; for that “there is a future of imperial sway amongst the peoples of the earth that may well-nigh appall us.” 52 For the prophet outvoices the Pharisee as he exclaims, “ When .ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.” The conclusion is indisputable, axiomatic, admitting no further discussion, — the churches as they are to- day cannot prevent war. Their palsied lips cannot echo, however feebly, the words of the Master, “Put up again thy sword into his place”! There is not spiritual power left in organized Christianity to insure the substitution of reason for brute force, international ethics for the law of the strongest, or the gospels for the book of Joshua. War has paralyzed the church. 262 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Is this the damnation of the church ? Say rather the damnation of war ! If there is a sight more shameful than that of the paid disciples of the Prince of Peace blaspheming him into a “ Prince of War,” it is the sight of them tamper- ing with his gospel in order to justify themselves. Confronted with the horrible discrepancy, their Moder- ators and bishops, in the spirit of the high priest Caiaphas, begin to talk in a disparaging way about “transcendental views of the gospel” — meaning, it is to be presumed, the taking Jesus at his word and endeavoring to live accordingly — and proclaim a gos- pel of “common sense” as a set-off to the unimperial gospel of mercy, charity, dying for one’s enemies, and so on. By this new ecclesiastical substitute for the old Galilean evangel the church hopes to conciliate a world grown hard, practical, wealth-gathering, empire-build- ing. It would be interesting to know the secret thought of Jesus that lies deep-buried in the subconsciousness of the latter-day Caiaphas ; and it would be profitable for him to be forced back upon his own hidden dissatisfac- tion with this Jesus who went up and down talking in an absurd, transcendental way about love and brother- hood, and who appeared to think a gospel of common sense not worth dying for. But Caiaphas evades the inquisition of his own soul by professing his entire readi- ness to obey the letter of Christ’s law “ when the Millen- nium comes,” — not seeing that the one condition and indispensable antecedent of the Millennium is this very practicing, here and now, of the principles of Jesus. TO THE PREACHER 263 To relegate to a millennial future the principles which he and multitudes of his followers successfully prac- ticed two thousand years ago is very stupid as talk, and very wicked as conduct. It is merely a trick to evade the cross. Unhappy Caiaphas ! What a foul insult they offer who exploit Christ’s name for all it is worth to them as churchmen, but disown his principles as soon as they conflict with their interests as citizens, — falling into the same condemnation as those early impostors who, having a form of godliness, denied the power thereof! How faithless to call him “Lord” yet not do the things he says, to put duty to him as Chris- tians into one water-tight compartment of life, and duty to the world as citizens into another, — coming under the rebuke of those ancient formalists who drew nigh unto him with their mouth, and honored him with their lips; but their hearts were far from him! The question at last emerges, Why should Chris- tianity be taught at all, if it is unfit to be taught fully ? Why should any profess the ideas of Jesus, if it is not possible to carry them right through life and politics ? To brand them as right but impossible is to brand him as a utopian of the worst kind. Are the teachings im- practicable ? or practicable ? If the former, why do we call him a great teacher ? If the latter, why do we refuse to obey them? If he taught what cannot be lived, what becomes of him ? Or if we decline to live according to what he taught, what becomes of us ? Let the war church make its choice. In opposition to the “ gospel of common sense ” so conveniently preached by Caiaphas it could be argued 264 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR that the teachings of Jesus are entirely practicable, and that all our miseries come from disregarding them. Nothing is so potent as a true ideal ; and no ideal is so true as the spirit and method of Jesus. The style is indeed oriental in its figurativeness; but the mean- ing strict as the science of the occidental mind could make it. The message is not for some far-off future, but for the here and now. The world may be a Gallio who does not care ; but the church is a Felix who does not desire. Postponing obedience to some more con- venient season, passing the message down from genera- tion to generation on the plea that the time is not ripe, the church brands herself as a mere timeserver, an opportunist of the meaner sort, — a Felix in excelsis. When can a time more appropriate arrive than this clash- ing and bloody present ? When is mercy more practi- cable than when cruelty abounds ? or sobriety, than in the midst of drunkenness ? or virtue, than when sur- rounded by vice ? or peace, than when torn by strife ? The way of obedience has to be prepared by the obedient. But alas ! it has hitherto been impossible to get Christendom to obey its Christ. It will build churches to him, send out missionaries for him, print tracts and Bibles for him, preach sermons about him, embalm him in dogmas and enshrine him in creeds, — yea, persecute 83 those who insist on keeping his commandments ; but it will not obey him. It insists that he shall be called God, yet will not obey him as even a wise man. It proclaims, but will not carry, the cross ; will not be crucified with its Christ. It literally beats the plow- shares into swords and the pruning hooks into spears, TO THE PREACHER 265 — ruining agriculture and industry for the sake of arms ; it degrades Christianity into the creature of the war god, — fashioning, as it were, the wood of the cross into rifles for its armies, and the nails of the cross into ironclads for its navies ; but it will not obey, it will not suffer. The problem is, How to make Christendom a doer, as well as a hearer, of the word of peace, — how to bring the ideal law of love down into the life of to-day, how to weave the Sermon into modern society, how to make the Beatitudes the driving force of politics, how to make the Christ ruler in his own house, how to cast out the legion devils that haunt the tombs of the world’s battlefields, how to substitute the cross for the sword. If the church can solve this problem, she will live. If she cannot, she will die ; and die unlamented. If the church cannot destroy war, war has already destroyed the church. And that enormous deed is the measure of the guilt, stupidity, and madness of the war spirit. REFERENCES 1. Rev. Minot J. Savage, D.D., The Jewish Criterion , Pitts- burg, April 21, 1905. 2. Dean Kitchin, Durham Cathedral, January 21, 1900. For preaching this sermon the dean was compelled to resign his chaplaincy to the city corporation, and was publicly rebuked from the bench by Justice Grantham, whose offense was condoned by the Lord Chancellor. See War against War in South Africa , p. 247 ; New Age , February 8, 1900. 3. Rev. George Critchley, for twenty-five years minister of Burnt Ash Congregational Church, Lee. After these utterances he was compelled to resign his living. 266 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 4. Rev. J. Morgan Gibbon (see War against War in South Africa , p. 347). 5. Archdeacon of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral, November 5, 1899. 6. Dr. Joseph Parker, Sun, London, December 5, 1900. 7. Rev. W. J. Dawson, New Age , February 22, 1900. 8. Congregational Union Committee, ibid.. May 10, 1900. 9. Duke of Richmond, ibid.. May 28, 1903. 10. Archidiaconal Conference, Shrewsbury, April, 1900. ir. “Religious Musings.” 12. Joseph Chamberlain, May n, 1900. 13. Archbishop of Capetown, New Age, May 30, 1901. 14. Dean Spence, ibid., April 30, 1903. 15. Rev. Paul Wyatt, ibid., December 26, 1901. 16. Canon Newbolt, ibid., December 18, 1902. 17. Bishop of Pretoria, ibid., May 28, 1903. 18. Rev. J. G. Holt, ibid. 19. Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, ibid. 20. Canon Farmer, ibid. 21. Archbishop of Armagh, ibid. 22. Rev. W. J. Dawson, War against War in South Africa, p. 284. 23. Herald of Peace, June 1, 1903. 24. Sir Edward Clarke, New Age, May 28! 1903. 25. Political Writings, Vol. II, p. 377 (edition of 1903). 26. Rev. E. J. Houghton, New Age, July 12, 1900. 27. Reuter, May 19, 1901. 28. A T ew Age, August 15, 1901. 29. Daily News. 30. Report of Soldiers’ Home, Herald of Peace, June 1, 1903. 31. Pulpit Calumnies : Rev. Arthur Robins, in Daily Telegraph, July, 1899. If Great Britain is not ready to draw the sword, and give the signal to her marksmen to sight their rifles for j ustice, liberty, and freedom, only because the crotchety conscience of some Little Englander who would dwarf our dominions everywhere calls a halt, then the half-breeds will get first blood, and their hangmen will find halters for every tree. Truly the braggarts of Dutch courage are not the mere swashbucklers of Dutch drops. Oom Paul, because he is on his knees, is not therefore always at TO THE PREACHER 267 his prayers. His kingdom, he assures us, is not of this world, but if his clowns ever set on him a crown at his court, there will be no Chamber- lain. He bleats amongst his sheepfolds about the Bible, as Beelzebub fires off the canonical Scriptures. He labors for peace, he maunders with up-turned eyes in the midst of the down-trodden, “ but when I speak to them thereof,” he whines, “ they make them ready for battle.” With us, if we are to dig up the prestige that was once lost — lost in those sands — there must be no half measures, for he will give no quarter. We must strike for life and honor such a blow as shall make all Boerdom reel. Oom Paul will swim through seas of blood upon his belly, psalm-singing with every stomach stroke, and not the least bit off color all the while. Whilst we are politically procrastinating, he is prayerfully preparing, and whilst some of our Radicals are calling on the hucksters of the party to curse our cause and bless our enemies, he is in pious prostration before the Lord of Hosts. Meanwhile, his myrmidons can all do murder at a pinch, and to ravish they are not ashamed. But he is verily and indeed a dreamer of dreams, if he believes that the voices of the cravens who shout surrender are as the voice of Mr. Gladstone coming up from the shades. Great Britain, unless she has a bit of the fin de silcle funk that is bred of the Little Englander, must fight with the focused forces of one fixed front, with the outstretched arms of her sons — hands across the sea with the weapons of war in their grasp from the land of her midday strength, and the land of the midnight sun. 32. Dr. Joseph Parker, New Age , June 19, 1902. 33. Rev. A. D. Pringle, Newcastle Daily Chronicle , April 17, 1885. 34. Bishop Chavasse, letter to Swiss Evangelical Alliance. 35. Army chaplain, Scotsman , Edinburgh, February 28, 1901. 36. Chaplain James Robertson, D.D., Alma Mater, Aberdeen, May, 1903. 37. Bishop Thornton, New Age, May 28, 1903. Pulpit Thuggery : A Scottish rector to W. T. Stead, November, 1900. You Disloyal Briton and Wicked “ Pro-Boer ” : Some centuries ago a vile people existed, known to the then world as Amalekites ! Do you remember anything you ever read about them? Well, an order went forth that they were to be annihilated — exterminated! And trouble ensued because they were not clean swept off the face of the earth, which was contaminated by contact with them. Now, my opinion is that the foul creation you call your “ Brother Boer" is as vile a thing 268 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR as any Amalekite who ever lived, if not viler , and that he ought to be exterminated forthwith. The dirty thief Kruger — he is a most dirty animal, is he not? — and a common thief, now running off with money burgled from his dirty and lying brother Boers who trusted in him? — I say, the unclean thief and burglar Kruger ought first to suffer the fate of A gag, and then all the other Boer reptilia ought to be made suffer a fate as like it as possible. Your effusions brand you as a traitor to your country, and while they ought to be burnt, you ought to be shot-ox imprisoned for life. F.S. — You may print this letter if you like; but, as the beast-Boer is capable of assassinating those who will not permit him to play the demon with impunity, and those, too, who describe him as accurately as I do, I must ask you to suppress my name. 38. Archdeacon Wilberforce, Daily Mail , November 5, 1904. 39. Dr. Stewart, of Lovedale ; quoted by Rev. James Barr, February 24, 1901. 40. Rev. Gavin Long, New Age , June 26, 1902. 41. Chaplain-General Bishop Taylor Smith, April 7, 1905. 42. Rev. R. R. Mangin, Newcastle Leader, February 16, 1900. 43. Chaplain, the Bishop of Marlborough, New Age , Febru- ary 15, 1900. 44. Rev. Armstrong Black, Toronto Weekly Globe , Febru- ary 6, 1902 : Soldiers of Canada, there will come sooner or later a day of trouble in the history of this land. Unless history of every kind is to be falsi- fied by the record of this land, we cannot attain to true and full life until we shall have passed through some great crisis — until, I say, we shall have experience of war in the life of this fair land. History tells us we must prepare for this. Before we come into the full and true and noble work of life we must be consecrated to that work in blood, I know not whence it may come, and I dare not desire the day to come. But come it will, and it may come soon. When that day comes, Canada will have full measure of that baptism of blood, some of the drops of which have but been sprinkled on some of your gallant and noble heads. 45. Don ftian , Canto 8, IX. 46. The line is omitted from edition of 1845. See “Thanks- giving Ode,” second “ Ode,” IV (Knight’s edition). 47. Rev. R. R. Mangin, Newcastle Leader , February 16, 1900. 48. Reader Harris, Q.C., Reynolds' Newspaper. TO THE PREACHER 269 49. Canon Knox Little, New Age , May 28, 1903. 50. Bishop of London, at Harrow, on Founder’s Day, 1904. 51. Rev. R. R. Mangin, Newcastle Leader, February 16, 1900. 52. Dr. Donald MacLeod, New Age, June 26, 1902. 53. The Church Persecuting those who obey its Christ (New Age, March 21, 1901) : The Rev. R. J. Campbell, having been out to South Africa, thought well to give a lecture on his experiences. A correspondent thus describes what happened: “ A large sheet was fitted up in front of the pulpit, and various lime- light pictures were thrown upon it from time to time as the lecture pro- ceeded. Photos of armored trains, 4-7 guns, lyddite shells, and other engines of destruction met with a good deal of applause; but when the photo of our hero god, Lord Roberts, was shown, the applause was almost frantic. As it died away, some one asked, ‘May we now see a picture of Christ, as I consider that would be only proper in this House of Prayer ? ’ Instantly there was a storm of hissing, and shouts of 1 Pro- Boer,’ ‘Turn him out,’ etc., were raised. Out of their own mouths were the war party condemned, for in calling this questioner ‘ Pro-Boer ’they were admitting that they themselves wished to leave Christ out of the question. At the close of the lecture a gentleman challenged the lec- turer to find in the Sermon on the Mount any justification for so mis- using a building dedicated to the worship of the Prince of Peace by showing these pictures of scenes and means of murder. ‘Christ,’ he remarked, ‘said, “Love your enemies,” but the church was teaching, “ Blow them to pieces with lyddite and worship in our churches the men who do it.” You are false to the Christ you profess to worship and obey.’ Amid scenes of uproar and confusion, the speaker was roughly hustled from the church.” VIII THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE MISSIONARY Not long ago I read the fifth chapter of Matthew with a Hebrew Rabbi. At nearly every sentence the Rabbi exclaimed : “ That is in the Bible ; that is in the Talmud ” ; and both in the Bible and the Talmud he showed me passages very similar to the words of the Sermon on the Mount. But, when we came to the verse about non-resistance to evil, he did not say, “ And that is in the Talmud,” but only asked me with a smile, “And do Christians fulfill that? Do they turn the other cheek ?” I had nothing to reply, for well I knew that at that very time Chris- tians not only were not turning the other cheek, but were smiting the cheeks of Hebrews turned to them. I was curious, however, to know whether any similar expression was to be found either in the Bible, or the Talmud, and I put the question to him. He answered, “No, there is not ; but tell me whether Christians fulfill that law or not.” By this question he affirmed, that the existence of a rule in the Christian law, which is not only neglected by them, but acknowledged to be incapable of fulfillment, is a confession of its senselessness and uselessness. And I had no answer for him. — Tolstoy. VIII THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE MISSIONARY The headship of Christ is one of the church’s most valued traditions ; and none has run a stranger career. Beginning as a prodigious but undogmatic reality in the apostolic age, it was first eclipsed by the shadow of Caesarism, then vulgarized by the Papal Empire, next reasserted with pristine vigor by the Reformation, only to be presently sunk again in State-churchism ; and to-day, even in the act of feebly stirring itself beneath the trammels of Establishment, or pedantically airing itself from the platforms of Voluntaryism, is entering into fresh engagements with politics and making new capitulations to empire. Not only does the church in all her sections decline to be under law only to Christ, but meekly bows to Caesar when he commands her to bless his warlike banners or sing Te Deums for vic- tories publicly proclaimed as acts of revenge. The church which refused to be bullied consents to be bribed, and is busy everywhere softening her asser- tions, modifying her ethics, trimming her sails to catch the favoring winds which blow from the world of politics, instead of holding austerely on before the trade-winds of her religious principles. Everywhere we witness a more servile submission of the Christian to the Caesar- ian temper. Christ shelters timidly under the martial 273 274 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR shadow of Caesar. Pontius Pilate stretches his protect- ing arm over a Jesus who with whispering humbleness promises to utilize his imperial enterprises for “ mission- ary ” purposes and “ the evangelization of the world ” ! Two kings are to-day laying fresh claim to the alle- giance of Christendom — Christ and Caesar. In form, of course, neither claim is absolute ; for we are yet only half-baked ; both the men and the motives are mixed. It is essential to a great act of moral decision that the choice be obscured, the issue complicated, the alternatives illusive, the possibility of error balanced with the probability of truth ; and Christendom is still troubled by a doubt whether the tempter be devil or angel, whether the swift and easy sword of Caesar be really a better way of acquiring the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them than is the slow and suffer- ing cross of Christ. Yet habit of mind counts for much ; tempter and aim, ideal and motive, begin once more to divide the sheep from the goats. Slowly the masses of men, the church in the world and the world in the church, are gravitating into one of two camps, — the tents of Caesar or the tabernacles of Christ. Dimly the distinctive goals of modern civilization begin to glim- mer through the gloom, — sovereignty by brute force or salvation by moral influence. Strongly the claims of two rival monarchs begin to urge themselves upon the modern world, — bloody Mars or “gentle Jesus.” A new strenuousness begins to be felt in the historic contest between the Prince of Peace and the Prince of the Power of the Air. The Heavenly Father of Christianity and the blood-spattered Baal of Imperialism TO THE MISSIONARY 275 have closed in grapple for the soul of the twentieth cen- tury. The question is, Who is to dominate the Chris- tian world, Imperial Baal or Christian God ? If Baal be God, follow him ; but if the Lord be God, then follow Him. The modern church is in the wilderness of temptation. She must decide for conquest or cruci- fixion ; she must take up either the sword or the cross ; she must choose this day whom she will serve. “ Under which king, Bezonian ? Speak, or die ! ” The heroic types of missionary enterprise — Paul who sought the spiritual supremacy of Christ and Xavier who sought the spiritual supremacy of his church, fol- lowed by the greatest of the moderns — invaded the deepest recesses of heathendom and savagery with no other resources than their own sublime personalities, sought no assistance from the arm of flesh, invoked no vengeance on those who refused their message or took their lives. Nor is the heroic breed yet dead. Vast and massive figures of the antique type still uprear themselves before the strongholds of savagedom, de- claring that the weapons of their warfare are not carnal but spiritual, and mighty through God alone. Still with us are groups of missionaries who decline to accept the money of heathendom to compensate, or to call in the armies of Caesar to avenge, the death of their martyrs ; genuine apostles who disclaim the protection of the warlike powers and place themselves on the same foot- ing of toleration and peril of death as their native con- verts . 1 But a degenerate type, born of demoralized forces, has now appeared and tends to occupy the field. 276 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Along with commercialism (the expansion of trade) and imperialism (the expansion of politics) new temp- tations successfully menace the spiritual independence of the missionary, who, availing himself of the openings into heathendom made by the trader and the soldier, now finds himself united to their fortunes, compelled to indorse their schemes, and assimilated more or less consciously to their methods and aims. The mission- ary also is driven by the spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the — trader and politician. This inclination — not simply to take advantage of the openings into heathendom made by imperial ex- pansion, which would be natural, but to encourage aggressiveness for the sake of missions — may fitly be read in the utterances of representative churchmen. One of these , 2 at a great missionary meeting and in his own cathedral, declared that since the inhabitants of the British islands had been “ obliged to go forth in order to find new markets for their wares and new homes for their people,” since they “could not possibly sit at home and see millions of their fel- low-countrymen starve,” and since “ in the search for trade and new lands they came almost inevitably into conflict not only with their competitors but also with many of those they desired to make their customers, and in those conflicts they frequently gained the vic- tory, as a consequence of that they were obliged to organize and govern the peoples they had conquered. . . . If they wanted markets they must take the land, . . . that is not their fault ; they are bound to get food for their people.” No doubt these things had been TO THE MISSIONARY 277 accompanied by acts “ of which they were ashamed ” but they found compensation in the “trial of their strength and the discipline of their character.” The whole process was, “ to some extent at least, a providential call.” Now what is to be said of the economics which assumes that the British islands can no longer afford food and home for their population ? and what of the morals which can justify making customers by force, annexing countries and territories for the sake of sell- ing cotton and brandy to the inhabitants, killing men in order to avoid starvation ; and which can find com- pensation for theft and murder, not in anything done for the plundered and slain victims but — in the aug- mented power of the thief and murderer ? What, also, of the curious lapse from sense in failing to see that the same argument, precisely, will at any time justify the have-nots within those islands in killing and rob- bing the haves, instead of emigrating for a similar pur- pose, — workman, laborer, and curate combining to kill capitalist, squire, and bishop, preliminary to looting the mansion, the hall, and the palace ? May not these tre- mendous object lessons on how to plunder and kill on the grand imperial scale be hereafter cited by starving populations to the extreme discomfort of pious ecclesias- tics, who may not, under the altered circumstances, be so forward to recognize the working of Providence? There is good scripture for suggesting that those who take the sword wholesale abroad may perish in a retail kind of way by the sword at home. Another typical utterance was made by a prince of the Anglican church when he declared that the call made to all the world which 278 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR has heard the name of Christ was made especially to the British people, because, of all nations on the face of the earth, there was none that had the same oppor- tunities of teaching other lands the truth ; while a world-renowned Presbyterian summed it all up in the affirmation that Britain was the new Israel, with a mis- sion to all the earth. This is the new imperial doctrine of the patriot missionary, the most popular heresy of a church under the yoke of worldly ideals. Ask, Why do we fight ? his answer is, “That we may defend and preserve the high interests which the God of Nations and of Christendom has committed to the keeping of the country .” 3 “If this country wishes to con- tinue her mission of Christianizing all the heathen nations of the world, and promoting the great cause of liberty, ... it must go on with the war ... all the Free Churches are hoping that this war will be prose- cuted to a successful issue . . . his church is prac- tically unanimous.” 4 He “believes that Great Britain is a trustee for God and for the everlasting gospel of his grace, and that the trust estate can only be properly maintained by the ultimate success of the British arms .” 5 Great Britain, alas, has no monop- oly of this unholy heresy ! An American missionary society defends its country’s aggression on the same lines : “ God is using the wars of our times for the evangelization of the nations .” 6 Even the peaceful Buddhist 7 has caught the proud political heresy, ex- claiming, “ Why, then, do we fight at all ? Because we do not find this world as it ought to be. Be- cause there are so many perverted creatures, so many TO THE MISSIONARY 279 wayward thoughts, so many ill-directed hearts, due to ignorant subjectivity. For this reason Buddhists are never tired of combating all productions of ignorance, and their fight must be to the bitter end. They will show no quarter.” Alas for this poor world ! If all the hitherto peaceful nations are now to fling themselves into the arena ; if the lion, bear, eagle of Western civili- zation are now to be joined by the dragon of the East to tear “each other in their slime” ; and if they are to go on fighting as long as there remains a relic of “ignorant subjectivity” in the breast of man, — then farewell hope ! The doctrine of the missionary impe- rialist is not new; it was stated long ago by that stout marauder and crusader, De Bracy, in Ivanhoe : “ And for Christianity, here is the stout Baron Reginald Front- de-Boeuf, whose utter abomination is a Jew ; and the good Knight Templar, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, whose trade is to slay Saracens. If these are not good marks of Chris- tianity, I know no other which they bear about them.” It does not occur to these sanctified upholders of imperialism for the sake of religion that since our ex- ceptional “opportunities of teaching other lands the truth ” are created, for the most part, by the mailed fist of our soldiery, Islam would be a more truthful comparison than Israel. Or, if the comparison revolves round the occupation of Canaan, with the difference merely that the New Israel’s Canaan is “all the earth,” then there is good scripture analogy for our benevo- lent annexations and armed ecclesiastical expeditions, as well as for destroying those who are blind and wicked enough to resist, who know not the day of their 280 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR visitation, and whose sin must be on their own heads : for that was the method of the original Israel, under Joshua. Only, let the analogy be carried through ; when the disconcerting conclusion will be reached that the “New Israel” is destined to be turned out of its “ all-the-earth ” Canaan, and its place occupied by the very political and religious powers it has held in most abhorrence : for this also happened to the original Israel, under its later kings. There would be nothing strange or new in this providential lesson, on the grand imperial scale, that those New Israelites who take the sword must perish by the sword. Yet another repre- sentative missionary — this time of the Roman Cath- olic order, so that the instances may be impartial — put the matter even more squarely and picturesquely when he declared that the Catholic church was justified in obtaining, by force if necessary, a right to propagate its doctrines ; for “ if force could be used to secure an open door for the sale of opium, kerosene, and flannel- ette, it might well be used to keep an open door for the religion of Jesus Christ .” 8 It evidently pleased this good brother to be facetious ; but fun cannot excuse the insult offered to his gospel, first in making it responsible for the doctrine that people might be killed for the sake of trading with those who survived, and then in submitting to introduce it on the same terms as the vilest commodities of modern trade. The first missionary apostle, it is plain, expected to convert the world by love ; for he talked in an ab- surd, transcendental way about feeding one’s enemy if he hungered, and, if he thirsted, giving him drink; TO THE MISSIONARY 281 commanded to recompense no man evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good ; and would have suffocated with shame had any one suggested his preaching to the barbarians of Asia Minor from under the panoply of a mil- itary escort, or that his martyrdom should be avenged by a “punitive expedition.” The rising Christian sect would never have secured the adhesion of Saul of Tarsus, had he witnessed the relatives of the martyred Stephen, whose clothes he held, huckstering with the temple party for compensation. Sects that sell their martyrs for gold secure Simon Magus for a convert, but never a Paul ; they develop the pretty ecclesias- tical trick known as “ simony,” never a hero-martyr apostlehood. It was the same ridiculous, transcenden- tal apostle who recommended to the Christian mission- ary such weapons as the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit ; and who specifically declared that the weapons of his warfare were not carnal but spiritual, and mighty through God to the pulling down of strong- holds. There is now, however, a school of missionaries who recognize the evangelistic potency of the bayonet and the Maxim gun, prefer to follow in the wake of an army corps armed with the latest machinery for scien- tific slaughter, and see a beautiful providence in the arrangement whereby Caesar kills off a number of peo- ple who do not sufficiently appreciate the blessings of opium, kerosene, and flannelette, in order that Christ may preach the duties of patience, meekness, and non- resistance to those who survive. When danger threat- ens he, as described by one of them, asks that troops 282 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR be sent up and collects all the white men available (in- cluding the Roman Catholic fathers), for the rising is a serious matter, not only anti-European but also anti- christian, since the native Christians naturally side with the government . 9 He leads his converts through Christianity to sedition and treason against their native rulers. The first missionaries went everywhere preach- ing the Word — they may be said to have been Ser- mon missionaries ; the reformation missionaries (having learned the art of printing) went everywhere distrib- uting the Word — they might be called Bible mis- sionaries ; but the new type of missionary has been reenforced by an agent more persuasive than either Sermon or Bible — he may be called the Maxim mis- sionary. The historic commission ordained the preacher to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature ; but when it is translated into terms of empire it resolves itself into a commission to carry fire and sword against peoples more innocent and fre- quently happier than ourselves, because they refuse our shoddy goods and the shoddier gospel behind them. There is something more alien to religion than the use of force against the truth ; that is the use of force in favor of it; and this is the sin of the imperial mission- ary when he loses faith in moral power and truckles to the consul, the chartered official, the soldiery. The gospel also takes a lift upon the powder cart. It avails nothing that a little time, patience, and persuasion would make a way for both goods and gospel : for your trader has no time to wait, he is in a hurry to make money ; and your preacher has no time to wait, he is TO THE MISSIONARY 283 in a hurry to make converts; and your politician has no time to wait, he is in a hurry to make subjects ; so that the miserable victims of the most omnipotent and unscrupulous trinity that ever preyed upon mankind — Mammon, Dominion, and Proselytism, or, if the terms be plainer, Greed, Empire, and Fanaticism — have no choice but to render up at once their land, their liberty, their religion — or their life. The pretense that it is wholly to the advantage of virtue that the primitive peoples should be subjugated is being found out. The letters of Robertson of Brighton tell how he went to dine with a certain Captain H and heard many stories of the Kaffir war ; but “ horrible as all this is [Kaffir cruelty], they are not so ferocious as our English soldiers. ... I feel strongly on the side of the Kaffirs. They feel that they will become as degraded as Hottentots by being subject to the English. At present they do not drink, and have a much finer sense of honor than the brutal soldier.” 10 Kaffirs, according to this authority, are, as compared with the British soldier, more sober, more humane, more respectful to women. The modern world is not now dependent upon the Missionary Herald for its chronicles of the mission field ; it has other sources of information ; and it has seen the up-to-date missionary at work. When a native king and people exhibit any unwillingness to receive the Maxim missionary and his military escort, the for- mer tarries in a safe spot till the latter has “ dealt with ” 11 the dusky patriots, the result being the mas- sacre of an almost helpless populace. The Emir has to 284 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR be “dealt with” as “an opponent of civilization .” 12 “The people were divinely commanded to go forward to wars of conquest ... he is a firm believer in uncon- ditional surrender, a fight to the finish, and complete annexation .” 13 The conquering ecclesiastic is unre- tarded by the knowledge that, along with the bagman and the bravo, he is introducing to an uncorrupted people the most disgusting vices of civilization . 14 For he cannot admit the possibility of happiness apart from union with the imperial race ; and if, unfortunately, that union carries with it not only the unspeakable blessings of kerosene and flannelette but also the un- mitigated curses of the opium den, the canteen, and the brothel, — does not the sun also cast a shadow? And what man would be fool enough to reject the light because of its inevitable shade ? Do not they have “a lower conception of the character of God, a lower interpretation of his word ? ” 15 It is enough. Onward, Christian soldiers ! A “Pan-African Conference” pathet- ically prays : “ Let not the cloak of Christian mission- ary enterprise be allowed in the future, as so often in the past, to hide the ruthless economic exploitation and political downfall of less developed nations whose chief fault has been reliance on the plighted troth of the Christian church ”; 16 but the prayer falls unheeded upon the ear of the New Israelite ; nay, stirs him to a fine heat ; since to expostulate with a member of an imperial race and an imperial church is the same thing as to insult him. We are “justified in invoking the blessing of the Most High on the British arms, and to use the magnificent imagery of the Hebrew prophet, in TO THE MISSIONARY 285 speaking of the sword of Britain as bathed in heaven, ... to carry out the work intrusted to the Anglo-Saxon race.” 17 “ He is glad to see the extension of the em- pire of their gracious sovereign . . . the members of our colonial empire throb with love for one another.” 18 Nor will the apostle of Maxim guns be deterred by thought of the invincible prejudice he is planting in the native mind, — the belief, namely, that the real object of the missionary is political conquest ; for, after all, the powerful logic of the cannon will silence, if not all objections, at least all objectors. Those who will not become converts can be converted into corpses, and from above the church door their heads may even frown a warning upon the stiff-necked, as in other days the heads of rebels used to- admonish from city gates ; for “two of the ringleaders have been decapitated, and their heads exhibited in the mission church at Tshihing.” 19 Neither can a New Israelite be expected to ponder the reasonableness of such as reject a messenger who bom- bards them with bullets as well as Bibles, connives at the destruction of their bodies as well as their faith, and demands the surrender of their territory as well as their religion ; nor, putting himself in their place, to perceive how the manifest hardship of the first process is likely to invalidate the beneficence of the second, and the selfishness of the policy to cast suspicion on the unselfishness of the gospel. The whole thing hangs together for both the pagan and the mission- ary ; they are both the creatures of manifest destiny, of providential New Israelism ; the alternative is lumped into one grand imperial whole which cannot 286 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR be divided, — opium, kerosene, flannelette, brandy, gospel — or death ! To this, then, at last the doctrine of the New Israel has brought us ; its ripe product is the Maxim mis- sionary. He is the new John-the-Baptist forerunner of Christ : his the new voice crying with dumdum bullets in African and Chinese wildernesses ; his the new method of preparing the way of the Lord with blood and fire ; his the new idea of making straight in the desert of bloody corpses and burned villages a highway for his God ; his the new style of making low every mountain and hill by killing off opponents ; his the new way of exalting every valley by piling them high with corpses ; his the new conception that the glory of the Lord shall be revealed by slaughter ; his the new falsehood that all flesh shall see it together, the butch- ered victims of the new evangelism being, obviously, deprived of the wonderful sight ; his all these mimic- ries of a dead Israel and a living Islam ; his, too, the old, old lie that it is permissible to do evil that good may come, that it is possible for the wrath of man to work the righteousness of God ! Though it is evident that the method of Jesus and Paul no longer suits the Maxim school of missionary enterprise, it must not be supposed that the church has formally renounced the gospel of brotherhood and good will. Caiaphas — whether figuring on high as Primate, Moderator, President, or Chairman — knows his busi- ness better than that. Caiaphas knows the value of the time-honored phrases to point an appeal and adorn a TO THE MISSIONARY 287 peroration, knows that they have a soothing influence upon the spirits, and a stimulating effect upon the pockets, of elderly ladies, — the practical men knowing, meanwhile, that the Maxim gospel is also ready to be preached with the whole unction of the bayonet-armed elbow. At home, surrounded by pasturing flocks, when the funds have to be got in, the' church’s symbol is the Lamb ; but abroad, amid obstinate and threatening wolves, the Lion is better displayed, and roars against the prey with all the thunders of his artillery. Amid those far-off Gentile races there are audiences which find a well-directed shell more moving than the old, old story which brings at once the tears and the subscrip- tions from the docile flocks of New Israel. Wise as the serpent and harmless as the dove, Caiaphas contrives to run two gospels side by side, — -Christ’s, which he describes as the gospel of “transcendentalism,” and his own, which he calls the “gospel of common sense.” The first is employed chiefly amid the peaceful scenes where the New Israelites meet under one political flag, or in back alleys and mission halls where indigent women and weakly men assemble to be converted in a nice, tractable, orthodox kind of way ; the second is useful when the church goes to evangelize the ruder stuff of Africa and China, where the persuasive power of the lyddite shell is found most efficacious. The first is preached by studious lads who are sent to the university and trained in the vocabulary of “transcendentalism”; the second by roystering blades who are clothed in khaki, and drilled in the doctrines of “common sense.” It is thus that the church, while satisfying those who 288 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR have hankerings after the gospel according to Christ, contrives also to make happy the souls of fire-eating missionaries with leanings towards the gospel according to Cain. And all the time the cry of the starving helot ascends from the untilled fields of Christendom ; the curse of the gambler, the oath of the drunkard, the wail of the prostitute, and the bitter cry of the children rise from its abominable cities to a not forgetful heaven ! If there be a worse feature about our new evangelism than that the Maxim should prepare the way of the missionary, the bayonet that of the Bible, the gunboat that of the gospel, and imperial piracy that of interna- tional brotherhood, it is found precisely on the re- verse side, where the process is turned round, — the preacher pioneering for the trader, the evangelist for the soldier, the missioner for the consul and the cruiser, the white spouse of Christ and universal human brother- hood debasing herself before the Caesar of imperial-race supremacy. A very religious imperialist 20 confesses to some uneasiness of conscience whether, after all, the movement towards Anglo-Saxon federation be anything more than mere comradeship in arms, but thinks to sanctify it by making prominent the importance of mis- sionary work, — -attempting, as self-deluded pharisees have attempted all through time, to sanctify piracy by prayer, to justify the blood of murder in the name of the blood of martyrdom, to commit acts of slaughter while talking cant about sacrifice, to bring the cross to bless and sanctify the flag. Imperial pharisee is he also who pleads the overruling of armed aggression for TO THE MISSIONARY 289 the divine glory, not knowing that he is guilty of cant, hypocrisy, blasphemy, and sacrilege : of cant because the slightest self-examination would expose his own sophistry, of hypocrisy because it covers with a thin veil of religious phraseology what is mere commercial and political speculation, of blasphemy because it trades upon holy words and motives to excuse carnal and selfish ends, and of sacrilege because it profanes with blood and plunder a whole sphere of thought that should be holy unto the Lord. Overrule to his own glory ? By all means ; but it is not necessary to do evil that good may come, as if the Lord were short of opportunities. Caiaphas, to be sure, is wont to excuse the incon- gruity between the instruments of physical compulsion and the methods of spiritual persuasion by the worn fallacy that the teachings of Jesus are impracticable. But why, then, force them upon others at the point of the bayonet ? Why, if he finds it impossible in a Chris- tian country to be a Christian, does he devastate another country because it is not Christian, or to compel it to become Christian ? Why does he think to dispose men’s minds to accept a religion which sanctifies acts that must appear to them cruel and wicked ? Why does he ask a heathen to accept principles he is in the very act of himself violating ? Why does he not see that it is the sublime of humbug to preach meekness and nonresist- ance to those whose territory he steals and whose tem- ples he defiles, while denying the authority of these virtues in the religion of the conquerors ? The heathen, be sure, is not a fool ; and even when he yields to the moral beauty of the Christian ideal he continues to 290 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR protest against the grossness of the imperial carica- ture, denouncing it as a dangerous thing that holds a bottle of gin in one hand and a Common Prayer Book in the other, carries a glass of rum as a vade mecum to the hymn book, points one hand to the skies with exhortations to lay up treasures in heaven and then, whilst one is looking up, with the other hand seizes one’s worldly goods, labels one’s ancestral forests, and places one’s patrimony under inexplicable legisla- tion . 21 And why (since we have fallen into the inquisi- torial vein) does the Maxim missionary attempt to justify his misbegotten zeal by maligning the character of the pagan patriot whom he can neither proselytize to his faith nor enlist for his flag? Why, when the territory he covets as an imperialist belongs to a people nom- inally Christian like himself, and whom therefore he cannot pretend to convert as a missionary, — why does he seek to cover his own lapses from the gospel by exaggerating the defects of the enemy into such hid- eous libels as that he illtreats and enslaves the native races more than ourselves do ; that he drives native men in his plow instead of oxen, shoots his “ slaves ” when they become too old for work, saws his slave girls between planks of wood when they refuse to divulge the military secrets of their tribes ? Why ? There is no answer, save that for political reasons he has deliberately renounced the missionary motive, which is to win men by love, and fallen back upon the imperial motive, which is to gain territory by force. When the missionary slanders it is easier for the soldier to slay. TO THE MISSIONARY 291 This political temper is responsible for many of the tragedies of the modern mission field, and turns some of the deaths which ought to have been glorious mar- tyrdoms into disorderly executions under lynch law. Persecution of missionaries is usually of the nature of retaliation for social and political injuries received from their countrymen and is seldom, in the first place, religious. The heathen is tolerant of other gods until they begin to meddle with his political institutions and trespass upon his domestic arrangements. Like other histories the history of the mission field requires to be rewritten from that point of view, and a good deal of material will be found scattered throughout the travel literature of the world . 22 Testimony has been offered to the fact that in China, to take the most recent and flaring example, the attitude of the Chinese towards the missionary pure and simple was friendly, so far that even Buddhist priests would permit Christian preachers to sleep in their temples and offer morning prayers at their altars,- — taking an intelligent, though critical, interest in their proceedings. Many mission- aries suffered death : few, however, for their religion in itself or their strictly religious propaganda ; some, because they were seen to be in direct collusion with those whose aspect was that of the invader and thief ; all, on account of their nationality rather than their faith, — not because they were Christians but because they were foreigners, and were suspected of designs upon the political integrity, more than the hereditary faiths, of China . 23 The heathen’s instincts in this mat- ter are wholly sound, and have recently been backed 292 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR by the greatest master of foreign politics . 24 He sees that the missionary invariably precedes the consul, the consul the gunboat, the gunboat the armed expedi- tion; and, being incapable of fine distinctions, he lumps them as common enemies, to be exterminated while yet there is time. He sees the religious teacher walking hand in glove with the civil ruler, the foreign agent ; and he not unseldom hears him clamor for his coun- try’s political influence (as in Turkey and Oceania), or for compensation for losses (as in China), or for complete annexation (as in Uganda) ; and thus he is convinced that religious propaganda is only another form of for- eign invasion. He sees that the church prepares the way for empire, the cross for the flag, Christ for Caesar ; and he rouses himself to resist even unto blood because he rejects, not those great spiritual realities, but these their political counterparts; because, no more than the Maxim missionary, is he able to understand, to distin- guish, to dissever, to separate in thought, the Kingdom of Heaven from the kingdoms of this world. In his fear and dread of imperialism he rejects Christianity, in his hatred of the flag smites the cross, in his man- ful opposition to the crowned Caesar pitifully crucifies anew the Christ. Into this horrible pit of lust and pillage and blood has war and the war spirit cast the Christian world, there to welter till it disowns force and lays down the sword. The fact is — and it cannot be too frequently or too forcibly driven home upon the mind — that the twen- tieth century has risen upon a pagan revival, in which TO THE MISSIONARY 293 the material vices born of wealth and the aesthetic cor- ruptions born of luxury have overborne the simple vir- tues and homely pleasures proper to unspoiled Christian ethics. The evangelizing ideal which traveled abroad has naturally conformed to the ecclesiastical ideal which prevailed at home: an erastian church has its counter- part in an imperialistic mission, — the war preacher steps out in time with the Maxim missionary. Expansion by force definitely marks the abandonment of the Chris- tian ideal for the pagan so far as the state is concerned ; nor can the missions which sanctify it by accepting its patronage be credited with retaining the Christian motive while thus following the pagan method. Just as national life comes to be motived definitely by the expansionist theory and directed by convinced and con- sistent imperialists, it must necessarily draw foreign missions further and further away from the principles of neighborliness and renunciation which underlie the religion of the cross. The chant of the churches glori- ously blends with the refrain of the music hall, “ Our Empire is the Earth ,” 25 so that the nation is divinely united in the faith that in so small a world there is really no room for anybody who does not speak English. This process of degeneration can be traced in the gradual substitution of the “active” for the “passive” virtues, — of wisdom, temperance, fortitude, justice, for meekness, patience, and self-sacrifice. The sacrificial basis of life laid down by Jesus is directly antagonized by the expansionist theory favored by the governing classes to-day; and as the former begets the personal qualities we very inadequately term the “ passive ” 294 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR virtues, while the latter produces those we with equal infelicity call “ active,” its leaders have only to shift the accent from the first to the second in order to quietly undo the work of Jesus and bring a nation gradually back to a heathen type of character. Impe- rialism goes to wipe something off a slate — the Beati- tudes. What has empire to do with beatitude ? What has an “imperial race” to do with lowliness, longsuffer- ing, and the rest ? How can their proud “ heritage of empire” won by blood and plunder be preserved, much less extended, by other than the same means ? And do these methods magnify the Beatitudes and make them honorable? Do they not rather abrogate them, and sub- stitute a set of beatitudes begotten of the pagan temper and molded according to the pagan virtue ? Blessed are the proud ; the triumphant ; the aggressive ; the mate- rialistic ; the relentless ; the worldly-wise ; the military powers ; the dominant races ; the admired and envied ; the acclaimed and rewarded : to them gold and lands, crowns and sovereignties, islands, continents, and em- pire ! It is enough. Let all the missionaries say, Amen. To bring a railing accusation against the foreign pol- itics and the foreign missions which unite to subdue the earth for its good is, it will be alleged, unfair; seeing that both imperialistic politics and imperialistic mis- sions are animated by a desire to benefit the conquered and converted lands. Imperialism, in short, is defended on grounds of philanthropy. This, however, is only another form of New Israelism. The New Israel is just like the old Israel in this, that it can employ the TO THE MISSIONARY 295 language of piety to mask the ends of business. We fear the Greeks even when bringing gifts ; and we mistrust the Jews amid their blandest protestations of disinter- estedness. When empire is spoken of as “the white man’s burden” — a burden which he generously and unselfishly takes up for the sake of the lower races, “ half devil and half child ” — all we can say is that we heartily wish we could believe it true. Imperialism, according to this transfigured and glorified version, is the foreign counterpart of those vast humanities which have turned the home land into a New Jerusalem worthy to dispense, in its turn, both law and gospel to all the earth. It is not for lordship but service that financiers and politicians unite to exploit the undeveloped races ; and we are to believe it, if we can. It is a mistake to think that the gaudy glitter of empire is of the essence of imperialism ; we are asked to see it as a burden unselfishly carried by benevolent politicians, a task magnanimously undertaken by philanthropic financiers under the irresistible constraint of duty, conscience, and humanity : to believe that, in fact, the missionary has succeeded in lifting the entire imperialistic business up to the level of a vast evangelistic enterprise, carried on for the clothing of the body and the saving of the soul of heathendom. To which it is necessary to say only that the precise opposite is the truth : the average ex- pansionist means business, not philanthropy; and, so far from being lifted up by the missionary, has suc- ceeded in dragging the missionary down. This idealized presentation is, at worst, a low display of that phari- saism for which the Christian powers are now. famous ; 296 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR and, at best, a praiseworthy attempt of the few right- eous to fasten a higher scheme upon the brute majority. And all that these high-minded apologists succeed in accomplishing is to give new garments to hypocrisy, new sops to conscience, new excuses for crime, and new arguments wherewith to silence the protests of humanity. Sir Galahad and St. Columba may try hard to believe that the bandit horde who have misled them are true knights of the Round Table, riding abroad redressing human wrong ; that the cutthroat crew are monks of Iona skirting the coasts of new worlds only for the souls of men : but the brandy down in the hold will undeceive them, and the Maxim missionary reach- ing with a gun the heathen brains he could not touch in argument will convince them of the error of their way. “ The idea of carrying the gospel to the Philip- pines with the aid of shot and shell is not only no quotation from the gospel, but it distinctly antagonizes the divine utterances which the gospel records and the divine spirit with which, from the beginning to the end, that gospel is inspired; and this bringing to them the story of the cross under the cover of our gunboats — redemption in one hand and shot in the other — is an infidel method of accomplishing evangelical results.” 26 The game is business, not humanitarianism ; conquest, not conversion ; lordship, not service; cent-per-cent, not treasure in heaven : “ God has added to this empire a diamond field, a land whose harvest is pure gold, or whose rich mines are of ruby, rocks of opal .” 27 It is not necessary to argue here whether sovereignty by violence tends to righteousness amongst either TO THE MISSIONARY 297 conquered or conquerors ; but only to see that it is pure hypocrisy to pretend that either statesmen or capitalists are actuated by the evangelical motive, and pure world- liness for the missionary to accept their patronage. Driven into a corner, the sincerely philanthropic im- perialist 28 defends his cause by asserting that imperial authority — alone strong and far-reaching — is neces- sary to protect native races from unscrupulous traders and rapacious adventurers who, without such restraint, would descend to the methods of the privateer and the pirate. But what difference does it make to the savage whether he is robbed by a government or a bagman ? shot by a chartered policeman or a soldier of the line ? exploited by a capitalist or a consul ? annexed by the colonial secretary, the shark, at home or by the mis- sionary, the pilot fish, abroad ? Whatever shreds of moral responsibility may subsist within this embrace between the spiritual and the temporal powers, — the preacher and the trader, the missionary and the soldier, — the stark, staring fact confronts us that the compel- ling power is greed rather than godliness and national vanity rather than gospel zeal. ’T is vain to argue that a sow’s ear is a silk purse. The debasing spirit of war has turned our gospel into shame, and too many of our missionaries into buccaneers. Is this the condemnation of our missions ? Say, rather, the damnation of war ! Hunted out of every corner of pretense, only one refuge of despair remains to the obstinate believer in dominion by brute force, — a refuge of despair lapsing into blatant defiance and an atheism that outstares the heavens ; it is the assertion of “ manifest destiny.” 298 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Now the “ manifest destiny ” of person or people, ac- cording to the theologies, might be to either salvation or destruction, as should be the will of God. But the political and missionary expansionism of the day is not ennobled by that perfect submission to the will of Allah which makes the Islamite so grand in defeat and death, nor hallowed by the pathetic fatalism of the Scottish Calvinist as he turns from the grave of his dead hope — “ it had to be ! ” It is more akin to the proud ambition of the Western Satan who would rather “reign in hell than serve in heaven,” rather have em- pire as one of the Great Powers than be the lowly servant of humanity ; or to the vaulting pride of the Eastern Lucifer who rose upon the necks of the infe- rior races saying, “ I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High ! ” The essence of this kind of destiny is not submission, but defiance ; not fatalism, but atheism ; the destiny of the lion who roars against all weaker creatures in despite of justice, till he, too, finds his doom (as Satan his hell and Lucifer his Sheol) in the hun- ter’s trap ; the destiny of the tyrant who elevates the law of the strongest into a decree and tramples down every right that is inconsistent with it, not directing strength by conscience, till he, too, exhausts the patience of the heaven he has defied, and is, in his turn, flung down to Hades ; nay (for even these images may lend an unmerited dignity to the sordid thing) the destiny of the pushing peddler who will take no refusal but beats down all sellers and squeezes up all buyers, till TO THE MISSIONARY 299 the godless riches of the extortioner who has permitted none to live save under the sufferance of his shadow pass to juster owners, consigning him to the only hell he fears — poverty! The appeal to the destinies is an excuse for imperial conquest rather than an argument for federated ministries ; a pretext for revoking the Ten Commandments without observing the eleventh which sums them all up ; an apology for violence in politics and coercion in religion ; a plea for greatness as a substitute for goodness; an attempt to justify the abandonment of the way of the cross by pleading the inevitable tendencies of trade, armaments, politics, and ecclesiasticism. The policy of the “ inevitable ” defi- nitely marks the renunciation of free will in morals, is quickly followed by the loss of freedom in politics, and foreshadows the doom of that empire for whose gaudy sake were bartered all the great moral realities. Politics and political missions may perceive nothing save the golden head and terrible form of Nebuchad- nezzar’s image, but ethics perceives also its feet of clay, while religion sees gathering those moral forces which, like the stone cut out without hands, are ap- pointed to smite the image and break it to pieces, till it becomes like the chaff of the summer threshing which the wind carries away, and no place is found for it. Missionary imperialism marks the complete surren- der of organized Christianity to political ideals, and the last stage in the decay of faith. It is precisely when faith is weakest that churches blossom out into ostenta- tious ceremonies and vociferous confessions, cast about for political alliances, abandon the arts of moral suasion 300 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR for the instruments of coercion, and welter in that religious pessimism which ceases to believe in God, joined to that political pessimism which has ceased to believe in man. The Maxim missionary is the agent of a church which has lost faith in man, in the slow processes of peace, in the civilizing methods of the plow and the primer as contrasted with the swift solutions of the sword ; which has lost faith in God, in the over- ruling Power who stands for justice and truth ; has lost faith also in righteousness, to which alone it was wont to make its appeal, win or lose, and which alone exalteth a nation ; lost faith, too, in the moral government of the world, believing no longer that the name of the Lord of Hosts is better than sword and spear and shield, than horses and chariots, than “ the mountains of prey”; which has lost the faith that speaks truth though the heavens fall, — not only accepting but issu- ing invitations to subordinate the national conscience to the national interest, to comply with wrong, and to condone the violation of treaties and pledged word for the sake of adding new provinces to the already “ vast empire,” as if it were possible to violate a people’s conscience without also fracturing its loyalty or to com- mit a sin against God without committing also a crime against the nation ; which has lost faith in the gospel and fallen back upon the irrational, inhuman, and anti- christian policy of evangelizing the world by the gun, making the Maxim forerunner of the cross, killing men because she is bankrupt of power to convert them, abro- gating the eternal obligations of the gospel before the latter-day necessities of empire ; which has lost faith TO THE MISSIONARY 301 in the Christ who declared that a man’s (or a nation’s) life consisted not in the abundance of the things that he possessed, and asked what it would profit to gain the whole world and lose the self — consorting with the trader as His new ambassador, junketing with the new evangelists in uniform and epaulets, punctuating the sermon with the bayonet, and, in general, carrying on that illicit commerce with the powers of this world to which both Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles gave a very unpleasant name ; which has lost faith in those moral forces alone relied on by all the missionary pioneers from Paul to Livingstone — the beneficence of their work and the transparent purity of their motives, — abiding the issue like Christians and receiving the martyr’s crown, under law to Christ only and protected only by Christ, considering that the call to perish was Christ’s call, rejoicing to add their martyr blood to the seed of human progress ; — a church which, because it has lost its faith, calls for a military escort to protect life and a “punitive expedition” to “exact reprisals ” for death, burning down villages and pound- ing women and children to death by gunboats to avenge the “ martyrs,” — sending the martyr courage after the martyr spirit, evidencing a dastard unfaith in eternal life by its carnal appetite for ecclesiastical expansion and secular glory. It is in this hideous demoralization of the “ bride of Christ ” that the war spirit’s foulest nature may be read. If the church will not arise and abolish war, war will abolish the church. If the missionary will not disown the Maxim, heathendom will reject the missionary. 302 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR While it countenances arms, the church will never come to its own. The injury it inflicts upon the subject races by means of its military ally reacts a hundred- fold to its own moral damage ; and the moral damage inflicted by war upon the spiritual agencies is the measure of its iniquity. For the sake of those heavenly powers which alone transform history from a feast of cannibals to a fraternal evolution, war must be destroyed. REFERENCES 1. Missionaries disclaiming Military Protection: Wilmot Brooke (see Peace and Goodwill, Vol. VI, p. 186). As the missionaries enter the Moslem states under the necessity of violating the law of Islam, which forbids any one to endeavor to turn Moslems to Christ, they should not, under any circumstances, ask for British intervention to extricate them from the dangers which they thus call down upon themselves. But also for the sake of the natives who have to be urged to brave the wrath of man for Christ’s sake, it is neces- sary that the missionaries should themselves take the lead in facing these dangers, and should in every possible way make it clear to all that they do not desire to shelter themselves, as British subjects, from the liabilities and perils which would attach to Christian converts from Mohammedanism in the Soudan. They will, therefore, voluntarily lay aside all claim to protection as British subjects, and put themselves, while outside British territory, under the authority of the native rulers. 2. Bishop of Manchester, June 21, 1900, etc. 3. Rev. Llewellyn Davies, September 26, 1900. 4. Rev. A. Whetnall, Newcastle Leader, February 16, 1900. 5. Reader Harris, Q.C., Reynolds' Newspaper. 6. Pamphlet, quoted, Irish World, New York. 7. Rt. Rev. Soyen-Shaku on “Buddhist Views of War,” Open Court, Chicago, May, 1904. 8. Rev. Father Watson, Newcastle Daily Leader. 9. Edward Dennis, Dundee Advertiser , March 5, 1904. 10. Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 317. TO THE MISSIONARY 303 11. Rev. — Richardson, New Age, January 10, 1901. 12. New Age, January 29, 1903. 13. Various clergymen, Plain Truth, Liverpool, September, 904. 14. Testimony of Lord Rosmead, War against War, p. 84. “ Civilization . . . ought always to be spelt in the South Seas as ‘ syphilization.’ ” 15. Archbishop of Armagh, June 3, 1900. 16. Review of Reviews, Vol. XXII, p. 131. 17. Dean Spence, New Age, December 26, 1901. 18. Archbishop of Canterbury, Times, June 1, 1900. 19. New York Herald, quoted in The Candlestick, Bristol, No. 16. Improvised dance song, from a Cape newspaper, supposed to be heard by a traveler on the banks of the Zambesi, drawn forth, we may be sure, not by merriment, but by grief : Englishman come — He preachee God . . . Turn, turn! ( piano ) Englishman beat — Englishman kill (crescendo) — He preachee God — - Turn, turn! ( fortissimo ). 20. Lord Hugh Cecil. 21. Rev. Mojola Agbebi, Aborigines' Friend, London, May, 1904. 22. Missionary Persecutions — Testimonies: (a) Sir E. Reed, Japan, Vol. I, p. 296. Any account of the reaction against Christianity in Japan, and of the expulsion of Christians from it by Iyeyasu, which omits from con- sideration the wrongs and persecutions inflicted by the Christians them- selves upon the members of other religious sects, must of necessity be one-sided, and far from complete. These wrongs and persecutions fed, if they did not light, the flames of fear and hatred which drove Chris- tianity from the land. But it was not, let it be frankly acknowledged, the Roman Catholics alone who were to blame; the Protestant Dutch and English [British] added abundant fuel to the fire. They stirred up the Japanese, as we have seen, not merely to religious resistance of the Romish missionaries and their work, but to political resistance likewise, and to political resistance excited by the worst of all alarms, that of the hostile invasion of their country. 304 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR (b) Herbert Spencer, Study of Sociology, pp. 2 10-21 1. If, again, we compare critically the accounts of Cook’s death, we see clearly that the Sandwich Islanders behaved amicably until they had been ill-used, and had reason to fear further ill usage. The experiences of many other travelers similarly show us that friendly conduct on the part of uncivilized races when first visited is very general ; and that their subsequent unfriendly conduct, when it occurs, is nothing but retaliation for injuries received from the civilized. Such a fact as that the natives of Queen Charlotte’s Island did not attack Captain Carte- ret’s party till after they had received just cause of offense, may be taken as typical of the histories of transactions between wild races and cultivated races. When we inquire into the case of the missionary Williams, “ the Martyr of Erromanga,” we discover that his murder, dilated upon as proving the wickedness of unreclaimed natures, was a revenge for injuries previously suffered from wicked Europeans. (c) Rev. John Ross, D.D., Mukden, Sunday at Home, London, November, 1900. The policy of Western governments, threatening to take possession of the land, combined with the action of the Roman Catholic Church all over China, is alone responsible for the anti-foreign rising. The French Minister has lately secured for Catholic bishops and priests the right to sit beside or above the native magistrates. Both these elements must change: foreign nations must renounce the unjust aggression of the past; Roman Catholics must no longer be supported by Western governments in insulting and dictating to Chinese officials. ( d ) Rev. Roland Allen, Peking, New Age, December 13, 1900. There can be no doubt that the Chinese believe that missionary effort, as well as the political action of the Powers in China, bodes no good for their country. The stories of barbarities by foreigners are believed by the Chinese people, and they are absolutely furious at the interference of certain missionaries in lawsuits, and so on. This is at the root of the whole matter. It is this that will turn Christianity in China into detestation, and which has led the common people to believe that foreign nations are absolutely destitute of any sense of right. 23. Missionary sermon at St. Ann’s, Kew, December, 1900. 24. Lord Salisbury, at missionary meeting, June, 1900. 25. War against War in South Africa, p. 42. 26. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst, March, 1900. 27. Bishop of Truro, “Twentieth Century Address.” 28. Review of Reviews, Vol. XIX, p. 107. IX THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE TRADER Once you warred For liberty against the world, and won : There was the glory. Now, you fain would war Because the neighbor prospers overmuch, — Because there has been silence half-an-hour, Like Heaven on earth, without a cannon-shot Announcing Hohenstielers-Schwangauese Are minded to disturb the jubilee, — Because the loud tradition echoes faint, And who knows but posterity may doubt If the great deeds were ever done at all, Much less believe, were such to do again, So the event would follow : therefore, prove The old power, at the expense of somebody ! Browning IX THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE TRADER Peace is the true interest of commerce, and should be its aim and guiding policy. Every business part- nership should be a bureau of conciliators, and every chamber of commerce a peace society. To stimulate productive industries, secure effective distribution, and promote extensive consumption constitute th'e natu- ral ends of trade; and they all presuppose conditions favorable to creation, to facility of travel, and to the increase of populations, — i.e. peace conditions, — while excluding those which imply destruction, dislocation, and the thinning out of peoples, — i.e. conditions of warfare. The Napoleonic gibe at the British as “ a nation of shopkeepers ” was finest compliment ; for the shopkeeper is the type of service, ministry : he stands for production, distribution, exchange of the arts, com- forts, utilities of life ; he represents agriculture, for- estry, horticulture, the fertilizing and adornment of the earth; by him the lone sea is populous with ships carry- ing wool and corn, timber and spices, travelers, immi- grants and missionaries, pictures and books ; thoughts, ideas, religions, gospels, civilizations, by him pass to and fro, redeeming the earth into an Eden for man and man into an Eden-dweller for the earth. Yet as the corruption of the best produces the worst, so 3°7 3°8 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR amongst all those classes injuriously affected by the war spirit none is subject to more frightful demoral- ization than the trader, whose heart was searched by Ruskin in Unto this Last , saying : “The fruit of jus- tice is sown in peace of them that make peace . . . peace-creators; givers of calm. Which you cannot give unless you first gain ; nor is this gain one which will follow assuredly on any course of business, commonly so called. No form of gain is less probable, business being . . . essentially restless — and probably contentious; — -having a raven-like mind to the motion to and fro, as to the carrion food.” Though Ruskin (who divided wars into two classes, those for defense and those for dominion) would probably have included commercial wars in the second of his divisions, yet the full, strife- provoking possibilities of business had not unfolded themselves as they have to a later generation. In this sphere also we observe the clash of ideals between the expiring brute and the crescent angel in the nature of man. Multitudes of traders recognize that the true interest of trade and capital is in peace, and are alive to the higher aspects of commerce ; but great numbers succumb to their temptation in the wilderness, make haste to be rich, exploit rather than develop the earth, and transform their swift-footed, art-teaching, wand- bearing Mercury into a rapacious, wasting Mars, add- ing the extravagances and penalties of war to the legitimate burdens of commerce. It was doubtless this danger signal, flaring out in the mists of futurity, that filled the eye of George Washington, when, in his fare- well address to the American people, he postulated, TO THE TRADER 309 “ The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” War is now waged avowedly for trade. Fox which tried to circumvent fox by fraud is metamorphosed into wolf which seeks to raven wolf by force. Swindling syndicates fill their coffers by draining at one and the same time the purses of their confiding fellow- countrymen and the veins of foreign tribes. A deep tidal wave is sweeping over the civilized world, made up of the froth and fury that go to float such sentiments as that conquest is the pioneer of commerce, that trade follows the flag, that the soldier must always and every- where protect the trader, the exploiter, even the mis- sionary, — the very gospel of God leaning upon the munitions of war. War for the extension of trade or to prevent its curtailment has become an established order, whose significance we may better realize if trans- lated into its vulgar equivalent — murder for gain. “We have here the argument,” says Richard Cobden in his pamphlet England, “ which has, immediately or remotely, decided us to undertake almost every war in which Great Britain has been involved — viz. the defense of our commerce. And yet it has, over and over again, been proved to the world that violence and force can never prevail against the natural wants and wishes of mankind.” The nation of shopkeepers has blossomed out into a nation of soldiers. And herein — to know his mind on the subject once for all — Ruskin is justified in his foreboding : “ Capital is the head, or fountain head, of wealth — the wellhead of wealth, as the clouds 3io MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR are the wellheads of rain : but when clouds are without water, and only beget clouds, they issue in wrath at last, instead of rain, and in lightning instead of harvest.” In our day we have seen the lightning strike. The new military commerce is seen to emerge out of that raven-like restlessness which has developed busi- ness on a vast, imperial scale, catering for a world’s needs, for colonies and dependencies in every part of the world ; discerning not imaginary golden fleeces, as in ancient myth, but most substantial gold mines ; and slaying not fabulous wild beasts but veritable living men, the unhappy guardians of the same. Its course could be fully traced only in the processes by which the hand-crafts developed into mechanical industrialism and that, in turn, into capitalism. The capitalist knows very well that every shilling spent in war is directly waste, that stocks sink and credit is lowered, but he regards this as a necessary investment of capital in order to reap a larger return from the exploitation of the con- quered territory. It is for this reason that — to quote an American peace writer 1 — “foreign investments are enormously increasing in weak and poorly governed countries. Poor Asiatics are supposed to be better customers than our own negroes and poor whites and South Americans. Put this year’s naval budget into Southern schools, create new wants and resources, and we should have immensely larger sales near home.” Modern industrial nations — such as Germany, Amer- ica, or Great Britain — depend decreasingly on manu- facture, and increasingly on investment, less on crafts TO THE TRADER 31 1 and home production, and more on speculation and foreign expansion ; so that a nation, distanced in the mechanical arts, may get a new start of the world by controlling its accumulations of wealth. That is why (to take but one instance) a capitalist could declare two hundred and fifty millions of pounds sterling spent in acquiring the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies to be, from a speculative point of view, the best invest- ment Britain had made or was ever likely to make . 2 This, again, helps us to understand the assertion that “ large speculative interests in Cuban bonds have long had something to do with Jingoism .” 3 Though the manu- facturer recedes, the foreign investor may advance ; home industries may be gradually extinguished while foreign transactions steadily develop. Let Great Britain be an instance. The commercial imperialist , 4 compelled to admit that the industrial glory of Great Britain may be departing, exults to proclaim that her capitalistic glory is only beginning ; her captains of industry, he confesses, may no longer make her the workshop of the world, but her capitalists are making her the landlord of the world, so that she may still exclaim, “ The world, the world is mine!” Her superabundant capital — the argument proceeds — may no longer find profitable employment in the fields and forests, mines and mills, of the home land ; but it flows over and takes possession of the carrying trade of the nations, of the soils, mines, rail- ways of countries beyond the seas, so that through her money lenders she gets other countries into her clutches, laying the foundations of new empire enduringly on 3 12 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR the solid basis of hard cash. She is a foolish mother, starving at home that she may be a spendthrift abroad. The general wealth of the United Kingdom is esti- mated at about twelve billions of pounds sterling, of which nearly a half is made up of colonial and foreign investments, thus diverting into distant channels that wealth and energy necessary to perfect vigor and wholesomeness of domestic life. Selfish speculation and spendthrift jingoism unite to push on wild-cat schemes, while sober men of all parties stand aghast at the folly which strains to occupy new lands, sink new capital, squander accumulated resources in regions far away, while the prairies of undeveloped America, the fields of barren Britain, and the plains of neglected India cry out for the compost of new capital. It is from this raven habit of trade that the new war spirit springs, reacting in its turn upon the trader’s mind and pro- ducing in him a yet deeper demoralization. Modern capitalism is the direct father of modern militarism. Mr. Spencer’s distinction between industrial and mil- itary civilizations goes to the root of things ; and the passage from the one kind to the other is capitalism. The decay of industrialism is coincident with the rise of capitalism, and the meridian of capitalism with the advent of militarism. The nineteenth century closed upon the first, and the twentieth century rose upon the last. Imperial trade requires an imperial army, the ex- pansion of commerce is accompanied by an extension of the mailed fist. The decline of the artisan is coincident with the rise of the soldier ; the fighter must increase, TO THE TRADER 313 but the mechanic, plowman, weaver, must decrease. To the far places whither Mercury, the trade deity, pioneers the way Mars, the war deity, is summoned to follow, lumbering with his guns and impedimenta after the quick, raven-winged feet of the mercantile god. Treaties of commerce are extorted from unwilling peo- ples by force of arms . 6 It is necessary to follow the course by which com- mercial imperialism leads to military imperialism ; it is the story of the merchant’s demoralization, of how Mars debauches Mercury. A distinguished American divine 6 notes the advent of “a vulgar commercialism, which stands ready to exploit all the backward peoples of the earth, and gladly helps forward that gigantic movement in our modern world, which, under the guise of preserving the peace of the nations, always takes care to increase their military expenditure.” Com- merce, secure in its consciousness of the army behind it, forces expansion, drags empire in its train. The producing and distributing agencies, which were all for peace so long as peace was considered good for trade, are now all for that expansion which necessitates war; and for the same reason. To make money peace- fully at home, sending missionaries abroad to convert the heathen into Christians, was once considered the sum total of a Lancashire cotton spinner’s duty ; which, though not a very exalted one, is not improved on by the new commercial gospel which requires him to send out soldiers to convert the heathen into customers. A peace principle rooted only in self-interest will erect but feeble barriers against the tempter. The ever 3M MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR pressing necessity of finding outlets for vast accumula- tions of wealth, or defending investments already made, drives the capitalistic nation into war for new customers or new securities. Here, there, everywhere, it is inter- national capitalism that is the danger. Money mongers of all nations and all political parties fall down before the golden image of Empire, with its promise of big business and full pockets. If the pushful trader and the arrogant expansionist require more soldiers, they confidently reckon on being able to persuade a patriotic country to provide the bayonets necessary to push cot- ton upon Egypt, opium upon China, brandy upon Africa, and empire upon all. The price of the bayonet is the profit of the merchandise, and must not be grudged. It is true that the poor fool Demos must drudge on to provide both the one and the other ; but Issachar is a strong ass, and has the pride and glory of empire to sustain him. It is also true that the public schools must be turned into recruiting grounds, and the citi- zens into conscripts ; but it is “ good for trade.” It is enough. All things are possible to the sordid faith of the money monger. Those numerous traders who hold the ethical view of their vocation know very well that no war can be carried on except by means of present property in the shape of capital, and that this is nothing less than the world’s savings converted by war into the world’s debts. They also know that a war debt transfers capital from individuals to governments, thus destroying the power of exchange which is the soul of commerce. They know also that the military and gov- erning classes would be absolutely powerless to carry TO THE TRADER 315 on war but for the loans and taxes which destroy ex- change and burden industry ; and they are beginning to challenge the right of any ruling class to annihilate present products and mortgage posterity for the pay- ment of its imperial, pride-provoked wars. The time may come when these ethically motived traders will increase to such an extent as to be able to refuse the loans, disown the taxes, and repudiate the bonds through which ultimate poverty and ruin are purchased for an illusive present boom in tea and tobacco, or by which the dividends of a syndicate are swollen whilst exploited peoples pay the bills. The commercial world really holds the governing world in the hollow of its hand ; can now successfully insist, if it will, upon the passage of treaties of arbitration, upon the adoption of measures for preserving the rights of neutrals, for maintaining neutral zones upon the high-seas ; and can ultimately veto every war upon the face of the earth. In truth, the hope of the world may now be said to be trans- ferred from its missionaries to its traders. The doctrine that it is permissible to make war for the sake of trade, killing those who decline to become purchasers, is fit only for a community of thugs ; yet it is openly preached in the market squares of Christen- dom, and cruelly practiced on the plains of India, China, Egypt, Central Africa, the islands of the Spanish Main, — wherever Christendom’s trader, Maxim missionary, or soldier has penetrated. “Their sole idea is” — wrote “Chinese” Gordon — “an increased power over China for their own trade, and for opening up the country, as they call it, and any war would be popular with 3*6 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR them ; so they will egg on any power to make it.” Already is this prophecy fulfilled. In Africa, too, piti- ful and tragic proofs are offered of the same demoraliza- tion. A consensus of opinion declares that the latest white war in that country was “ capitalist in origin and purpose,” 7 waged “ at the sinister mandate of a group of Stock-Exchange speculators and gold-field capital- ists ”; 8 whilst a high-minded Colonial Governor 9 de- scribed the position in these terms : “ The South African League forcing our hand . . . exactly expressed what was being done. This was the real position. I declined to accept a situation in which irresponsible and concealed persons could practically dictate to the gov- ernment the line of action which these persons desired to take. . . . Let my chief at the War Office tell me what I am to do, and I will do it, but I cannot be dragged by syndicates in South Africa, and I will not obey them. ... I refused to have anything to say or to do with them, and they turned on me the Press which they commanded.” We have seen the imperial trader at work. We know how it is done . 10 As soon as individual adventurers have selected a suitable terri- tory they proceed to get up a company, acquiring on the one hand a concession from the native monarch and on the other a charter from the government at home. Thus armed both as to the right hand and the left, they proceed to interpret their cunningly devised concession into rights of ownership in lands, mines, na- tive laborers, and of political overlordship on the part of their government, asserted by forts speedily run up to overawe the native chiefs. Railways are next built TO THE TRADER 317 for the purpose of selling cotton, whisky, and Bibles to the natives ; and if, as is most probable, resenting these insolent encroachments they answer in rude terms that they want neither our cotton nor our Christianity, soldiers are run up the railways to teach the innocent natives a “sharp lesson.” Next a quarrel is picked with a neighboring potentate, and an expedition organ- ized to teach him also a “ sharp lesson and so on to the restless tribes on the farthest fringes of the land, in an unending series of concessions, railways, “ sharp lessons,” till all the natives in that part of the world are “reconciled” to imperial rule and find it expedient to slave in the imperial mines in order to earn the imperial wages wherewith to pay the imperial tax and purchase the imperial cotton and whisky. Mr. John Morley, the supreme ethicist of British politics to-day, sums the whole nefarious process thus: “You push into terri- tories where you have no business to be, and where you had promised not to go. Your intrusion provokes resentment, and resentment means resistance. You in- stantly cry out that the people are rebellious, in spite of your own assurance that you have no intention of set- ting up a permanent sovereignty over them. You send a force to stamp out the rebellion. Having spread blood- shed, confusion, and anarchy, you declare, with hands uplifted to the heavens, that moral reasons force you to stay. These are the five stages in the Forward Rake’s Progress.” If the two-handed ruin — war and commerce — that descended upon native races were honestly, how- ever foolishly, intended to develop their countries, it might be possible to give it reluctant admission amongst 318 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR the darker things of Providence ; but its object is ex- ploitation, — the gain of the trader, not the good of the barbarian. To accomplish this end the financial ring seizes upon the entire economic supply of the country, organizes public meetings, sets agoing whatever news- papers may be necessary, besides appointing its own correspondents to papers at home, puts its creatures into all administrative positions, coerces or cajoles what- ever civil officials may be sent out by the home govern- ment, appoints taxation, enforces labor, pits the black slave against the white laborer in order to squeeze down wages, carries out no works of public utility, cares only for high profits and quick returns. It is not even hon- est agriculture or mining the ring seeks, but dishonest stock manipulation in the interest, partly of the in- vestor at home but chiefly of the company promoter who exploits the home investor as he exploits the bar- barian, breaking the heart of the first as indifferently as he breaks the head of the second. The demoniac temper in which commercial imperialism tramples down every human right and moral prerogative of native peo- ples evoked the pitiful but unheeded appeal from a con- gress of Africans “ that the natives of Africa would no longer be sacrificed to the greed of gold, their liberties taken away, their family life debauched, their just aspi- rations suppressed, and all avenues of advancement and culture taken away from them.” 11 The essential danger of this new and more squalid class of wars arises from the fact that the trader is not willing to take the risks of his own ventures, nor the speculator of his own securities ; they insist on TO THE TRADER 319 committing an entire country to their cause, identify their commercial privileges with the rights of the gov- ernment, elevate a permission to trade into an obligation to rule, until we get the impressive spectacle of the once peaceful bagman defying the “ four corners of the world in arms,” or shouting himself hoarse on the Stock Exchange for delight that another barbarian has been faced with his highwayman dilemma, Be my customer, or die ! Having undertaken to push his business by the arts of war, the once beneficent trader is content to profit by all the ambushes and spyings, treacheries and briberies, tricks, lies, cruelties, and murders proper to the pirate and the buccaneer, and which would make him as an honest trader suffocate with shame. It is the knowledge that he carries the imperial armies and navies in his bag that demoralizes the merchant : were he thrown entirely upon the arts and measures of peace he would be spared these sins. Sometimes, however, in the great drama of imperial- ism the parts shift : the soldier becomes the avant- courier of the trader ; empire precedes commerce. The export trades unite with capital on the basis of the fallacy that “trade follows the flag” and call upon the military powers to promote commerce by conquest. Even were this Stock-Exchange lie as true as it is his- torically and economically false, it would still be con- fronted with the Sinai which forbids to murder for gain ; but the facts entirely disprove this justifying shibbo- leth of the imperialistic trader. Many recent acquisi- tions are proving very drains upon the resources of the 320 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR predatory nations of Europe. Expansion has not been followed by corresponding growth of exports. British territory, for example, has doubled during the last twenty years, but imports and exports have remained in about the same proportion. British trade with her colonies continues in much the same ratio to her trade with foreign countries . 12 Trade follows other lines of development ; it does not follow the flag ; its laws are economic, not military. The doctrine according to which war becomes the pioneer of trade is a heresy partly against economics, and wholly against ethics ; and though it has hitherto produced its natural fruits of unrighteousness chiefly in uncivilized countries, it threatens to extend its influence and disturb the relations between the larger civilized powers. The bandit patriotism, — that it is permissible to crush (if we can) a rival state for no other reason than to make the commercial competition less keen, to cripple Germany in order to make the pace easier for Britain, — is already growing up in the minds and find- ing outlet from the pens of certain besotted mammon- ites of the day. But “ is it,” says a keen American thinker , 13 “to our advantage to trade with nations im- poverished and penurious, or with nations opulent and open-handed ? At the beginning of a war there would be a sudden pouring out of treasure, a feverish squander- ing of the painful hoardings of years, and we should get a large share. But humanity lives from hand to mouth. The savings of the past would be quickly consumed. The capital and labor that might serve as fuel for the wealth- producing machinery of the nations would be uselessly TO THE TRADER 321 consumed in the conflagration of war, and where would trade be then ? ” But the danger of collision between the great powers is immensely increased by the trading doctrine expressed in the new article of creed — “the open door.” So greedy of gain have the merchant and the trader be- come that they are prepared to wage the most tremen- dous wars of modern times for the policy of the open door. They are not “ prepared to see Africa divided up among other nations with the consequential tariff arrangements which would follow ” ; they would rather add millions a year “to their estimates,” 14 thus, for the sake , of a momentary sprint, putting a permanent handicap upon the course of foreign trade. This new dogma of imperialistic commerce refers to such ter- ritories as one power dare not annex for fear of — or must share along with — another power ; territories in which two or more rival powers have succeeded in establishing commercial interests, of which each would like to have the exploitation single-handed, but not being strong enough to shut the door in the faces of the others by protective tariffs, insists upon the duty of equal trading rights and risks fate in a demand for the open door. The dogma is also employed to jus- tify a command from the greater powers that all the ports of an inferior, undeveloped country shall be kept open to the trade of those powers — under penalties ; assuming the right to cut the throat of the man who refuses to trade, in the expectation of doing business with his surviving brother. When the merchant over the way declines to deal with us, or agrees to deal only 322 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR on his own terms, we claim the right to walk into his office and blow his brains out. The open door, desir- able as it certainly is in itself, is thus made a gateway wide enough to admit murder and robbery as well as bales and barrels. It is interesting to notice the way Free Trade is prostituted to foreign war — how Manchesterism itself leads to militarism. All the Free Traders from Cobden to Gladstone were of opinion that free trade would tend to peace by creating a sense of solidarity amongst nations ; but this hope, like so many of the pioneers’ dreams, is disappearing. And why ? Because the pa- cific element in Free Trade, which Cobden postulated, is disappearing. The doctrine stated by the noble apostle of peace through free trade was this : “ Besides dictat- ing the disuse of warlike establishments, free trade arms its votaries, by its own pacific nature, in that eternal truth — the more any nation traffics abroad upon free and honest principles, the less it will be in danger of wars .” 15 Free Trade has to some extent departed from the spirit and principles of its founder, has become militant, compulsory, distrustful of itself ; with the result that it works for war in the most astonishing way, is never without scares and alarms and rumors of war, and seems to disprove the dictum of its apostle only because it has departed from his faith and his creed alike. The customhouse is a portent only less terrible than the fort ; for it sits under the frowning shadow of embrasured cannon, and drags the largest navy in the world all round the seven seas after it. The argument is that Free Trade has never had a real TO THE TRADER 323 trial, — for these sentences are not directed against it but against the militarism which counteracts its benefi- cent influence ; nor will it ever have a fair trial until trade ceases to rely on arms, until the merchant disowns compulsion, and until Free Trade is preached not as a policy justifying force but as an evangel worth suffer- ing for. It may also be urged that the protectionist is the original sinner; but the Free Trader is a faithless backslider — a protectionist' at heart, with selfish inter- est at the bottom of his commercial policy just the same as the other — unless he is prepared to accept all the commercial consequences of his creed. The trader who objects to tariffs and protective duties is not only inconsistent but immoral if, at the same time, he is ready to extend commerce by bayonets and Maxim guns, if he thinks his country justified in a policy of expansion merely because it throws open the ports to the trade of the world. War for religion’s sake is now impossible in the Christian world ; it remains for the commercial world to make war for trade equally im- possible. “Equal opportunity” is a right and fair thing ; but that little good cannot atone for the greater wrong of war — to say that it can is to boggle at an economic heresy whilst committing the sin of murder, to confess Cobden’s doctrine whilst rejecting his spirit, to be true to Cobden’s creed whilst being false to Cob- den’s Christ, The battles of empire were fought at one time for thrones and dominion, which, if not worth the moral degradation involved, were not without a redeeming 324 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR touch of grandeur, — but are now fought for the squalid ends of the huckster, the real struggle, we are told, being for commercial supremacy; the country that can open out the widest fields for the investment of its capital coming out dux; so that, whereas the driving power of expanding nations formerly consisted in their love of conquest, their pride, their patriotism, it now resides in their love of money, their pockets, their eye to business. For national rights and liberties also men have sometimes resorted to the arbitrament of the sword ; and though these do not justify murder, they are wholly noble when compared with the powder-and- brandy imperialism which tarnishes the splendor of the Victorian age. That capital is specifically the menace is made clear by an informing American student 16 when he points out, amid much of a similar nature, that it is not enough to find new markets, it is necessary also to open up fresh fields for investment of capital ; for “ One of the most striking phenomena of the new eco- nomic conditions is the rapidity with which capitaliza- tion proceeds, when once a country has entered, to any considerable extent, upon the career of machine pro- duction. ... So far as these foreign investments are safe and well chosen, . . . the result is much more bene- ficial to [a country’s] interests than if the increasing savings of the country were kept at home to bid against each other in the stock market. . . . The necessity of sending capital abroad to obtain profitable returns is the salient economic lesson of the closing days of the nineteenth century. . . . The real opportunity afforded by colonial possessions is for the development of the new TO THE TRADER 325 countries by fixed investments, whose slow completion is the only present means of absorbing saved capital. . . . Whether trade invariably follows the flag or not, the real question of the benefits of Australia, India, Canada, and Egypt to Great Britain, and of Algeria, Tunis, and Madagascar to France, relates to the fields which have been, and will be, opened there for the profitable invest- ment of capital, and not merely to the quantity of finished goods laid down annually in the export trade.” The writer concludes a ruthless argument and these ominous instances by the patriotic announcement that “ The United States is rapidly approaching the con- dition of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium, where she will be compelled to seek free markets and opportunities for investment in the undeveloped coun- tries, if she is not to be crowded to the wall by the efforts of the other great civilized powers”; finally, “if the Constitution stands in the way, the Constitution, like other human instruments, should be amended.” Thus vanish the fraternal principles of Washington and Franklin, dismissed as “glittering generalities” by the exigencies of modern capital, to come back as Emerson’s “blazing ubiquities” only after many bloody experi- ments . 17 His case being thus unanswerably expounded by the philosopher and economist (for if commerce be regarded merely as a system of profit and loss, divorced from ethics, humanity, international fraternity, there is no reply), the capitalist confesses his guilt, even glories in it, and declares war to be the modern method of wholesale purchase : “ If it were true that the war was caused by capitalists or undertaken on behalf of the 326 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR mines, the Empire owes them a deep debt of gratitude. . . . South Africa, after all, is not a dear asset to the Empire at the cost of the present war.” 18 The watchword is no longer Commonwealth, but simply Wealth ; and the accent is shifted from the development of domestic industries, social advancement of peoples, and formation of noble character in children, to the exploitation of distant tribes, the enormous accu- mulation of ill-gotten money, and the power to purchase manhood, yes, and the destinies of entire nations. National flags, formerly regarded as symbols of national glory, even liberty, are now emblems of national trade, — the “greatest commercial asset in the world” a famous British speculator 19 called his, — and an empire comes to be ledgered with other office effects : patriot- ism is identified with commerce ; the statesman is merged in the speculator, the colonist in the company promoter, and the explorer in the commercial traveler ; the dollar is frankly named as the basis of mercantile imperialism and defended by the bayonet of political imperialism ; and these two — the dollar and the bayonet — stand to imperial sovereignty as the great pillars Jachin and Boaz stood to Solomon’s temple. The im- perial trader just quoted declared that modern wars were not waged for the amusement of royal families, as in the past, but for “practical business”; while a Chancellor of the Exchequer bluntly confessed that the real object of naval and military expenditure was “to push and promote our trade throughout the world .” 20 The argument once ran, Be my subject, or I will kill you ; it now runs, Be my customer, or I will kill you. TO THE TRADER 327 ’T is thus that, “all in a later and a sadder age,” we justify the Napoleonic taunt about the shopkeepers. Capitalism thus stands revealed as the great menace to the peace of the world, having- taken over from royalty the criminal business on the grand, spectacular scale. It is not now the ruler who makes war, so much as the speculator, the financier, the exploiter of uncivi- lized peoples and undeveloped lands ; who is giving evidence upon a gigantic scale — both in Asia and Africa — that he is prepared to push commerce throughout the world at the point of the bayonet. He blushes less than formerly, and can now be got to confess, or to ironically describe, his country’s policy in terms such as these : “ The talk about benevolent assimilation is cant. . . . We want the Philippines. The islands are enormously rich. But unfortunately they are infested by Filipinos. There are many millions of them, and it is to be feared that their extinction will be slow. The development of the islands cannot be successfully done while the Fili- pinos are there. Therefore, the more of them killed the better .” 21 The money lord has taken the place of the landlord, controlling the powers of war and peace, bestriding the narrow seas as the modern Colossus, — one foot planted on the neck of the proletariat at home, the other on the necks of the primitive races abroad. The power of international finance has swelled to vast proportions since the author of Rob Roy set down this dialogue between the ingenuous Frank Osbaldis- tone and the initiated Bailie Nicol Jarvie : “ It is very singular that the mercantile transactions of London 328 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR citizens should become involved with revolutions and rebellions.” “Not at a’, man — not at a’; that’s a’ your silly prejudications. I read whiles in the lang dark nights, and I hae read in Baker’s Chronicle that the merchants o’ London could gar the Bank of Genoa break their promise to advance a mighty sum to the King o’ Spain, whereby the sailing of the Grand Span- ish Armada was put aff for a haill year — What think you of that, sir?” “That the merchants did their country golden service, which ought to be honorably remembered in our histories.” “I think sae too.” The twentieth century has risen upon a commercial- ism so vast and influential that it can organize wars as part of its office work, rig governments as well as mar- kets, and set in motion the fleets and armies of the mightiest empire the world has ever seen. It finan- ces states, which, in their turn, tax the people to pay interest, and employ soldiers to force the taxes out of them. If the patriotic people revolt under a national leader and in a great national movement, imperial fleets and armies will be sent to bombard their capitals to compel them to keep their obligations, — that is, to pay the tax interest to the swollen Shylocks who are as gods to the petty Shakespearean variety. If they desire a trade monopoly, they coerce their government into hostilities against a petty power that distances them, and secure the trading by securing the country. “Everywhere,” says Sir Thomas More, “I perceive a certain conspiracy of rich men seeking their private advantage under the name and pretext of the common- weal.” TO THE TRADER 329 If imperialism were the expression of the free will and self-directing energy of a people, it would at least be entitled to whatever respect was due to wrong of the grand, imposing kind ; but it is entitled only to contempt when it is seen to be the creature of foreign investment, yoked and harnessed to the yellow chariot of capitalism. Statesmen are but the tools of the mas- ters of finance, and politicians merely the puppets of the generals of capital. “Moneybags ” controls senates nominally free ; and the plutocrat buys the politician like other merchandise. There is hardly a national leader, whether of Lords or Commons, but falls before the mighty thaumaturgist of finance ; hardly a cabinet or a legislature but is organized and maneuvered by the millionaire magician. Armies are marshaled by the same magic baton ; and as the devoted bands march forth to battle the cry is no longer, “Hail, Caesar!” but “Hail, Croesus, those about to die salute thee!” As workers they live to make Croesus rich ; then, as fighters, die to make him richer. He first gets on their backs and governs them ; then puts his hands in their pockets and taxes them ; next claps bayonets into their fists and kills them ; then gets their taxpaying relations to bury them ; afterwards congratulates them on having died for their country ; but first, last, and all the time takes care that all they shall get of their country is the necessary six feet by two. “The middle and industrious classes . . . can have no interest apart from the preservation of peace. The honors, the fame, the emoluments of war belong not to them ; the battle plain is the harvest field of the aristocracy, watered 33 ° MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR with the blood of the people .” 22 Securely propped by parliament on the right, the church on the left, and with the army in front, he marches forward on his con- quering way. Kingdoms lie in the hollow of his hand ; countries are his stakes and continents his counters ; and his huge gambles in material things are buoyed up upon the immaterial waves of national selfishness and national sentiment, in which also he makes enormous and successful speculation. The persuasive power of his world-wide newspaper press is brought to bear upon the people, inviting them to “ consider the immense value of the states just acquired, when they cannot but come to the conclusion that the money expended in the war ($1,200,000,000) is of minor importance,” 23 for it will “ bring us great reward, and great gain in return for the money we had lost .” 24 Thus Ahab forever seduces Demos to consent to the murder of Naboth ; but Ahab takes the vineyard every time. Capitalism has power to rope in every selfish party of a nation. The commercial and military classes can, as we have seen, go but one way; shipbuilding, gun- making, and allied trades stand to gain by a policy of aggression ; the middle and upper classes are tempted by the prospect of outlets for their sons and superflu- ous dependents; while the investing public, with their vast ramifications, rejoice to see the arms of the state enlisted in defense of their private fortunes : and all these — not its accidental humanitarianism — consti- tute the driving forces of imperialism. A gallant officer puts the matter in a nutshell when he says : “ We want the colonies to produce the whole of the corn and raw TO THE TRADER 331 materials we require, and let the rest of the world go to the devil .” 25 So we must take care to get plenty of colonies. The motive in the heart is selfishness, but the appeal in the mouth is, frequently, to sentiment, — the senti- ment expressed in such words as “ country,” “ empire,” “patriotism,” — by which pretense some of the worthy are drawn to the side of Mammon, which has power to deceive the very elect. Capitalism can exploit the higher forces of mind as cunningly as the lower provi- sions of nature ; by brutal bribery of the lower elements and skillful harping upon the higher is able to enlist the moral sense of a people on the side of its quarrel and their military forces to fight its battles. This explains the existence of a few strands of purer sentiment wound up in the coarse lasso with which the annexationist proceeds to his task, — such as the desires for political reform, extension of civilization, protection of native races, abolition of slavery, development of missionary enterprise ; but these high things are all compelled to follow in the train of the ruling forces which make for financial profit and territorial aggrandizement. Those higher elements — congenial themes of banjo bards and platform platitudinarians — are expected to redeem the imperialistic movement from utter reproba- tion, to satisfy public conscience, to give a pleasing sense of moral elevation : but the driving power is in the lower elements of greed and pride ; the practical work of expansion is left to the financier, company pro- moter, stock manipulator, and, when all things are ready, the soldier. This is the depth of baseness 332 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR reached by the owners of imperialistic finance, — to work upon a people’s noblest instincts for most sordid ends, to stir the popular mind with indignation by stories of wrong forged in the offices of their prostitute press, to play Iago to deluded Othello, — knowing that when his anger is well up miserable Othello’s brutality will wake up with it, — and prepare him for any barbarity that war can necessitate or empire justify. Greed play- ing upon brutality, — that is the process by which the war devil is roused in the breast of a democracy, in- flaming national vanity, exciting brutal lust of domin- ion, stirring up blind frenzies of patriotism, until, like Mark Antony, he can safely retire from the scene, smiling complacently to himself, “Mischief, thou art afoot!” By the very conditions of its existence international capitalism has no country — save El Dorado; no king — save Mammon; no politics — save business; and is the veriest hypocrite when it sets up these parrot cries. Mammon worshipers of all nations forswear every alle- giance whensoever and in whatsoever part of the world it clashes with their allegiance to capital and interest ; that heterogeneous and polyglot crowd of millionaires, exploiters, money lenders, gamblers — to the outer- most fringe of the obsequious and emulous throng of flunkies and park loungers who attend them, or the adoring circles of political women who worship them — being moved by no other consideration than profit and loss. By transference of its investments from native to foreign countries capitalism ceases to be national and becomes cosmopolitan, without, on that account, TO THE TRADER 333 becoming fraternal — any more than the roving pirate becomes fraternal because, in a cosmopolitan kind of way, he preys upon all . 26 So far from conducing to the union of mankind, this bloated order of capitalism has hitherto produced little but division and bloodshed; and there seems just as much likelihood of converting the pirate from his cosmopolitan robbery to neighborly cooperation as of turning the international capitalist from his selfish exploitation of the world to a fraternal development of humanity. If international capitalism were an expansion of the old national sentiment into a cosmopolitan one, there would be hope that the higher elements would overcome the lower ; but it is abso- lutely unaffected by any sentiment of race or nation- ality, merely substituting a mercenary for a patriotic motive, and turning the political formula “the greatest good of the greatest number ” into the trader’s axiom “the greatest number — number one!” So far from obeying patriotic impulse, international capitalism will exploit with equal cheerfulness both the nation it has cajoled into a declaration of war and that which it has goaded into accepting the challenge. And Rebecca of Ivanhoe shall set forth the reason : “ With- out the aid of our wealth, they could neither furnish forth their hosts in war, nor their triumphs in peace ; and the gold which we lend them returns with increase to our coffers.” Amongst great nations all war is waged by borrowed money;- the capitalist lends the “ sinews of war” — ominous word! — and for the sake of good investment is ready to foment quarrels in every part of the world. The politicians declare war, the 334 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR capitalists finance it, and the people pay for it. “ All unjust wars being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who ap- pear to have no will in the matter, the capitalists’ will being the primary root of the war ; but its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice and bringing about, therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each person .” 27 So we get this last worst attribute of syndicated capitalism, — that, for the sake of large investments with government securities, it busies itself in getting up wars against native races or between foolish peoples, the misery counting nothing, the widows and orphans nothing, the cruelty and demoralization nothing, — nothing the heart- breaks, madnesses, spiritual desolations, atheisms, hells. Patriotism, nationality, fraternity, — these are the stops pulled out by a militant commercialism that would play on the mighty organ of public sentiment ; but itself loves them not, cares for none of them : confesses by the mouth of one of its apostles , 28 “ We are all too hell- ish rich to care anything about your morality,” declares by the lips of a second that “morality is off the slate,” and through a third gives judgment in the original and striking apothegm, “righteousness be damned !” 29 A picturesque member 30 of the fighting — not this time of the preaching — trade -has enrolled himself amongst the prophets, and lifts up his voice to bear testimony that : “ In the motherland the corruption of money has wrought fearful havoc in the ranks of society. In TO THE TRADER 335 the United States there are ominous mutterings of the coming storm. The plutocrat is gaining power each day on both sides of the Atlantic, and the democrat is likely to be crushed under the heel of a worse tyrant than any king who wore the purple, or any ecclesiastical dignitary who set up claims to temporal power. . . . This is the danger which menaces the Anglo-Saxon race.” Let it be granted that the majority of capital- ists are motived by higher ideals, that much capital is pacific in its aim and direction, yet an impartial examina- tion of the economic theorizings and national develop- ments of our time leads to the conclusion that capitalzkzzz, — the massing of capital into syndicates, corporations, chartered companies, and international exploitation schemes, — as we know it to-day, as we have seen it recently at work, is the absolute incarnation of the invisible, diabolic powers,- — having neither a soul to be saved nor a body to be burned ; the supreme instance of that which a sacred penman describes as “ with- out natural affection, implacable, unmerciful,” having neither bowels of compassion nor conscience of wrong; probably the most absolutely dehumanized, miscreated and unnatural abortion that has hitherto cursed and afflicted mankind. And it rules the world. All these facts and symptoms declare with an em- phasis the age cannot ignore that capitalism is the enemy, — the enemy which has to be fought with every weapon in the armory of moral suasion, mental en- lightenment, humane dealing, and the commercial con- science. All the illiberal and reactionary forces which 336 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR have been gathering head in Europe and America these fifty years have been seen to focus themselves in the plains of Asia and Africa, and now stand revealed as the latter-day incarnation of “ the least erected spirit that fell,” the true “abomination of desolation ” stand- ing in the holy place of the opening century. The twentieth century confronts a mightier and wickeder confederacy of forces — more squalid in its inner na- ture but more imposing in its outward show — than any that has hitherto defied the moral sense of man. It is not militarism the century is called upon to fight, nor expansionism ; but capitalism, which, like a satanic charioteer, yokes these to his car, raising in his furious career a cyclic storm of reactions, obscurantisms, des- potisms, immoralities, glittering illusions and dazzling shows proper to the “ Prince o’ the Power o’ the Air,” tempting the nations to their doom. Into what ocean depths the human race may be dragged by the weird and shapeless Kraken that has fastened upon its limbs — happily not yet upon its vitals — it is impossible to measure ; neither its titanic sufferings and struggles ere it deliver itself. If the political tyrants of earlier days, from Nimrod to Napoleon, chastised mankind with whips, the new plutocratic tyrants will chastise them with scorpions ; will be as Rehoboam was to Solomon — their little finger thicker than the others’ loins. The battle is between commerce on the grand, im- perialistic scale and liberty. It is finance against free- dom the world over. All the “ interests ” that used to play against each other, holding each other in check, TO THE TRADER 337 have now drawn together under the headship of Mam- mon ; and mankind have nothing to oppose to them but the naked forces of morality. Not in the past’s worst days, whether against mitered priest or crowned king, did fight so tremendous await the forces of righteous- ness. Church, press, throne, legislature, — all are now enlisted on the side of Mammon and Mars. All polit- ical parties, all industrial and trading combinations, unite on the war policy of the hour ; for war means power to the “interests,” paralysis to liberty and de- mocracy. Every kind of domestic improvement must wait on foreign conquest ; soldiers must be had, by con- scription and compulsory service if necessary ; boys must be drilled in public schools and churches ; voters must be reduced to fighters, and citizens to ciphers : and all in order that finance may trample, first upon the rights of peoples abroad, and then upon the home rights of those it sent abroad to fight its battles. It is pluto- crat against democrat the world over. With what new weapons will righteousness fight the good fight ? What new embodiments will she assume ? The century opened upon the spectacle of a small but indomitable people resisting the enemy of the human race even unto blood, opposing to the misshapen monster capitalism the simple, unsophisticated powers of manhood and the primitive occupations ; as if the Providence that rules the destinies intended to show mankind by a terrible object lesson the enemy that has to be fought, — that must be fought, however, only with the weapons of enlightenment, education, moral culture, commercial integrity, and the reform of religion. 338 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR The battle is between business and morals. The real significance of the war with which the century opened is that the greater war — the holy war — between trade and ethics has commenced ; and, though it has opened grossly with material weapons, must be fought out with spiritual weapons. It cannot be doubted that the higher elements in commerce and its best representatives will be found more and more decisively on the side of an ethical interpretation of their functions ; that they will use their comprehensive influence through cham- bers of commerce, boards of trade, and similar agencies to effect treaties of arbitration, secure zones of peace on the high seas, placate angry statesmen, and con- vince the democracies of the world that the world’s interest is peace. The very purpose of a chamber of commerce is to organize the trade and industry of mankind, and by doing so to weave bonds of interde- pendence and mutual help. The rupture between the ethical sense and the deadening power of gold has at last declared itself, and will go on widening till all men are compelled to choose whom they will serve. Con- science has at last taken the alarm and commenced that struggle against a diseased commercialism which is to determine the future of religion and politics : whether religion is to be mechanical and worldly, or spiritual and ethical ; whether politics is to be free and social, or oligarchical and governmental ; whether inter- national trade is to become a blood-sucking vampire, or a white-winged angel ; whether commerce is to open upon the peoples of the earth a Pandora’s box of plagues and curses, or to pour upon, a smiling world TO THE TRADER 339 its cornucopia of fruits, flowers, products of love’s labor that therefore is not lost, — so at last to realize the vision of an ancient poet when “ the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose .” 31 The battle is between selfishness and brotherhood, — Self incarnate in Empire, and Fraternity whose sub- lime ideal is expressed in the homely live and let live or the divine whatsoever ye would that men should do to you , do ye even so to them ; Self on a scale so colossal and in a garb so glittering as to beggar precedent, and Frater- nity with nothing but the old moral appeals, the drab moralities that glisten only to the eye of faith. The object is abolition of every system of protectionism, exclusion, exploitation ; and establishment of inter- national trade relations, human solidarity, and equal rights of individuals and races. The struggle is greater than between two divergent economic theories; it goes deeper than economics, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow and of the soul and spirit, and proving a discerner of the very thoughts and intents of the heart. It is a struggle between two con- flicting habits of mind, two irreconcilable spirits within man ; between selfishness and altruism, exclusiveness and universalism, materialism and religion. In this struggle it cannot be doubted that the multitude of traders will come over to the side of the angels. Com- merce is being transformed into a missionary for peace, and the process is being hastened by the very ugliness of those forms of capitalism it has been the purpose of these pages to describe. For trade is not in itself a 340 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR cause of disunion between nations, but only false notions about trade. And the associations of business men are setting themselves to teach true doctrines about busi- ness, and to counteract the specious fallacies of the politicians and the soldiers. True ideas move the world ; and it is not too optimistic to believe that the mer- chants of the civilized world are at last preparing to back with their conquering influence the idealists in pulpit, poem, and press. The merchant is by his very office a philanthropist : he brings the farmer’s harvest to feed the hungry, the manufacturer’s web to clothe the naked, the products of quarrier and forester to house the homeless, the books of the writer to educate the ignorant, the instruments of the musician to cheer the sad, the pictures of the artist to adorn both hall and cottage ; and to the discharge of these great offices he brings a trained intelligence, a liberal outlook, a wide capacity, a comprehensive grasp, a quick under- standing of circumstances, a sympathetic appreciation of other interests, a character for faithfulness and integ- rity which unite to make his demand for justice and mercy irresistible. The commercial world could not stand unless its citizens had a higher reputation for sincerity and truth and honor than it is possible to gather from the foul pages of diplomacy and politics ; so that it is with honor in his right hand and human- ity in his left the merchant moves forward to the persuasion of the world. International commerce is evolving an international conscience. Interdependence in material things is rising up to interdependence in things humane and spiritual. The world’s interest TO THE TRADER 341 is one, because the world’s soul is one. The fraternal spirit of commerce is destined gradually to drive back the barbaric spirit of war ; and that destroying angel, the soldier, to yield place to the ministering angel, the merchant. It is not so ? — is far indeed from being so ? That is just the argument. Reliance on force is what chiefly prevents it from being so. The demoralization of the trader furnishes the modern world with the crown- ing and convincing proof that war must be abolished. REFERENCES 1 . Lucia Ames Mead, The Primer of Peace. 2. Carl Hanan, Daily Chronicle, January 1 6, 1903. 3. Times , April 7, 1898. 4. “ Ritortus,” in Contemporary Review , London, July, 1899. 5. Commercial Treaties extorted by Force (Thorpe’s History of Japan, pp. 173, 193): In July, 1858, not only American but Russian men of war arrived at Yokohama, to be speedily followed by the English and French, all intent on forcing the proud Japanese to concede treaties of commerce; and if these treaties could not be obtained peaceably, they should be extorted by force of arms. . . . Not satisfied with their work of destruction, the envoys of the four belligerent nations demanded of the puzzled and dis- tressed Japanese an indemnity of three million dollars, of which amount America took seven hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars, although the cost to them of their war demonstration was only twenty-five thou- sand dollars. N.B. [These events in 1858 must not be confused with the landing of Commodore Perry in 1854, when, for the first time in modern history, and by perfectly peaceful methods, certain Japanese ports were opened to American and other ships.] 6. Rev. Charles F. Dole, Jamaica Plain, Mass. 7. J. A. Hobson, New Age, May 28, 1903. 8. Atherley Jones, M.P., ibid. 9. Sir William Butler, The South African War Commission. 342 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 10. The Imperial Trader at Work : Testimony of Commissioner Jackson, Aborigines' Friend , August, 1904. Apart from the injustice of depriving the Masai of their land nolens volens, it is bound to lead to great trouble in the end. Even if the Masai do not resent their best grazing-ground being taken away from them, and resort to force, they will get pushed away or drift away of their own accord, and get completely out of touch with us, and therefore out of hand, and all the trouble they give us will be of our own making. 11. See References, Chap. VIII, Note 16. 12. Trade does not “Follow the Flag”: Testimony of Sir Edward Clarke, War against War, p. 28. During that forty years we have increased the area of our authority in the world to an enormous extent, and have brought large areas and great populations under our direct control; whereas at the beginning of the forty years our trade with our own possessions and dependencies amounted to one fourth of the whole trade of the country, at the end of these forty years, after all this accretion of territory and population, our trade with our colonies still amounts to one fourth of the whole volume of our trade. The proportion has been steady, though the area of our authority has so largely increased. That should be, and 1 think is, a certain indication it is not by the direct government of countries that the course of trade is mainly or materially altered. 13. Professor Walter Rauschenbusch (Rochester, New York), War against War, p. 122. 14. Mr. Arthur Balfour, M.P., House of Commons. 15. Political Writings, Vol. I, p. 222 (ed. 1903). 16. C. A. Conant, Formn, New York, June, 1899. 17. Edwin D. Mead, Principles of the Founders, p. 65 : It was Emerson who . . . paid the most memorable tribute ever paid in a single phrase to the Declaration of Independence. When Rufus Choate, speaking in the spirit which has again become fashionable among us in this latest time, slurred the Declaration as a mass of “ glittering generalities,” Emerson took up the taunt with quick resentment, and exclaimed, . . . “ say rather, blazing ubiquities 1 ” 18. C. D. Rudd, New Age, July n, 1901. 19. Cecil Rhodes, February 23, 1900. TO THE TRADER 343 20. War against War, p. 137. 2 1 . San Francisco A rgonaitt, quoted in New Age, J uly 24, 1 902. 22. Richard Cobden, Political Writings, Vol I, p. 34 (ed. I9°3)- 23. J. B. Robinson, November 7, 1900. 24. Colonel Pilkington, New Age, May 28, 1903. 25. Major Dugdale, East Dorset Herald. 26. The Preying Spirit in War and Trade: (a) Tolstoy, Bethink Yourselves ! p. 36. The more money and labor of the people is devoted to war, the more is grabbed by various authorities and speculators who know that no one will convict them, because every one is doing the same. (b) Rev. Father Timoney, Sydney Catholic Press. The exchange of government horses for others, which can be sold, is a very common industry. The sale of government stores to outsiders is a flourishing business, and so ably are all these transactions conducted that it is impossible to sheet his guilt home to the swindler. There are generally three or four persons concerned in these shady transactions, and as they are all equally guilty, every one keeps his mind to himself. Another brisk business on a smaller scale is to requisition for clothes on all occasions, and to sell them to the Kaffirs, all of whom around us here, about five hundred, are elegantly dressed in uniforms, including helmets, leggings or putties, khaki tunics, and riding breeches. Those who are the longest in the army are the greatest and most scientific swindlers. To rob the government is in their eyes an act of solid virtue. For, after all, there is no personal wrong done. That abstract firm called government is not individually injured, and no man of spirit and energy, and with a head on his shoulders, should hesitate to annex whatever government property he can safely lay his hands on. This to moralists may seem sophistry, but to many of the British army it is sound rea- soning and common sense. 27. John Ruskin, Unto this Last, p. 154. 28 . War against War in South A frica, p. 1 1 . 29. Remark of a personal friend. 30. Lord Charles Beresford, North American Review, New York. 31. Isaiah of Jerusalem, chap. xxxv. Read the whole poem. X THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE CITIZEN There is evidently an attempt at universal restoration in Europe. From Vienna it has passed to Rome ; from Rome to Paris. Where will it stop ? It is now hanging over Switzerland, Piedmont, and Belgium ; it tends to suppress liberty, the press, the right of asylum. When that shall be accomplished, when England shall be the only European land upon which liberty, the press, the right of asylum, still exist, do you think that an effort will not be made to destroy them there? No army, perhaps, will succeed in landing upon her soil ; but is it by invasion only that a country is destroyed ? . . . England arms ; she authorizes rifle clubs; she speaks of militia; she is then in fear; and yet she repulses the most efficient means of safety that Europe offers her ; she leaves the peoples who would be her nearest allies to fall one by one under the attacks of la terreur blanche ; she renounces with a fatal obstinacy the glorious role which the loss of the French initiative yields to the first nation willing to seize upon it, — a role which would assure to her the first influence in the Europe of the future, safety from all attempts against liberty, and the consciousness of the accomplishment of a duty towards the world. [Her best defense is in] the alliance of the young nationalities which will shortly furnish her with the opportunity of overthrowing that imperialism which now threatens freedom every- where, because an army is its slave, with the most dangerous enterprises. — Mazzini. X THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE CITIZEN The first duty of a state would appear to be the pro- duction of citizens ; but there is none of first rank that is not to-day the seat of an active conspiracy to destroy citizens by making void their citizenship. The vast possibilities of personal and social greatness which opened out to the nineteenth century have been frus- trated by a stream of reactionary influences whose symptom is a showy and distempered militarism, and whose secret cause is a decadent spirit which has abandoned the old habits of thrift, hardihood, and self- reliance, for the sake of luxury, pleasure, and con- quest. A former generation measured its greatness by the number and efficiency of its establishments for im- proving the health, intelligence, and morals of its mem- bers, or by the ardor with which it desired them ; to-day we weigh guns and count bayonets. Whereas public aspiration was directed towards the making of better citizens and a higher type of citizenship, — such as might be expected from education on a national scale, municipal libraries, application of science to domestic, industrial, and municipal life, emergence of new social principles, recognition of nobler democratic relation- ships, and cession of juster political rights, — effort is now turned chiefly towards provision of heavier 347 348 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR ironclads and bigger armies. The satanic spirit of war has risen to dispute the path of advancing democracy. It is sin, not necessity, which has turned the achieve- ments of modern industrialism into food for powder; for — to put Carlyle’s 1 pointed interrogatory — “Why should they quarrel ? . . . As to foreign peace, really all Europe, now especially with so many railroads, public journals, printed books, penny post, bills of ex- change, and continual intercourse and mutual depend- ence, is more and more becoming (so to speak) one parish ; the parishioners of which being, as we our- selves are, in immense majority peaceable hard-working people, could, if they were moderately well guided, have almost no disposition to quarrel.” Yet once more the spectacle is seen of the right and true wrenched by the wrong and false to their own ends. Yet once more a mocking devil grins at us from the face of the newborn angel. Dem ocra cy is made to fortify despotism, edu- cation to equip the soldier, literature to feed the fight- ing temper, science to invent new engines of slaughter, economics to furnish new arguments and politics to find new opportunities for strife. Imperialism has seduced Democracy : and the monstrous birth is Mili- tarism. It is time to restrict the meaning of certain terms, or to expand the meaning of certain things. It is necessary to examine this portent which recently has — to borrow a figure from Milton — Like a comet burn’d That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war. TO THE CITIZEN 349 When we speak of imperialism we mean patriotism plus pride; not jingoism, which is patriotism plus de- lirium, and which bears the same relation to the first that a tyrant drunk bears to a tyrant sober. The first, which alone admits of discussion amongst sane men, has been defined ; and though there are two varieties — Liberal and Conservative, or, if you please, republican and monarchical — they differ in nothing but name : by their fruits we know them, and their fruits are iden- tical. They have alike ceased to believe in what Mr. Gladstone called “that original sin of nations — greed of territorial aggrandizement,” — not, alas ! in the ag- grandizement, but in the sin of it. Imperialism is, we are told , 2 a formula for interpret- ing the duties of government in relation to empire ; which formula, again, is compounded of four elements, — an emotion of pride, a conviction of duty, a deter- mination to accept every burden, and a creed whose single article is faith in our race. Without the same verbal nicety it has been explained by a competent disciple 3 as the obligation to uphold national interests in every part of the world, even at the cost of annexa- tion and the risk of war ; the only condition being that such actions shall be a manifest gain to empire. We now know where we are. It will be observed that the monster is born in pride, suckled on greed, cradled in war, and apotheosized in more pride ; that, further, the Ten Commandments are not included; nor the “ interests ” of other countries. It is selfishness leaning on arms. It is politics corrupted by strength, citizen- ship demoralized by war. Wherever it goes, at home 350 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR or abroad, the citizen dwindles. And first, see how this happens abroad. The fundamental nature of citizenship is freedom of opinion, speech, action, government ; yet it is precisely upon these that imperialism is trampling in every part of the world. War and magnanimity never go together ; aggression and suppression are twin brothers ; and if we add a third, stupidity, we shall have a perfect trin- ity. The conquering nations — not least the British people — exhibit a blind incapacity to put themselves in the other man’s place and imagine how it looks to him. There is an imperial self-righteousness which can- not comprehend how any nation should demur to impe- rial arrogance, or prefer to die under its own flag rather than live under ours. If a little Republic, like shepherd David, refuses the yoke and challenges imperial Goliath to mortal combat, it will come as an apoplectic shock to Empire, which will find breath at length only in one universal howl of derision and shout of “ Inso- lence!” Desiring to be great in arms rather than in faith and virtue, it will be a thing unpardonable that a coveted country should question the duty or privilege of being swallowed by an imperial race. Extension of commerce is regarded as extension of civilization, increase of territory as increase of law and justice : weaker tribes should accept the whole, and be thank- ful. Two ideas divide the mind, — how to acquire, then how to defend, alien land ; and those who refuse to bow the knee are, if they live in the coveted country, regarded as fools for not seeing the manifest advantages TO THE CITIZEN 351 of absorption, and if in the conquering country, as traitors for opposing expansion by force. So far from being ashamed of their domineering policies, imperial races accept foreign reproach as mere envy of great- ness, wear it as an ornament about their necks, wax proud of their insular pride, and continue to display equal contempt for an enemy’s objection to be plun- dered, for the civilized world’s disapprobation, and for moral protest within their own coasts. They pray every Sunday to be delivered from hardness of heart and con- tempt of God’s commandments; yet go on their impe- rial way in the spirit of that Lucifer who sought to exalt his throne above the stars of God. No spirit ever soared so high on free suffrage ; it is on the necks of slaves, not by the votes of citizens, Lucifer exalts himself. Salvation is rendered more desperate from the fact now hinted : that the penalties exacted by expansionism and inflicted by Providence, — wars, deaths, taxes, debts, — are turned into new food for pride ; that punish- ments which moral beings endure with some sense of shame are by nations accepted as evidences of prow- ess and national spirit : “ They [the Lancers at Om- durman] chafed and stamped and blasphemed to go through them [the Dervishes] again. . . . There were gnashings of teeth and howls of speechless rage — things half theatrical, half brutal to tell of when blood has cooled, yet tilings to rejoice over, in that they show the fighting devil has not, after all, been civilized out of Britons .” 4 Like the pugilist with his bruises they glory in their shame. They take their punishment, not 352 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR with humiliation as the measure of their unfraternity, but with almost religious veneration as their “magnifi- cent sacrifices ” on behalf of empire. In like manner the burglar might refer to his imprisonment, the foot- pad to his penal servitude, or the drunkard to his headache, as his “magnificent sacrifice” on behalf, respectively, of a more equable distribution of pro- perty, manly trial of strength, freedom of will or good- fellowship ; similarly, the tyrant might reasonably claim to be a benefactor because he had put down anarchy, or the anarchist that he had set down tyranny. That blasphemous tendency of imperialism to take the terms proper to religion — the holy word sacrifice , for example, proper only to a victim — and apply them to such politi- cal adventures as sacrifice the innocent and victimize the unoffending is proof that some foul spirit utters its oracles. It is as though the Jewish people were to appropriate the ideas of unselfishness and cross bearing usually associated with the Crucified, and vaunt their downfall and dispersion as “magnificent sacrifices” on behalf of their ancestral land and temple ; or as though the Christian peoples, after their innumerable massacres of innocent Jews, were to boast their blood stains as “ magnificent sacrifices ” on behalf of Jesus. If patriot- ism be love of fatherland, certainly it must include the idea of sacrifice ; but it ought to be sacrifice of territory to conscience, not conscience to territory ; of might to right, not right to might ; of paramountcy to brother- hood, not brotherhood to paramountcy. A race which bears abroad the thunders makes subjects, not citizens; keeps an India under foot for a century, and remains TO THE CITIZEN 353 as resolute as at first to exclude its subjects from the rights and liberties of citizenship. If we are to boast of our sacrifices, let it be our sacrifices on behalf of jus- tice, mercy, humility ; our sufferings for peace’s sake ; our losses for commonwealth ; our willingness to be humbled that the human race may be exalted, to learn, in the words of Mrs. Browning , 5 How to quench a lie With truth, and smite a foe upon the cheek With Christ’s most conquering kiss. Why, these are things Worth a great nation’s finding, to prove weak The “glorious arms ” of military kings. And so with wide embrace, my England, seek To stifle the bad heat and flickerings Of this world’s false and nearly expended fire ! Till nations shall unconsciously aspire By looking up to thee, and learn that good And glory are not different. Announce law By freedom ; exalt chivalry by peace ; Instruct how clear calm eyes can overawe, And how pure hands, stretched simply to release A bond-slave, will not need a sword to draw To be held dreadful. O my England, crease Thy purple with no alien agonies, No struggles toward encroachment, no vile war ! Disband thy captains, change thy victories, Be henceforth prosperous as the angels are, Helping, not humbling. Imperialism is so far moved by the poet’s passionate entreaty as to take goodly words into its mouth even while it takes strong arms in its hand ; and protests that its mission is to carry the blessings of civilization to the barbarous and misgoverned peoples of the earth : 354 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR “ Our purpose is not selfish, it is humanitarian ; it is not the vanity of self-aggrandizement, it is not the greed of power and dominion ; no, no, not these, but altruism caring for the happiness of others, philanthropy reliev- ing [the victims] of oppression, and conferring on them the blessings of liberty.” 6 Never is hypocrisy so proud of itself. In the fond faith that it represents the chosen colonizing people whose law and government are best for all the world it goes forth bullying in the name of liberty, coercing in the name of independence, annex- ing in the name of self-government ; and since it pos- sesses the means of killing those who refuse to acquiesce in these measures, it is able to present the appearance of a very great and successful affair. Flattering itself as peacemaker of the world, it protests that it keeps its right arm strong for good as well as defense, — as if a householder’s opinion that his household was ordered better than his neighbor’s justified him in setting fire to that neighbor’s dwelling, and killing such of the family as refused to conform to his rule; which reason- ing cannot be met better than by the prose words of the poet just quoted, whose Casa Guidi Windows, chief of her poems, would prove, could people but be got to read, best antidote to this virus of bloated im- perialism : “Freedom itself is virtue, as well as privi- lege ; but freedom of the seas does not mean piracy ; nor freedom of the land, brigandage ; nor freedom of the senate, freedom to cudgel a dissident member ; nor freedom of the press, freedom to calumniate and lie.” 7 The end which cannot be secured save by unlawful means is an unlawful end. Lowell’s “ Candidate for TO THE CITIZEN 355 the Presidency ” 8 has indeed propagated the heresy that civilization may get a lift in a powder cart ; but it may also be blown into the air by the thing that carries it ; and since the fallacy was proclaimed by “jest a candidate” who gloried in having no principles, both criticism and history justify us in rejecting it as neither our own nor Lowell’s. War and civilization are contradictory terms. The plea of good government is turned to purposes of vile aggression ; and the pre- tense of advancing the humanities by that which has been described as the negation of all virtues and the sum of all villainies is an hypocrisy gross and palpable as the lies of Falstaff. The pretense was never set forth better than by the imperial Pyrrhus who, amid all his senseless butcheries, professed to be seeking a solid and enduring peace ; nor ever better answered than by the yet wholesome. Roman Senate : “ If Pyrrhus really wishes for the friendship of the Roman people, let him first abdicate their dominions, and then the sincerity of his proposals of peace may gain some credit.” No; citizenship and war can never be harmonized. On the contrary, war destroys the bodies of possible citizens abroad, and demoralizes the souls of actual citizens at home. Perception of that inevitable result of imperial conquest lay behind the magnanimous offer (alas! a vain offer, as it transpired) of an American citizen 9 to pay twenty million dollars to the government of his country, if it would surrender its grip upon a people rightly struggling to be free. The attempt to give imperialism a moral basis has re- sulted, hitherto, only in a more consummate hypocrisy 356 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR — the hypocrisy of the bagman who wants to trade, and a more unspeakable cant — the cant of the mis- sionary who wants to evangelize, in the track of the soldier. The gospel, too, and commerce get a lift in the powder cart. Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s invitation to “take up the white man’s burden” is merely grease to the wheels of the powder cart, a sop to sentiment, an opiate to the missionary conscience. When, further, we are urged 10 to follow up the powder-and-brandy adventurer who, protected by his government, goes forth to prey upon the weaker races, who is generally the most lawless and licentious of our breed , 11 — when the duty of protecting the native races from his depredations is urged upon us, we feel that more glittering dust has been thrown in our eyes. For it is not from purely natural causes that “ the native on first touching civilization invariably loses his own primitive virtues and acquires only civilized vices.” 12 Mr. Kip- ling’s faithful brutalities introduce us to many a realistic personage whose prayer is “ Ship me somewheres east of Suez . . . where there are n’t no Ten Command- ments ,” 13 “whose Decalogue” (to quote the pictur- esque description of a Scottish sheriff ) 14 “ has had the seventh article of it edited and expounded, if results can warrant an inference, by a canonical committee of goats and monkeys.” And is it even distantly the case that the Christian governments follow up the devil spawn they have bred to plague the simple peoples of the Orient, for the purpose of punishing their tres- passes and of supporting the native tribes in upholding so much as the elementary decencies, not to speak of TO THE CITIZEN 357 such things as ethics and law ? Is it not notoriously not so ? Is it not the case that we follow the spoiler to protect him against the outraged moral sense of savages he has debauched, against the indignant public opinion of cannibals to whom he has given points in treachery and murder, against the religious penalties of heathens whose conscience he has revolted by his infamies ? We follow up the trader, true ; yet not to protect his vic- tims, but to protect against their justice the aggressor. And when native peoples revolt because the panoply of empire is flung around the person of the basest of mankind for the reason that he belongs to a white-skin state, and because the empire’s armaments are directed against the victims, to avenge, it may be, their just execution of a miscreant who has violated every law of his own country and every precept of his own religion as well as the ethical and religious principles of the very barbarians he has outraged, then their honorable resistance is made a pretext for annexing their territory and killing all who oppose. In too many instances of colonial expansion “we find the typical transactions: betrayals of many natives and merciless sacrifice of their lives ; eventual retaliation by the natives to a small extent ; a consequent charge against the natives of atrocious murder ; and, finally, a massacre of them, innocent and guilty together.” 15 To describe this process as “taking up the white man’s burden” is the most odious and shameful cant. It rs another crushing proof that military civilizations are a curse to citizens, a blight upon citizenship, a mockery of every civic ideal. 358 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR If the author of “The White Man’s Burden” gives us the poetry of imperialism, billowed, for obvious reasons, on a falsetto ditty, he has also given us its prose, ex- pressed very properly in sententious proverb : “ Mr. . . . does not need morality : he is building an empire.” This is, in fact, the body of the thing ; the rest is fringe. This is the whole truth, from one who knows. Morality is a hindrance and an irritation to empire builders. Their conscience is the conscience of a steam roller. But the steam roller must be greased ; and the “unctu- ous ” matter is supplied by “ The White Man’s Burden.” If we must be imperialists, let us not be pharisees. Let us confess that our aim is glory, not cross bearing ; conquest, not civilization ; subjugation, not citizenship. If we must be imperial expansionists, let us not be liars. Let imperialism not be ashamed of its parentage, lust of dominion mingling with lust of gold. The militarism which blights the world is due to a feverish race for em- pire, and chiefly to Britain’s resolve to be supreme upon land as formerly on sea. As with private so with public estates ; the land is getting into fewer and fewer hands, with increasing omens of disaster in both cases. Russia, Germany, France, America, Great Britain, are rapidly becoming the landlords of the world ; and though the latter’s possessions amount to nearly one third of the entire land surface of the globe, a besotted imperial- ism constantly urges her to maintain her equilibrium by buttressing with new territory her already top-heavy ac- cumulations. The very language — buttressing and top- heavy — suggests an empire drunk ; and drunkenness TO THE CITIZEN 359 never went well with citizenship. On the contrary, imperialism has in our own day led to a ferocious war against a race of burghers, for no other reason than that they promised to distance an imperial race in the peace- ful rivalries of the family and the moral conflicts of the ballot box, and stands completely unveiled as a move- ment towards disfranchisement. Imperial ambition begins by vanquishing civic conscience at home, pro- ceeds to suppress civic rights abroad, and then returns to “plague th’ inventor ” by abolishing civic liberties in the home land. Love of right disappears amid exhila- rations of victory ; the nation which started out with fine ideas of its civilizing mission ends just like any other vulgar bandit, and fills its mouth with cant as a salve to the aching void left in its breast by the dead conscience. Endeavoring to absorb and transform the world to its type of civilization, it finds it cannot per- form the task of assimilation, thus failing in the work of citizenship ; yet declines to disgorge the prey, thus sinking into the vulgar conqueror ; and ends by fulfilling the prophecy of the imperialist Bonaparte, that “ empires generally die of indigestion through swal- lowing too much territory.” Appetite outruns capacity. The covetous eye is bigger than the digestive organ. Repletion leads to death. The downfall of the last op- ponent of imperial advance is preliminary to the down- fall of the imperial conscience, and this to the downfall of the empire. The penetrating words of Dr. Kuyper 16 are completely accurate : “Yes, this imperialism is an obsession. It worms itself into the heart of the nation from the moment 360 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR that the last opponent that troubles it bends under its blows, thus opening every land road to the eagles of its army, as formerly for Rome, and every sea route to the flag of its fleet, as for England after Trafalgar. So long as the last opponent continues to resist, he will always be, in spite of you, the ally of your conscience, which, by the forces at its command, constrains you to respect for right. But once the last rival is brought to his knees, your love of right remains alone, and must, without any external support, suffice for itself. If then, at this psychological moment, the conscience of the nation betrays itself, the danger is that it will pre- cipitate itself from the highest idealism into the most vulgar cynicism. Stronger by land or by sea than any other nation, and even than all other nations combined, its unlimited power unconsciously suggests to it the dream of universal power ; and the history of Tyre may be repeated.” Further, an alarmed moral sense sees much to justify its fears in the fact that the chief national treaties and alliances spring more from fear than love, more from selfishness than neighborliness, and are advocated rather as means of stronger defense than steps towards universal peace. Anglo-Saxon federation — to take a supreme instance — is commonly preached in such a way as to provoke selfishness in Anglo-Saxons and jealousy in the rest of mankind ; as an assertion of race superiority which might pass as only another ex- ample of insular ignorance : but finally appears as an attempt at race supremacy which must, at some point, be disputed to the death. Never is that desirable TO THE CITIZEN 361 federation more immoral or illusive than when it is preached as an apostolate of peace by force, as a method of keeping the peace of the world by overwhelming armaments — as if the Anglo-Saxon race could be trusted with omnipotence, or Prometheus had died out from the hearts of the other races. Never ! “A. proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, are an abomination to the Lord ” ; and also to man, if only as a stimulus to jealousy and revenge. Empire is a luxury which can be maintained only at great cost, and one of the items in the bill is the con- fidence of the sister nations, who pay their dues to imperial greatness in the shape of secret enmity, rising at set times into open conflict. When an assertion of paramountcy becomes intolerable the remonstrances of the civilized world culminate in force, and in that Sheol which is not only for wicked persons but for “ all the nations which forget God.” Warlike experiments in city building have been made from the beginning of time, and with similar results. Citizens made by the sword become rebels on the first opportunity. Citizen- ship that rests on conquest is an anxiety while it lasts, and in the end destruction. An old-world preacher shall pronounce its doom : “ The stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a city by iniquity ! ” As the fascinations of empire do not exhaust them- selves with the racial idea, but bewitch the individual also, so with its destructions. Every member of an imperial race feels himself exalted in the supremacy of 362 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR his country, appropriates its triumphs, pours out taxes as soldiers pour out blood, and is repaid in the proud thought that he is a member of a chosen people. For this he barters his citizenship. The little mind grows big by feeding on thoughts of empire. The empty mind rolls’ them round and round till it inflates with windy vanity. The dullard mind absorbs them and grows drunk. Little persons perch themselves like sparrows upon the highest circle of “ our vast empire ” and crow like masters of all the earth. The weakling and the coward know that the blood of a dominant race is in their veins, and become insufferable with self-import- ance. New continents bring new conceits, in the intoxi- cation of which much sin is remorselessly committed and much suffering cheerfully endured. If suffering shall not be permitted to interfere with imperial advance, why should sin ? Nay ; they even dream that pain and loss is the measure of their sincerity, and atones for their sin. They are willing to pay away their civil liberties for the luxury of destroying those of other peoples. The destructive influence of empire upon citizenship abroad runs parallel with that which obtains at home. As militarism advances citizenship necessarily declines. Organs of public opinion speak with “ whispered hum- bleness ” in presence of the military autocrat: “It is painful to us to differ from the [commander-in-chief], and seems almost sacrilegious on a military question.” 17 The soldier slays the citizen even when he spares the man. The soldier is the personal equivalent of empire ; the citizen, of commonwealth ; and as it is empire against TO THE CITIZEN 363 commonwealth, so it is fighter against voter, bayonet against ballot, the world over. Democracy need be under no delusion ; militarism is its natural foe, whose one aim is to prevent its reaching its goal of equal rights and opportunities. Militarism is everywhere hostile to citizenship : the soldier stands everywhere as a rampart between Privilege and the rights of the common man . 18 “These enormous standing armies . . . are indispen- sable at home to repress the discontent caused in a great degree by the burden which their own cost imposes on the people .” 19 The propertied classes, dominated by financial magnates, quickened by their accession in vast numbers to the position of share- holders, alarmed by the boldness of the social claim, desire a powerful army as much to defend their pos- sessions at home as to extend them abroad. Germany’s Social Democrats 20 went to the root of the matter when they declared their opinion that ruinous arma- ments were a “ product of the avarice and lust of con- quest and mastery among the ruling classes,” and that peace could never arrive “ so long as standing armies admittedly serve as implements for the subjugation of nations and the maintenance of the authority of a class.” This is the only note that shakes the mind of the military ruler. Criticisms, even denunciations, he does not mind ; the only thing he fears is a clear per- ception on the part of the common people of the true end and object of standing armies, and so he hastens to counteract the liberty-bringing utterances of enlight- ened reformers by obscurantist appeals to imperial pride : “I do not care whether they denounce the 364 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR government ; but do not let them attempt to dissuade the people from bearing such taxation and bearing such burden as may be necessary to carry on the duties of empire .” 21 The result was recently presented in a great object lesson by France, whose army placed itself in daring opposition to the civil powers, and all but throttled the commonwealth. The army, — the honor of the army, the prestige of the army, the national position of the army, — was set over against the state, — the sacredness of civil authority, the suprem- acy of the civil powers, — and, but for the Cato-like resolution of a few heroic citizens, would have erected itself into a military tyranny. The specter that almost suffocated France begins to be outlined on the horizon of every country that declares for empire. The French upon whom the tower of their military Siloam fell were not sinners above all that dwelt in Europe and America. Except we repent we shall all likewise perish. Empire gives the soldier his opportunity by making him increasingly necessary and by throwing upon him a number of duties ordinarily performed by civilians. Generals in the field assume the functions of civil gov- ernors, depose native rulers and substitute creatures of their own, suppress newspapers and establish orgarts inspired by their own ideas , 22 govern a civil community by military proclamation , 23 compel civilians to become combatants in complete submission to martial rule , 24 thus introducing conscription 25 and the press gang without sanction of law and displaying every attribute of tyranny on plea of military necessity. Conscription TO THE CITIZEN 36s begins informally, under pressure, at the instance of a commander, and ends by becoming the settled policy of a nation, enforced by parliament, acquiesced in by all. Conscription is the inevitable goal of an imperialist policy, the definite aim of military parties, and implies the direct opposite of all civic ideals. Those who sup- port empire as against commonwealth make it their business to prepare their country for a system which merges citizen in soldier : devising schemes of military drill for schools, forming cadet corps amongst past and present scholars, multiplying boys’ brigades amongst the churches, getting higher pay for militia and increased facilities for volunteers, yeomanry, sharpshooters, — drilling, inspecting, perorating; by which means the public mind is indoctrinated with the ideas and seduced by the glamour of militarism, taught how glorious it is to lay the flower of a nation’s youth upon the altar of Moloch, and persuaded to make the grand sacrifice on behalf of empire. The matter has now come to the push, requiring nothing but a serious threat of inva- sion to precipitate it. Partly by force of circumstances, partly through skillful engineering, we are now called upon either to accept conscription or to abandon imperialism. They cannot longer be kept apart. We must presently choose between remaining citizens and becoming soldiers. A clever inversion of the process by which the school is being turned into a rudimentary army has been pro- posed , 26 according to which an imperialist people might rather turn its army into a school : school becoming an 366 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR appendage and outgrowth of army, rather than army being dependent on school ; army being basis of school, not school of army ; the three R’s being grafted upon drill, instead of drill upon the three R’s ; technical training and discipline of character being superadded to instruction in the science of slaughter. The idea appears to be to rescue the army from opprobrium as a mere fighting instrument, make it presentable as a school of industrial art, and thus commend it to a nation not yet wholly reconciled to the notion of pure militarism. The drill sergeant is to supplement, if not supplant, the schoolmaster ; the recruit is to be turned into an artisan as well as a warrior : the net result being that while it would be found impossible to turn the army into a school or a workshop, it would be too easy to turn the school into an army, every college into a barrack, and every university into an officers’ mess. This suggestion, like every other of the kind, overlooks that personal and social demoralization which accom- panies military systems in every conscript country. It is vain to think of having conscription without civic degradation. Fire cannot be had without burning, sewer gas without fever, poison without death. Just in pro- portion as a military basis is given to society national I character is switched on to lower lines, — materialism in morals, paganism in religion, and unconstitutional- ism in politics. If we ask what it is that excites this lust for a mili- tary type of character, we shall find the answer in society’s weariness of the slow returns of agriculture TO THE CITIZEN 367 and industry — and, therefore, of civic arts and models, of the laboring type of character — and society’s desire for those swift returns of conquest which add whole provinces, with their trade and territories, to the empire in a single day, without the dull and prosaic necessities of working and paying. Imperial races become sated with luxury, crave the excitements of war and the stim- ulants of conquest, and welcome the transformation of their homely workers into gay soldiery. But is it not more important to teach men to work than to kill ? And if we were to train for labor as systematically as we train for battle, — to instruct in the hammer as well as we do in the bayonet, in the spade as thoroughly as in the cannon, in the plow as carefully as in the rifle, — would not the laborer pre- sent to the world a front as cheerful and alert ? Rus- kin , 27 as ever, has shown the way : “ Men are enlisted for the labor that kills — the labor of war : they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Let them be enlisted also for the labor that feeds : let them be counted, trained, fed, dressed, praised for that.” Would it be an extravagant thing to demand that our men, instead of serving the state in arms, should serve it in the arts that preserve and develop human good ? Instead of press-ganging our youth for the bloody ends of battle, let them be allured into the holy cause of agricultural and industrial development. Let every young man be invited to yield a portion of his life for the cultivation of public lands, making of public roads and harbors, erection of public buildings, abolition 368 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR of public nuisances, reclaiming waste lands, draining bogs, trenching moors, demolishing slums. Let our young men refuse to be the slaves of governors, but offer to become the servants of society. Let them decline to be trained for the purpose of killing their brothers, but demand to be educated in order to make their brothers live with a life more abounding. Let them make it plain that they do not desire their duty to the community to be remitted, but only that it be made harmonious with the ends of humanity ; that they will serve their country for good, but no longer for evil, as their contribution towards the service of uni- versal man. As a step towards this glorious servitude to humanity, it may be found necessary to resist the encroachments of militarism by the means adopted by the Quakers of the seventeenth century and the Russian Doukho- bortsi of our own, — by submission to fines, imprison- ments, and, in the last resort, death. Even in that Anglo-Saxondom which has boasted of its freedom men may yet be driven to bind themselves in a solemn league and covenant against the rendering of military service or payment of military taxes — and to take the consequences. The culmination of militarism in con- scription makes compromise impossible, forces every citizen to make choice between the Prince of Peace and Imperial Baal. The question will soon cease to be one of expediency and will become one of principle ; for the adoption of compulsory service is a definite repudiation of spiritual nature, a deliberate return to pagan ideals — at a time, too, when arbitration is the TO THE CITIZEN 369 easy alternative. As soon as the mark of the false prophet is visibly inscribed on the forehead of de- veloped men and free citizens, it is time for them to stand together and resist “ even unto blood ” — their own blood, not the blood of their persecutors. That they may not become murderers, they must be ready to be made martyrs. That state which has ceased to foster citizenship has renounced every claim to the allegiance of citizens. Men who regulate their civic as well as private life on moral principle can be under no obligation to support a government which deliberately renounces morals, bas- ing itself on force ; which spends on education and culture only a fraction of what it spends on war and murder ; which everywhere elevates the materialistic above the ethical and the civic ; which puts military regulations over the Ten Commandments, and the Ad- ministration above God. Passive resistance, even to the point of martyrdom, will then become the duty of all good men. There can then be no question of uphold- ing the cause of a country which, in violating the rights of other countries, has abolished her own ; which, in crushing the freedom of other citizens, has absolved her own from fealty. Public wrongs call for repudia- tion equally with private wrongs and for similar refusal to share the spoil. A good man can neither fight nor pay to maintain the “ honor ” of a nation which has become systematically dishonorable, or to promote the glory of a nation whose glory has become her shame. Citizenship is what distinguishes civilization from bar- barism ; and he who would not consort with savages 370 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR must dissociate himself from those national adventures whose object is to destroy foreign citizens while weak- ening democracy in the home land. Good men will find the price of empire greater than they care to pay ; not so much in men or money, — for other men are born and money is mere dust on the scale, — but in conscience, justice, mercy, refinement, freedom. When in the name of empire they are com- pelled to kill men and break the hearts of women, devas- tate whole quarters of the globe, lie, and break all the Commandments, they will say that empire is too dear at the price. The good man cannot accept it on those terms. Unless he can be its free servant, not its armed slave, he takes no pride in it, feels no joy, sees no glory, incurs no obligation, longs only to flee from it, saying with the poet Cowper : I could endure Chains nowhere patiently, and chains at home, Where I am free by birthright, not at all. When that point is reached by any number of its citizens, it is time for a country to pause, think, re- trace its steps, and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon it. Truly, when its cost in humanity, ethics, citizenship, international good will is counted, this golden image of imperialism set up for the worship of the modern nations is found too dear. Not only does it divert a gov- ernment from its proper ends, but it substitutes a set of ideals which can terminate only in fearful disaster. It opens a devouring maw which swallows up every new source of revenue whether in land or trade. It TO THE CITIZEN 371 makes feverish efforts to restore by foreign conquest what it loses by domestic neglect, thus weakening both the limbs and the heart of a people and hurrying it to that doom which awaits every tyrant. Herein is justified the prophecy of a great democrat, — “Europe will perish at the hands of its warriors.” Yes, and the words of a greater democrat than Montesquieu may not unfitly be paraphrased : “ Therefore whatsoever commonwealth heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken it unto a wise citizen, who built his citizenship upon the rock of international brotherhood. And the rain of foreign war descended, and the floods of domestic discontent came, and the winds of commercial adversity blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell not : for it was founded upon a rock. And every empire that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish citizen, who built his house upon the sand of militant imperialism. And the rain of foreign resistance descended, and the floods of domestic discord came, and the winds of colonial sepa- ration blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell : and great was the fall of it.” REFERENCES 1. The New Downing Street. The entire pamphlet a wonder- ful exposition of the fact that the true British policy is peace. 2. J. Lawson Walton, Q.C., M.P., Contemporary Review , March, 1899. 3. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, M.P., quoting Mr. Dicey, November 24, 1899. 4. G. W. Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartoum. 5. Casa Guidi Windows, Pt. I, line 702. 372 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 6. Mr. Schurman, New Age , August 28, 1902. 7. Preface to Poems before Congress. 8. The Biglow Papers, No. VII. 9. Mr. Andrew Carnegie. 10. Mr. W. T. Stead, War against War , p. 84. 11. Lord Rosmead, ibid (see References, Chap. VIII, Note 14). 12. Aborigines' Friend , August, 1904. 13. Barrack Room Ballads, “Mandalay.” 14. Sheriff J. Campbell Smith, Dundee. 15. Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology, p. 212. 16. The South African Crisis. 17. Spectator. 18. Militarism Hostile to Citizenship (Manchester Guardian, October 22, 1904): FIGHTING THE REVOLUTION {From a C orrespondenf) The following report which was recently addressed in the form of a confidential document to the commander of a division of the Russian army is of value as showing the extent to which the military authorities have become alarmed by the growth of revolutionary propaganda amongst the troops. The document is numbered “ 1 1 5, On Service,” and is dated August 11 (24), from the camp at Syrts, in the south of Russia: To the Commander of the Thirty-Third Infantry Division-. I hereby report that in order to remove the possibility of illegal and seditious proclamations, books, and pamphlets finding their way into the midst of the privates of my regiment I have adopted the following measures : I. — General 1. The commanders of companies have been requested (a) To acquaint themselves, by questioning every private and push- ing the inquiry as far as possible into details, with the life of the privates before their entry into service, with their condition, — that is, as regards family, property, and social status, — -and to gain an accurate knowledge of all changes in their mode of life that may have taken place since their entry into service. (i 5 ) To find out precisely with whom the privates correspond (the contents of correspondence) and what private persons they visit when TO THE CITIZEN 373 they are on leave; such private persons must, moreover, apply in person to the commander of the company for leave for a private to visit them. (c) To collect information with regard to the political trustworthi- ness of those persons whom privates visit when on leave, and in the event of the discovery of suspicious circumstances to refuse leave of absence. ( d ) To watch whether the privates actually visit those persons who have received permission to receive visits from them. 2. Commanders of companies are to conduct conversations with the privates on the significance of the soldier as a servant of the Tsar, on the obligation resting upon him to fulfill this lofty vocation, on our ene- mies at home and their seditious and destructive activities, and on the fulfillment of the duty of service, the oath of loyalty to the Tsar, — all these subjects to be illustrated by examples. The conversations shall be conducted not less than twice a month. 3. The regimental chaplain shall initiate on an extensive scale con- versations on the duty of the soldier as a Christian in relation to the Tsar, Church, and country. These conversations shall be conducted at such intervals as may be deemed advisable by the regimental authorities. 4. Arrangements shall be made for the performance by the soldiers of plays of an instructive nature on days of leisure (Christmas and Easter festivals). 3. In every company the practice shall be established of singing in chorus songs exalting the greatness of the Tsar, the fatherland, and the work of a Russian soldier (a choirmaster will be engaged by the regi- ment). 6. The admission of visitors shall be so restricted as to extend only to persons closely related to the privates (father, mother, sister, uncle, aunt), and the visits shall take place not in the company’s quarters but in the dining or tea rooms. Visitors shall be admitted only with the permission of the commander of the company, or, in his absence, that of the officer on duty or his assistant. 7. All privates upon their return from leave are to be closely searched. 8. [Outsiders ?] are not to be admitted into the courtyard of the bar- rack or into the barrack itself. 9. The families of the privates who live in barracks are to receive from the commanding officer tickets giving them fhe right of entry. 10. No member of the families of privates living in barracks shall be admitted after the beating of the evening drum. 11. There shall be stationed in the courtyards and at the entrances to the staircases of those barracks which have courtyards accessible to private individuals special guards whose duty it shall be to see that any private individuals who may pass through the courtyards shall not throw about papers of any kind. Every person who does throw about such 374 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR papers shall be arrested and brought before the officer on duty or his assistant, in order that the contents of the paper may be determined, and in the event of these proving to consist of a proclamation the per- son arrested shall, upon the order of the officer on duty or his assistant, be conducted to the police. 12. Not less than twice a month a general inspection of barracks, clothing, and beds shall be made without warning; partial inspections of a similar kind may be made at hazard daily. 1 3. Leave of absence shall be granted only with the permission of the commander of the company. II. — Partial Measures In Barracks (а) In the barracks of the regimental staff the gate leading from the street shall be locked with a key, and only such private individuals shall be admitted as are furnished with the written permission of the regimental officer on duty. ( б ) Arrangements shall be made with the Municipal Executive for building material to be brought in by the back courtyard behind the fence stables. (The workmen will be furnished by the regiment.) (c) There shall be posted in the back courtyard a sentinel, whose duty it shall be to see that no private individuals climb into the court- yard and throw papers about. hi Goldfarb' s House (a) A fence shall be built on the garden side. ( 6 ) The window of the tea room opening into the garden shall be blocked up. ( c ) The gate is to be kept locked. In the Camps Under the measures enumerated in Regulations 1, 2, 6, 7, 12, 13, the following measures have also been taken : 1. The admission of visitors to the tents is forbidden. Visits take place in the living rooms. 2. No visitor or traveler is allowed to walk about among the tents. 3. The work of watching the movements of private persons who walk along the officers’ line has been intrusted to two sentinels, whose duties are indicated ia Regulation n. 4. The approach of cab drivers to the front line has been forbidden, and civilians have been forbidden to walk there. 5. Next year walking along the officers’ line will be forbidden, and will be permitted only along the back way. Colonel Kryloff, Commander of the Regiment. Lieutenant Karsintsky, Regimental Aide-de-Camp. TO THE CITIZEN 375 19. Richard Cobden, Political Writings , Vol. II, p. 349 (ed. I9°3)- 20. Vorwdrts , February, 1899. 21. Mr. Goschen, M.P., First Lord of the Admiralty, March, 1899. 22. How Militarism edits the Newspapers: (a) Methods of Barbarism, p. 67. Stringent measures are used to prevent the transmission of letters which are calculated to throw any light upon the deeds of darkness which were being perpetrated at the seat of war. The story of the way in which information has been smuggled across the frontier recalls the worst days of reactionary Europe. Letters are carried in the soles of boots ; they are secreted in all imaginable receptacles; private soldiers have been warned that it would be better for them not to write any letters at all ; war correspondents have been banished, excepting those favored indi- viduals who can be guaranteed to act as the convenient conduit pipes for official information. To such lengths have the authorities gone that travelers on entering or leaving the Transvaal have been given the option of leaving their boots behind them or allowing the soles to be cut open in order that the authorities might be satisfied that no secret missive was being carried from the African inferno to the outside world. (b) What is now being done in South Africa. All newspaper telegrams from the seat of war have to pass the cen- sorship of British officers, who often appear to think that their chief duty as censors is to prevent any intelligence reaching the British pub- lic. Correspondents who tell the truth frankly find endless obstacles placed in their way. (c) New Age , May 9, 1901. In view of the vindictive and monstrous sentences passed on the editors of newspapers in South Africa, and the suppression of all news from the Cape, it is as well that the public should know how Dutch women and children are being treated. Every letter from the Orange Free State and Transvaal has to pass through the censor’s hands, and is liable to be burnt by “ a set of insufferable cads,” as one correspond- ent describes them. It has happened that owners of letters from Eng- land see part of the contents in one of the government newspapers before they receive their mutilated letter. It is a penal offense to send any letter by private hands. The letters detailing the sufferings of the 3/6 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR women and children have to be taken by hand from up country to Cape Town, and given to some friend on board the mail steamers. Foreign steamers are the safest. (d ) Loyal Traitors , p. 255. On the 17th of July, 1899, the staff correspondents of American newspapers stationed in Manila stated unitedly in public protest : “ The censorship has compelled us to participate in this misrepresentation by excising or altering uncontroverted statements of fact, on the plea, as General Otis stated, that ‘ they would alarm the people at home,’ or ‘have the people of the United States by the ears.’ ” 23. Government by Military Proclamation. — Testi- monies : (a) An officer in the field. Others of the better class, wives of rich farmers, had money, and left Pretoria, confident of living without serious privation till their husbands or fathers returned ; but they had yet to count with the military gov- ernor of Pretoria, and yet another stroke of misfortune awaited them. An order was issued forbidding them to leave their farms without passes, and passes to Pretoria for food were strictly prohibited. Evidently it is intended to force the men to surrender by starving the women. ( b ) What is noiv being done in South Africa. 1. The principal residents of the towns and districts are to be held jointly and severally responsible for the amount of damage done in their district. 2. Heavy fines are to be inflicted, and the receipts for all goods taken by the troops to be cancelled. 3. The principal residents may be forced to travel on the trains. 4. The houses and farms in the vicinity of the places where the damage is done are to be destroyed, and the residents in the neighborhood dealt with according to martial law. (c) Exact text of a proclamation. NOTICE All male adults in the township of Cradock are hereby ordered to attend in the Market Square to-morrow morning at a quarter to eleven to witness the promulgation of the sentence of death to be passed on Johannes Petrus Coetzee for high treason and attempt to murder. TO THE CITIZEN 377 All places of business must be closed from half-past ten till after the promulgation of the sentence. C. C. Wiseman Clarke, Major, , T , „ Commandant Cradock District. Thursday, July n, 1901. 24. Tyranny of Martial Law. — Testimonies: (a) Martial Law Blue Book, pp. 46, 78, 54. Martial Law is not a Law, in the proper sense of the term, at all. . . . For the most part, what is done under Martial Law is illegal. . . . Martial Law is the will of the conqueror. ( 5 ) “ A British Officer who administered it,” Manchester Guardian , August 5, 1902. “The pretty and humane instructions appearing in the body of the work were not given ” to the officers, but, on the contrary, they were “ encouraged through the orders and advice received to act severely rather than leniently.” (c) Committee on South African Distress Fund, April, 1903. U nder this law, “ Any one who speaks seditious words,” which includes, “To bring the Governor into contempt,” “To raise discontent and dis- affection,” is liable to five years’ hard labor and to be deported. (d) Miss Hobhouse, Contemporary Review, October, 1901. The present method of keeping them [captive women] in semi-disgrace till they acknowledge their husbands and sons to be rebels is futile, and it is worse. A recent telegram from the Orange River Colony stated that strict methods were going to be taken to put down seditious language in the Camps. What does that amount to ? It means that women cannot talk together of the prowess of their men, or express amongst each other hopes for their success, but some spy (and the Camp is full of such) reports their natural utterances, and punishment is enforced. 25. Press Gang by Proclamation : Testimony of Johannesbzirg Gazette, December 18, 1900, quot- ing Military Proclamation No. 14. Calling upon all British subjects, irrespective of age, to be formed into a force known as the “ Rand Rifles,” not, mind you, simply for the 378 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR protection of the town, but for active military service, at the discretion of the military governor. On a careful perusal of the twenty clauses of this proclamation (to which every Britisher, unless physically incapacitated, has to put his name), you will see that after signing this document we are bound down to whatever the authorities may consider military exigencies, and, according to clause 12, can be called out for active service whenever the military governor deems fit, when we then come under the Army Act the same as any soldier of the line. 26. Sidney Low, Nineteenth Century , London, September, 1899. 27. The Crown of Wild Olive , paragraph 38. XI THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE PATRIOT We are inhabitants of two worlds, and owe a double, but not a divided allegiance. In virtue of our clay, this little ball of earth exacts a certain loyalty of us, while, in our capacity as spirits, we are admitted citizens of an invisible and holier fatherland. There is a patriotism of the soul whose claim absolves us from our other and terrene fealty. Our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terrestrial organizations are but far-off approaches to so fair a model, and all they are verily traitors who resist not any attempt to divert them from their original intend- ment. When, therefore, one would have us to fling up our caps and shout with the multitude, “ Our country , however bounded ! ” he demands of us that we sacrifice the larger to the less, the higher to the lower, and that we yield to the imaginary claims of a few acres of soil our duty and privilege as liegemen of Truth. Our true country is bounded on the north and the south, on the east and the west, by Justice, and when she oversteps that invisible boundary line by so much as a hair’s breadth, she ceases to be our mother, and chooses rather to be looked upon quasi noverca. That is a hard choice, when our earthly love of country calls upon us to tread one path and our duty points us to another. We must make as noble and becoming an election as did Penelope between Icarius and Ulysses. Veiling our faces, we must take silently the hand of Duty to follow her. — Lowell. XI THE MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR TO THE PATRIOT When King Joash bent over the couch of dying Elisha wailing out his grief in the pathetic and im- pressive words, “ My father, my father ! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!” he recognized the truth that its good men are a nation’s best defense, the prophetic spirits who keep it in paths of righteous- ness truer protectors than its panoplied hosts. Pure religion may, in the end, be found pure statesmanship. To risk life on the battlefield is not the only form of patriotism ; may not be that bespattered thing at all, but only adventure, excitement, pugilism, mercenari- ness, social outlawry, moral cowardice, or other squalid impulse. Mazzini was at least as good a patriot as Garibaldi ; Garrison, as Grant ; Whittier, as Lincoln ; Gladstone, as Gordon. Just as religious speech has frequently held it easier to die for God than to live for Him; or for Christ, or Buddha, or Humanity; so it may be held more difficult to live nobly and unselfishly for one’s country than to die for it on foughten field, more sacrificial to preserve it from aggression and un- holy strife than to run with its multitudes to shed inno- cent blood. History is rich in types of patriotism which consisted in resisting the immediate and narrow policy of a sect for the sake of some greater and wider good, 382 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR — more anxious to remove domestic sins than to fight foreign sinners ; nay, if things came to the worst, deliberately chose to die by the hands of countrymen rather than live to support their ignoble policies, — like Mrs. Browning’s Riego : And he who lived the Patriot’s life, Was dragged to die the traitor’s death! The martyr is nobler than the murderer, the reformer than the fighter. Judged even by the brute standard, it requires more courage to face the clamor of one’s neighbors than the cannon of an enemy ; yet so irra- tional still is man that the citizen who does the former will be deemed a coward and a traitor, while he who does the second will be esteemed a patriot, though but diplomatic and a courtier or stupid and a clodhopper. It is the higher character which makes its slow appeal to reason and moral sense ; the lower which smites hastily with the sword. The smaller mind must have quick returns, rapid strokes, dramatic effects ; the larger can be patient, take long ways round, wait de- velopments of conviction and character, — looks more to the printing press than to the Gatling gun and would rather write a book than fire a shot, believing that “Gutenberg’s gun has the longest range.” War, as the instrument of empire, accompanies ag- gression abroad with persecution at home, and sets in motion a multitude of influences to terrorize and silence those who desire to see their country greatly good, — who resist domestic wrong for the sake of foreign right. TO THE PATRIOT 383 John Stuart Mill thought that even when the world was unanimous and right, dissentients might still have something to say by which truth would be gainer ; but the war system demands that dissent be crushed and free speech suppressed, promulgates a decree that every citizen must support the government, right or wrong, and sanctions the penalties of popular fury, organized injustice, and even future torment 1 against those who refuse to sacrifice their convictions to expe- diency. It is better for the righteous that their blood should flow by the hands of war-frenzied mobs, egged on by the Iagos 2 of press, parliament, and army, than that they should give conscience into the keeping of the legislature and incur the damage of war to their own moral nature ; for, says Thoreau, “ is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded ? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immor- tality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death.” War demoralizes the common patriot by teaching him to rely on passion rather than justice, on force rather than reason ; and by encouraging him to put interest above honor, glory above righteousness, and territorial aggrandizement above human fraternity. It creates a shouting provocativeness, — the frothy patriotism of Shimei who curses loud and long, the nagging patri- otism of Gashmu who plots and dogmatizes ; as distin- guished from a silent devotion, — the strong patriotism of Saul who holds his peace, the purposeful patriot- ism of Nehemiah who goes quietly about to build the wall. War is responsible for the pirate patriot whose fool eyes are in the ends of the earth, who neglects 3 8 4 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR his own garden in order to annex his neighbor’s vineyard, who is so dissatisfied with his own land that he is ever on the watch to thieve another’s, and who reaches the acme of wrong by persecuting any kinsman who loves his land so well that he is content to abide peaceably within its borders. It is the pirate patriot who preaches the absolute duty of seeking the interests of one’s coun- try even at the expense of others, and the imperative necessity of discarding the principles of justice and magnaminity ; and who thereby brings a fair word into such disrepute that good men are sometimes almost tempted to expunge it from their vocabulary. Every good man bears it as a mark of his very goodness that he is willing to admit himself at fault, to apologize for and repair an error of conduct as far as possible ; and even in the very midst of a quarrel or a lawsuit he is con- sidered magnanimous who can cry “halt,” confessing his own fault or forgiving that of his opponent. It is only when we come to the international sphere that a weigh- ing of evidence is counted unpatriotic, a confession of wrong cowardly, and judgment for the other side treason. No sooner has patriotism reached this stage than it becomes dishonor, and every good man is absolved from political allegiance by virtue of his fealty to the higher standard of humanity which teaches the duty of loving neighbors equally with self, and enemies equally with neighbors. Even if payment of Caesar’s taxes be per- mitted, it is imperative that conscience, intelligence, faith, truth, and such higher things be rendered to God alone. Loyalty to conscience takes precedence of loyalty to country . 3 Fighting patriotism, however, demands TO THE PATRIOT 385 God’s portion as well as Caesar’s, promulgates the im- moral and antihuman doctrine that it is traitorous to express difference of opinion from a belligerent govern- ment, and sets itself up as a fetich to be worshiped by men of low intellectual development, or an hypocrisy to be cunningly assumed by men of low morale for the sake of gain. It demands that when war still looms through the mists of diplomacy, no word of dissent shall be spoken lest it should hinder a favorable settlement ; nor after war has broken out, lest it should encourage the enemy ; nor till all is over, and it is too late to save the victim ; and it resents with inconceivable ferocity any utterance of sentiments which might impair the prestige of its murderous designs . 4 At such times freedom of opinion and of speech come to an end, or have to be asserted in the teeth of “ clenched antago- nisms.” A new Test Act is imposed by the Iagos of the printing offices, and enforced by Bill Sikes at the head of rowdy mobs. The right of public meeting is abolished by mob law. Municipal authorities forbid the holding of peace meetings even in the open-air forum of their city. Town halls are closed against whole groups of citizens. Even the temples dedicated to the service of the Prince of Peace will not, or dare not, open their doors to the messenger of peace. Public halls either cannot be hired at all for the deliverance of opinions contrary to the war policy, or only after extravagant guarantees against damage that may be inflicted by infuriated “patriots” ; and the doors have to be manned and fortified by those who desire merely to show reason for dissenting from the policy of the day . 5 Friends of 386 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR peace who are not prepared to fight literally for their liberties are driven to meet in private houses and secret conventicles, like Christians under the Empire. Assaults on private persons and houses keep pace with attacks on public meetings. Nor do the authorities extend protection to such citizens, but only a formal and ineffective show of protecting the person while ostentatiously refraining from preserving those liber- ties which are dearer than life. Murderous onslaughts upon peaceable persons and gatherings are palliated by the press, winked at by the police, waived aside in par- liament. Intoxicated ruffians who drink themselves drunk with beer, shout themselves hoarse with war songs, and furiously assault peaceful citizens, wake up in various police cells to be carried before “ patriotic ” magistrates, patted benignly on the back, and dis- missed with encomiums cunningly worded to sound like cautions. The man who declines to go with the war of the day is counted unworthy of citizenship and is reckoned both a social leper and a political pariah . 6 Thus does war advance us along the path of slavery, — slavery for the sake of empire. “ My country right or wrong ” is only an enlarged version of “ my business right or wrong,” a maxim which would damn a pedler, and cannot glorify a patriot. To say that a citizen be- cause a certain land has borne and nourished him is on that account bound to indorse all its quarrels is as immoral as to say that he must stand by and see murder if the murderer happens to be his father, or theft if the thief chances to be his mother, — is, in short, a doctrine of scoundrels, not citizens ; of pirates, not TO THE PATRIOT 387 patriots ; of antisocial bandits, not brothers of the equal races. “ Patriotism ” is a bait flung out by rogues to catch fools. It is time to restrict terms, or to define things. Here is a politician who picks a quarrel in order to steal a neighboring country, a preacher who brings the lofty sanctions of religion to foment hate and justify mur- der, an editor who stands by his government “ right or wrong,” a crowd which smashes windows and breaks up public meetings, — for all of whom the adjective “patriotic” is reserved ; while the epithet “traitor” is applied to that politician who stands for international justice, that preacher who enunciates the loftier laws of the Kingdom of Heaven, that pressman who seeks to guide public opinion along lines of truth and equity, that citizen who refuses to join the saturnalia of flag waving and ditty shouting. How is this ? Why should a man who prevents his children from revolting against the laws of chemistry and blowing up the domicile be compelled to rejoice when his country revolts against the equally immutable laws of justice ? Why should it be treasonable to oppose a policy of national suicide, and loyal only to sit silent, or to assist actively, whilst madmen tie a rope round our common mother’s neck to drag her into the eternal abyss ? This is not patriot- ism ; it is madness, — or can escape being esteemed madness only by submitting to be called downright villainy. It is national felony ; a curse and scourge to whatever people adopts it ; an instigation to the foul- est crimes and an apology for the greatest tyrannies. It was patriotism of this type that poisoned Socrates, 388 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR crucified Jesus, and sent thousands of Christians to the lions under the Caesars. It is political atheism. Suppression of free speech, however serious a hurt to love of country, is only a symbol of and prelude to other losses. Imperialism, bringing in its train mili- tarism and conscription, confronts the people with the question whether they are to be governed by their governors or whether they will govern themselves according to the formula of democracy. The choice, in set terms, is between serfdom and self-government, bureaucracy and home rule, Caesarism and democracy. In proportion as the former advance the latter recede : the two things represent contrary tendencies which admit of no reconciliation, of which India and Australia are symbols. The motto Imperium et Libertas merely combines in a phrase two positively antagonistic ideas. A people may have empire without liberty, or liberty without empire ; both they cannot have. Already impe- rium begins to swallow up libertas. The fetters may be forged by an Augustus, or gilded by a Beaconsfield ; worn voluntarily, or unconsciously: the one thing certain is that citizen merges into soldier, state into army ; and freedom perishes. The inhabitants of a country may be constitutionally assured of equal jus- tice, supremacy of civil over military power, freedom of person and speech and vote, yet see the constitution cunningly evaded, gracefully waved aside, or bluntly repudiated, according to the character and position of the assailant. So long as they refuse to answer her call and hasten anew to her defense, they will see TO THE PATRIOT 389 Democracy steadily undone, while caste, bureaucracy, officialism, and irresponsible dictatorship erect them- selves upon her ruins. The governing classes, — ad- ministrators, soldiers, and other dictatorial people, — who caught the trick of despotism over a conquered proletariat abroad, return to practice it upon an emas- culated proletariat at home ; and may be trusted to rehearse in the kingdom the lessons they learned in the empire. Imperialism is a veritable school for tyrants, and its trend even in countries otherwise free and constitutionally governed is strongly towards dic- tatorship. During these late years British and American autoc- racy have enhanced their prestige and influence, while democracy has gone back in corresponding degree. The executive exalts itself against the representatives. The hereditary House of Lords has successfully defied the representative House of Commons. The throne has exhibited new signs of authority. The cabinet has proved its power to bring the country to war without consultation ; the Administration, without authority from Congress 7 ; and ministers have shown that during their term of office their power is practically unlimited and irresponsible. Representative government, meager as are the remnants of its power, is made weaker still by the domination of wealth and class, its membership in general being composed of foreign investors, capi- talistic magnates, professional tufthunters, aspiring officials, — a body whose interests are not popular but financial and administrative, yet cunning enough to yoke the democratic voter to the car of imperialism. 390 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR In theory Demos controls senate and parliament and thus, nominally, army and navy ; but somehow army and navy are available only to back the extravagances of Dives, never to supply the needs of Lazarus, who, after every turn of the ballot box, is bewildered to find himself still the under dog. Hunger is exploited in ever new and ingenious ways by Mammon. The banners of returning tyranny are already streaming on the wind. The tramp, tramp, of the sappers and miners of free institutions comes nearer and nearer . 8 As a result of popular education and cheap literature every modern war gives rise to a vast outpouring not only of maga- zines and newspapers but of books ably written by officers and war correspondents under the spell and glamour of the military spirit, all deferring to the dis- cipline and temper of the army as the nation’s ideal, all, expressly or by implication, glorifying that habit of blind obedience to rules and orders which is the sworn foe of thought and self-government. The ominous desire for a dictator has already been voiced, partly in jest, it is true, but also partly in earnest ; and it is time to challenge the aspiration, for it is the way of such utterances to fulfill themselves, the joke disappear- ing before the serious purpose, the feeler preparing the way of the policy as the tentacles of an octopus herald the entire monster. Imperialistic government is always and everywhere of the same kind. It still requires the legionaries of Caesar, and inevitably terminates by putting Caesar upon the throne. Liberty calls aloud upon democracy to retrace its steps along the “ prim- rose path of dalliance,” to renounce that patriotism TO THE PATRIOT 391 whose means are foreign aggression and whose ends are domestic slavery. There is no need to despair of democracy as if it had been tried and found wanting; like Christianity it never has had a fair trial, but has always been cheated cun- ningly out of its patrimony. Imperialism, it is true, has dug the grave of every democracy the world ever produced ; but modern democracy is the product of ethical development even more than of purely political forces and may, on that account, hope to evade the doom of the ancients. But it can escape only by dis- carding the gravedigger — imperialism — and throwing away the spade — militarism. The sign of its heavenly grace is that, unlike the old-world democracies, it has had a revelation of international union and universal brother- hood : if it is true to the heavenly vision it will be saved ; but if it repents not of its unfraternal jealousies, aggres- sive selfishness, and undemocratic militarisms, it will likewise perish. Such is the frightful demoralization wrought in the patriot by the spirit of war that it repeat- edly transforms him from a citizen into a corsair, from a democrat into a despot ; turns love of country into lust of conquest ; . and degrades that very Elijah who de- fended Naboth into the Ahab who steals his vineyard. Our military system has now reached such a stage that it is no longer possible to evade the choice between home and abroad, development and expansion, legitimate do- mestic policy and bastard colonization. We are called on, in short, to decide between commonwealth and empire. The politicians, for the most part, have lurched heavily 392 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR toward the latter ; for it is their nature to walk by sight, not by faith, and the gravitation of a fact as tremendous as an American or a British empire pulls them help- lessly towards itself, overpowering thought and imagina- tion, engrossing every energy and resource, burdening them so heavily with its responsibilities, obligations, dangers, as to render them incapable of weighing in the balance the sufferings, necessities, possibilities of one continent however vast, or of one little island. Pride of possession swells out into insolence, courage rises into defiance, greed creates greater appetite, and the fly on the wheel of empire feels himself justified in putting on a bold front, — whether to growing hunger and discontent at home or to gathering jealousies and federating rival- ries abroad. The awful fascinations of empire draw him on with the words “ inevitable ” and “ destiny ” upon his lips, — a political fatalist, a governmental Calvinist, a re- jecter of that free will which makes both men and nations masters of their fate, and which alone can prevent the stronger influence absorbing all the smaller interests, as the mackerel swallows the sprat but the shark both. A colossal object lesson has been presented to our day. That government responsible for the most disas- trous British war of modern times took office with a promise of rest to a harassed country, an assurance to the weary Titan of “ a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep,” but actually pro- duced nothing save a succession of alarums and excur- sions. It could not do otherwise. When it declined to take the path of domestic reform it was obliged to go the way of foreign conquest. The choice confronting TO THE PATRIOT 393 all modern rulers is just that, — reformation or war, social progress or scientific slaughter. There is no middle way, nor any standing still ; the pull from the side of empire is too enormous, and can be counter- acted only by a decided movement towards the oppo- site pole of endeavor. A government that is not to slidder down into the pit of foreign aggression and dis- aster must toilfully climb the long slow spiral of reform and improvement at home. To run empire against kingdom is fatal, and to run them in double harness impossible. The choice is between the universe and the hearthstone ; between an imperialism which includes different continents, a heterogeneous and indigestible mass of tribes, colors, tongues, religions, civilizations, permitting no organic unity, sharing no common senti- ment, moving to no conscious goal, having no embodi- ment higher or more living than the page of an atlas, — between this and an amor patrice which cherishes home life and reverences the home feeling in other races. It is high time for our dreamers to wake ; to return from a policy of imperialistic expansion to one which may best be described by a Carlylean compound — the “development-of-the-people” policy. That patri- otism which leans on force is a degraded thing ; and if this be no argument to those who care less for honor than for interest, let them know that it is also a dan- gerous thing. ’T is those only whose ways please God whose enemies are made to be at peace with them. The injurious effect of war upon the patriot is fatally displayed in turning away his eyes from the true path 394 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR of national salvation to wild, chimerical, adventurous, and ultimately destructive schemes of national expan- sion, — schemes as seductive but as suicidal as those of Richard the Lion-heart who spent the years of his reign fighting Saracens and prosecuting absurd Crusades upon the sands, while Englishmen starved and these islands sliddered down into a state of unspeakable misery and destitution. Crusading patriotism spends the re- sources of the people, not upon their fields and rivers, unfilled plains and undrained bogs, wasting agricul- tures and waning industries, but upon arms and arma- ments to defend that which is steadily becoming less worth defending or to extend that which is becoming less worth extending. This is the senseless statesman- ship which first permits the food supplies of a country to languish through successive generations, then, in a paroxysm of “patriotism,” declares that it must have command of the seas in order to guard its imported food supplies, and finally squanders upon defending the pas- sage of these across the sea as much as would feed its population from its own soil twice over ; which is all as absurd as if a man were to let half his garden lie waste, expend half the yield of the remainder in buying produce from his neighbor on the right, and the remain- ing fourth in building wagons and rearing watchdogs to convey the purchased fraction safe from the depre- dations of his neighbor on the left. Folly like this drives all but the wisest to despair. We first decline to raise corn and fruit from our own soil, then pay away enormous sums for other people’s corn and fruit , 9 next spend unimaginable wealth in building ships to TO THE PATRIOT 395 effect and guns to cover their transit, lastly point to the immense turnover as convincing proof of our afflu- ence ! And warriors are all the time urging us to develop this state of affairs, to spend less upon the production of internal food supplies and more upon external defenses. Even when they do give a thought to the question of the people’s food, it is not to suggest the production of living grain by development of agri- culture and employment of healthful laborers, but the accumulation of dead grain in enormous storehouses which could only become centers of bloodshed in that coming day when our stupendous policy of depletion shall have turned crowds of starving laborers into mobs of red rioters. Imperial Rome brought from Egypt and elsewhere those supplies of corn which in better days she had grown for herself, sending one part of her pop- ulation abroad to live by pillage and crowding the remainder into towns to live in an artificial fashion upon imported food; nor has modern imperialism grown wiser; it, too, prefers to base itself upon the devil work of destruction — calling it “defense” — rather than on the divine work of production. The “responsibilities of empire” (which are defined as the colonies, India, and the trade routes) demand that the British army and navy be made adequate to meet whatever military or naval force might put them in peril . 10 Thus is the very brain stuff spattered all abroad under plea of maintaining the nervous system. Expansion abroad is accompanied by contraction at home, — arrest of social progress, shrinkage of agricul- ture, reduction of population, perishing of rural workers 396 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR by rheumatism and dullness in the parishes where they were born, or their drifting into the slums to perish. Imperialism is the fool who has her eyes in the ends of the earth ; she has no thought for the multiplying crowds of landless proletarians, no policy for restoring to the land the heaped masses who are filling her expanding cities with poverty, crime, filth, disease. Neither can she see the necessity of building along her iron coasts harbors of refuge for her brave sailors and fishermen who perish needlessly by the hundred every year ; she proposes only to sink more millions in what she calls “coast defenses,” in rivers which need never be attacked or, being attacked, can never be prop- erly defended, in fortifications just formidable enough to invite, without being strong enough to repel, attack. Meanwhile, sailors must fill watery and unhonored graves that soldiers may fill foreign graves with their own or native corpses ; and fishermen must drown and fisheries dwindle that patriots may ruffle it before admir- ing audiences of political dames. Imperialistic patriotism is assuredly not the instinctive mother but the senseless stepmother of a people ; one who prefers to exploit other lands rather than develop her own, to build battle ships rather than homes, to sweep the seas rather than the slums, to turn the veldts red rather than the meadows green, to make cordite rather than grow corn, to pension the fighter rather than the toiler, to drill rather than edu- cate, to provide camps and shooting ranges rather than schools, colleges, polytechnics, labor settlements, model farms. To call this unnatural monster by Lowell’s title is to compliment her : she is not so much as a stepmother ; TO THE PATRIOT 397 she is a baby-farmer whose profit is in her children’s deaths. No country can be great and prosperous unless, and in proportion as, its inhabitants are peaceful, cheer- ful, contented, healthy, satisfied with the provisions of bounteous Nature ; unless it is a home which its chil- dren can love, — where they have taste and leisure to go about its great rooms — its seas, woods, mountains — and learn to admire their beauty. The honest lover of his country is he who endeavors to make the home land homelike, the fatherland fatherly, the motherland moth- erly ; which cannot be done by expansion and foreign war, but only by the arts proper to the spade and plow. The tyrant Pyrrhus, describing the conquests he in- tended to make in Italy, Sicily, Libya, and Greece, was asked, “ And when we have conquered all these, what are we to do then?” His laughing reply — “Why, then we will take our ease, and drink and be merry ” — brought the unanswerable retort, “And why can we not repose and be merry without these conquests ? ” Pyrrhus must now yield to the plowman. Extensive exploitation must now give place to intensive cultiva- tion. The only motto for a country whose rulers even distantly apprehend the sum of human good is not defiance, not even defense, but development. Such a country will, — to quote some words written by the present writer in the Westminster Review , u — “above all, renounce a strumpet imperialism with all the bedizenments which prank her out, and return to nationalism, its lawful love; will wash the paint and tear the paddings off the charmer ; will show that the path of dalliance leads inevitably to extravagance abroad 39 § MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR and impoverishment at home, to the dominance of military ideals and the consequent decay of the ideals of industry, to the exaltation of the soldier over the citizen, to a deceptive expansion of the outer circle and a too real contraction of inner resources ; will denounce an imperialism which sinks the nation in the empire, and proclaim a nationalism which exalts the nation that it may maintain the empire ; will bring the British people back from a policy which squanders means, men, and morals, abroad, to a policy which fosters the home life, develops the men, cultivates the fields, expands the industries of these British Islands; and, by making the base of our operations strong, sufficient, self-supporting, give the surest warrant of success and safety to our movements abroad.” How much longer will the monumental follies of imperial aggression continue to masquerade as the highest political wisdom ? How long shall a military system which is the bitterest foe to civilization, and an imperialism which is traitor to humanity, be permitted to waste the earth and spoil the people ? For it is reliance on force, a consciousness of resistless power behind, that makes possible these stupendous follies and sins. It is the knowledge of brute force backing annexation that encourages the monstrous policy of hazarding the dearest interests of a people for foreign conquest, foreign markets, foreign produce. Were the possibility of supplying their wants by pillage removed from the calculations of civilized states, they would take the same pains to cultivate their fields and popu- late their lands that they now take to waste the plains TO THE PATRIOT 399 and bereave the homes of other lands ; would cease to forge chains for their own citizens in the very act of destroying the liberties of citizens abroad ; would spend upon the diffusion of knowledge and the blessings of peace those sums now worse than wasted on munitions and operations of war ; would lay aside those military ideals which surely destroy their moral, intellectual, and, finally, political life, and which build their own guilty, however glittering, tombs. Imperial patriotism, after persuading a people to abandon home cultivation for the sake of distant con- quest, proves itself a hollow betrayer even on its own ground ; for with slight exception it does not attempt to cultivate the lands and peoples it has subdued, but seeks only to exploit and plunder them. Its aim is not genuine colonization by the spade and plow, but utili- zation by all the means and instruments rapacity can invent. It fells virgin forests, but plants not ; exhausts virgin soil, but fertilizes none ; digs for gold, but delves not for grain ; builds railways for its traffic, but traffics only for greed ; forces the native to work, but for its gain, not his good ; exploits but rarely educates him ; makes him a laborer without creating him a man; fills the land, not with schoolmasters, industrial instruct- ors, humanists, but with capitalistic agents and official persons making haste to be rich by the swift and swol- len spoils of extortion rather than by the slow fruits of culture and development : in short, utterly despises the original command which alone can give sanction and warrant to distant adventure, — the command, 400 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR namely, to subdue the earth by the sweat of the brow, making it fruitful, — preferring rather to subdue the peoples of the earth by their blood and their sweat, burying the bloody half in shallow graves and the sweaty half in deep pits and mines to slave for dia- monds and gold : of all which the only extenuating word that can be spoken has been spoken by Pope 12 : Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf, Each does but hate his neighbor as himself ; Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides. In no realm and under no conditions can there be harmony between the principles of empire and absolu- tism on the one hand, and of commonwealth and democ- racy on the other : the first imply alien government, absentee landlordism on a vast scale ; the second, self- government, moral and political development, a people rooted in the soil. The password of the first is con- quest ; of the second, cultivation — by colonization if need be. The first includes cruel subjugation of unwill- ing peoples in enormous numbers, a cynical selfishness which seeks commercial gain at the cost of the moral welfare of native tribes, a brutish blindness which exter- minates unpruned races through whose wild stocks alone can new sap and fruitfulness enter the body of human- ity ; the second implies reclamation of untilled lands by colonists who afterwards live on them, and the human- izing of the barbarians by the arts of peace. The first is a mere descent of soldier, trader, official person upon uncivilized races to turn them into food for empire — TO THE PATRIOT 4OI to live upon the people ; the second is a genuine family settlement for the subduing of the earth — to live upon the land. The first represents mere quantity, bulk, vul- gar mileage and counting of heads, mechanical painting of maps, an officially directed huddle of inharmonious personalities and incongruous civilizations; the second implies quality, moral values, realized ideals of life according to laws of historic development and under the influence of self-government. The first is repre- sented by a plague-cursed, famine-stricken India; the second by a wholesome, divinely hopeful Australia. The friends of man are called to stand for cultiva- tion abroad instead of exploitation ; and everywhere for commonwealth as against empire. Empire is a name of pride — the pride that goes before destruction ; com- monwealth includes all that is best in politics, eco- nomics, and the humanities. Henceforth we stand for commonwealth ! The stand for commonwealth is made for humanity, its general principle of action being to promote what- ever contributes to the common weal — the common well-being of man, and its particular application being to those sections of humanity called nations. Common- wealth necessarily includes an indefinite number of commonwealths. “This policy,” says Mazzini in his essay on the condition and prospects of Europe, “ is that of nationalities, that which will protect openly and avowedly their free development.” The principle of na- tionality promotes peace by extending the bounds of international toleration, and by creating that love of general liberty and that respect for freedom everywhere 402 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR which is at the bottom of all healthy political activity. It throws responsibility for good government upon those persons who actually live in each country, thus promoting order and self-reliance, permitting free development to each separate portion, fostering institu- tions native to the temper and ideals of the people, and permitting every kind of peaceful pioneering in the arts, the sciences, and religion. Imperialism, by con- trast, through unjust annexation of territory creates a necessity for alien and usurped authority and the de- struction of native institutions, paralyzes local effort, prevents the highest development of resources, reduces the motives that tend to order 1 and good government and increases those that make for rebellion ; rebellion, again, is made the excuse for trampling yet further the sentiment of nationality; from which in turn come new insurrections and a train of such miseries and disasters as find a hundred bitter illustrations in the page of his- tory. The difference between the divine principle of nationalism and a domineering imperialism is revealed in the fragrance which arises from such names as Wallace, Tell, Kosciusko, Kossuth, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Stepniak, Washington, and the sulphur emitted by the Alexanders, Caesars, Tamerlanes, and Bismarcks. Henceforth the prayer of the democrat and humanist is for the downfall of the golden-headed but clay-footed image of imperialism and the furtherance of nationalism in every quarter of the globe ; for whereas the former has been found to work havoc and war continually, the second will be found to merge gently but inevitably into philanthropy. The developed ideals and varied quests of TO THE PATRIOT 403 the nationalities will enrich human character with new types and bind human beings in new bonds ; will lead to neighborly intercourse, mutual respect, cooperation for common ends, and ultimately to a commune of peo- ples in schemes of universal beneficence. The idols of the tribe (the absurd conceits and prejudices which have kept the nations jealously apart) must fall before humanity’s God, the All-Father who made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. It is time for every good man to repudiate the nar- rower sense of the thing called “patriotism,” even if it be found necessary to repudiate the word itself, and to strive to carry tribal sentiment up to that fraternity cherished in dream and song, and actually realized by some of the wisest of the race. Patriotism of the lower type is kept alive by war and by a permanent military system, and opposes the passion of empire to the enthu- siasm for humanity, sets pinchbeck against principle, glory against godliness, gold against goodness, surface against depth. From war that patriotism derives its being which substitutes force for reason, interest for justice, jealousy for cooperation, sectionalism for uni- versalism ; which keeps alive the idea that it is permis- sible to commit murder in order to avoid martyrdom, — to inflict, in order to escape, death. In proportion as it ceases to rely on force patriotism will rise into phi- lanthropy, and love of country expand into love of humanity. Fraternity is a bigger thing than patriot- ism. The nation is but the avenue through which we approach humanity ; the fatherland the door into 404 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR the universal world. Great as well as comforting were the words written by Edmund Ludlow over his door during exile: Every land is my fatherland, For all lands are my Father’s. Imperialism must now yield to humanism ; and as religion has striven to teach men the sin of gaining at the expense of a neighbor, it must go on to show that national advance upon a sister nation’s ruins is equally abhorrent. Nations are but members of the human family ; nothing that is human is alien to them ; none can live to itself alone ; each is bound to seek the com- mon good, to spread common knowledge, to cultivate mutual intercourse, respect, and toleration. “ If,” says Mrs. Browning again, in her preface to “ Poems before Congress,” “patriotism be a virtue indeed, it cannot mean an exclusive devotion to our country’s interests, — for that is only another form of devotion to personal interests, family interests, or provincial interests, all of which, if not driven past themselves, are vulgar and immoral objects.” This is the tribal egoism surviving even in American pulpits, where peace sermons may be delivered in the course of which the preacher defends almost every war his country ever entered into. The name for this kind of thing is parochialism, not patri- otism. It is the parish of Little Peddlington perking up beside the republic of God. The crowning test of patriotism is respect for the same sentiment in other nations; just as proof of domestic faithfulness is regard for the domestic sanctity of other homes. As it is not love, but lust, which causes a man to overleap TO THE PATRIOT 405 the sacred barriers of a brother’s home, so it is not patriotism, but pride, which tramples upon the sense of nationality in other peoples. If true patriotism be love of one’s own land, false patriotism must be love of another’s land. It is not by fighting against other countries that we learn to love our own, but by living for all. Enlightened citizenship perceives that there is a solidarity of nations ; that the law of each for all and all for each represents at once the highest policy and the noblest morality ; that each country is intimately bound up with the prosperity of the whole ; that the general progress of society affects and determines the progress of each part ; that the best citizen is the man who labors to promote the liberty and improvement of every community. To every good man Gerizim is sacred as Jerusalem ; and both must yield to the higher claims of the spiritual and invisible commonwealth of humanity, as of the sons of God. A great fight of faith is before the righteous to-day, and in the days coming on. He must stand for honesty, neighborliness, justice, mercy, peace, against the red tide that courses through the world. For the remainder of his natural existence he must fight, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places, against imperialism and the thing called “patriotism,” against capitalism and plutocracy, — dark powers which have already corrupted the ruling classes, and will next, unless vanquished by the higher forces of righteousness, corrupt democracy, and finally vanquish the commonwealth. Against the righteous man are 406 moral damage of war the gods of vested interests, the idols of international jealousy, and the dour devil called apathy. For him are the three chief ministers of human progress, — the logic of history, good men, God. The moral evolution of mankind is away from patriotism of the old political and fighting order, and away from piety that makes itself subservient to political institutions. Eulogies of the old fighting patriots become fainter. Progress is seen to lie along the lines of international cooperation. Religion is coming to mean those aspirations which are common to the human race. The world has less and less need for its warriors. A higher type of man is tak- ing the place of the militant hero. While the armies are growing bigger, man’s faith in them is becoming smaller. The whole trend of human character is towards the ethical and the spiritual. The animal decreases; the man increases. Apologies for war are more numer- ous, excuses more necessary, justifications more urgent. Man is becoming ashamed of it. The peace advocate unites himself with the evolutionary forces. Like Abraham Lincoln he asks himself on what side God is, and goes to that side. The destruction of war is a sure prophecy, and therefore a main object of his endeavor. War must be cleared out of the way of the advancing humanity. The first enemy that must be destroyed is — war. TO THE PATRIOT 407 REFERENCES 1. Future Penalties invoked against the Peace Advocate : A clergyman to W. T. Stead, War against War in South Africa , p. 163. Your pamphlets are thrown into my waste-paper basket. I regard you as one of the greatest enemies of your country, and I shall ever pray that Almighty God will punish you both here and hereafter for it. 2. Iago inciting the Mob to attack Peace Advocates : ( а ) Admiral Commerell, Morning Post. If this gentleman thinks he is in the right, let him call an open meet- ing, . . . and express the views he had demonstrated in your paper of to-day, and I don’t think much of body or mind would be left to the plotter. ( б ) The People , London, February, 1900. After describing bloody attacks upon peace men — “ Doubtless to-morrow will witness similar scenes should any of the orators seek to disparage [the government or its military minions].” (c) Globe , June 19, 1901. We trust that such a protest will be offered to-night as will convince the friends of the enemy that in trying to hold meetings in London they are doing a very foolish thing ; and if it persuades them, in addition, that they have no proper place among Englishmen at all, no great harm will be done. ( 35 2 > 360, 361, 37 C 3 8i > 39 C 393 - 4 ° 3 - 422, 43 °. 43 C 437 . 439 - 443 - 447 ! degraded into a tool for spies, 133 ; in the public school, 94; looting of, 134; New Testament not on side of soldier, 113; superseded by The Soldiers' Pocket Book, 133. Books : biographies of “ Christian soldiers,” 112; fostering the war spirit, 100, 390. See Libraries. Boys’ Brigades : unchristian, 101. Britain, Great : “ a nation of shopkeepers,” 307 ; food sup- plies, 394 ; the new Israel, 278 ; wealth of, 312. 45 1 452 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Browning, Mrs.: quoted, 176, 353 ; on freedom, 354 ; on pa- tience, 442 ; on patriotism, 382 ; on political righteousness, 168, 184 ; on thinkers and teachers, 234 - Browning, Robert : on war for the sake of trade, 306. Bryant, Wm. C.: on peace, 447. Buddhism : modern views of war, 278. Burns, Robert: on “ man’s inhu- manity to man,” 145; on uni- versal brotherhood, 446. Byron : mercy better than war, 426 ; on the horrors of war, 143 - Cant: of imperialism, 288, 327, 352 ; of the war platform, 190. Capital : as the enemy, 335 ; con- spiring against national inde- pendence, 31 1 ; consumed in war, 320; controlling newspapers, 208, 318; dictating to govern- ments, 315, 328; exploiting all w'arring nations, 333 ; exploiting backward races, 313; foreign investment of, 31 1, 324; fur- nishing the “ sinews of war,” 328, 333 ; international, 332 ; promoting militarism, 312 ; self- ish, 333, 339. See Commerce. Carlyle, Thomas: on the “Fourth Estate,” 202 ; on union between Britain and America, iii; on war, 170, 348. Causes of War: churchmen re- fuse to investigate, 240 ; covet- ousness, 65, 334, 358, 384 ; Dean Swift on, 40 ; immense arma- ments, 430. Channing, W. E. : on the false charms of war, 80. Character: production of, the supreme concern, no; two dis- cordant types of, 426. Children : indoctrinated with military ideas in the nursery, 83 ; indoctrinated with military ideas at school, 84; indoctri- nated with military ideas by toys and games, 83, 98; “juvenile crime,” 100; patriotism of, 89; persecuted in time of war, 87 ; perverted by false history, 88 ; sacrificed to Moloch, 81 ; sacri- ficed for the nation, 89 ; suffer- ings of, in war, 51, 52 ; trained in a dual morality, 92; trained in moral atheism, 96. Chivalry : discouraged in mili- tary operations, 49, 128, 423. Christ: Cassar and, in, 273; Christendom refuses to obey, 264; headship of, 273; Lamb at home, Lion abroad, 287 ; as “ Trince of war,” 259. See Jesus. Christendom : creed and con- duct inconsistent, 414; double- minded, 430 ; less peaceful than the nonchristian world, 251 ; love, not force, proper founda- tion of, 438 ; miseries of, 236 ; preaching, but not practicing, the Sermon on the Mount, 4 ; refusing to obey Christ, 264 ; religious forces of, 235; why still at war, 235. Christianity: appeal to its moral principles, 4, 16; con- demns all war, xi, 7, 9, 31, 235; early, refused to participate in war, 235, 281, 438 ; flouted by its own professors as “ imprac- ticable,” 70, 255, 262; genuine, cannot effectively prosecute war, 67; genuine, unpopular in INDEX 453 war time, 70; renounced by the politician, 190. See Church, Ec- clesiasticism, Pulpit, Religion. Church: army chaplains, 113, 247, 257 ; backing the militant politician, 245, 252; boys’ bri- gades, 10 1 ; Cain preferred to Christ, 47, 287; cannot prevent war, 261 ; Christ degraded by, 236, 259; Christianity degraded by, 226, 248 ; Commandments tampered with, 42, 54, 254 ; con- fusion of ideas, in, 259, 286; corrupted by the war spirit, 241, 244, 260 ; dogmas suited to ethics of, 260 ; faith of, lost, 300 ; favors war in general, ix, 243, 247, 264, 276; favors war of the day, 246, 273; following public opinion, 246 ; force employed to propagate the gospel, 286; hymnology in praise of war, 15, 250; imperial- istic religion of, 245, 253, 260; opportunism of, 240, 264, 273 ; peace advocates outside of, ix, 251 ; professional teachers of, responsible for war, 235 ; revenge sanctified, 254; temptation in the wilderness, 274; treasonable cry of, “ no politics,” 240 ; the true, 251. See Ecclesiasticism. Citizen : degraded by an army, 120; indifferent to his own countrymen, 49; injured by militarism, 347, 359; preferring material to moral interests, 186; responsible for war, 43, 56. Civilization : aim is develop- ment, not destruction, 69 ; force the foundation of, 438 ; goal is humanistic, 109; industrial v. military, 312; love the proper basis of, 438 ; possible end of the present, 443 ; revival of paganism in, 292 ; vices carried abroad, 284 ; war contrary to, 355. See Age. Classes of People: interested in war, 66, 174, 212, 329, 434; privileged, favor militarism, 363, 388. Cobden : apostle of peace through free trade, 322. Colonization : conquest not a genuine form of, 400 ; imperial exploitation contrasted with, 399. Commandments : abolished by war, 370; discarded by traders and imperialists, 349, 356; su- perseded by the military regula- tions, 369; tampered with by the church, 42, 54, 254. Commerce: buying up the press, 204, 318; chambers of, 307; missions degraded by, 276 ; national flags exploited by, 326 ; peace its true interest and end, 3 07, 338 ; “ trade follows the flag” an error, 319; war de- moralizes, 277, 307, 320, 334, 341 ; war for “the open door,” 321 ; war may be abolished by, 3 r S- 3 2 3 > 339 - See Capital, Trade. Commonwealth: empire distin- guished from, 362 ; preferred to empire, 391 . Conscription: goal of military civilization, 364, 388. Courage, Moral: higher than physical, 382, 422 ; required to dissent from war, 7, 382. See Heroes. Covetousness: cause of war, 334 ; greed of territory, 359. Cowardice : in the pulpit, 240 ; promoted by war, 67, 128, 147, 423. 454 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Cowper, William: on freedom, 370; on the press, 203. Crime: “juvenile,” 100; war pro- motes, 48, 65, 147. Czar : Peace Rescript of Nicholas II, 25, 432. Death : men do not fear, 5 ; not necessarily an evil, 8, 441. Democracy: hope for modern, 391; militarism the enemy of, 348, 363, 388; plutocracy and, 337, 390 ; war inconsistent with, no. See People. Despair : politicians in, 26, 27 ; religious and political pessimism, 299, 436. See Fatalism. Destiny, National: a plea for war, 13; “Manifest Destiny,” 297 , 392 - Diplomacy: militant, 177; un- truthful, 187. Disarmament: does not neces- sarily entail destruction, 440. Ecclesiasticism: casuistry of, 256; cold to the peace advo- cate, 13, 245 ; exploiting wars for new buildings, 250 ; readi- ness to sanction wars, 13, 246. See Church. Economics: arguments of, cannot prevent war, 18; erroneously made to favor war, 277. Education : does not prevent war, 33 ; endeavor to graft, on military training, 365 ; perverted to military ends, 97. Emerson : on love as the basis of society, 440. Empire: “benevolent,” a failure, 413 ; commonwealth opposed to, 362, 391 ; decay of, inevitable, 69, 359, 370 ; price of, too great, 370. Enemies: deprived of liberty, 67; justice towards, 384; rejoicing in sufferings of, 44, 52 ; slander- ing, 53, 215; spiteful temper towards, 49. Expediency : illustrated by “ Peace Crusade,” 21 ; in despair, 23; its motives not enough to pre- vent war, 17; its motives not enough to establish arbitration, 28; its motives not enough to secure disarmament, 26; the “ practical man ” declines to seriously discuss the peace prin- ciple, 35 ; principle must sup- plant, 23, 28, 30. Faith : between nations, 404 ; destroyed in children, 93, 96 ; destroyed by the war spirit, 251 ; modern church has lost, 299 ; obstacles not overlooked by, 442; war abolished by, 35, 442 ; war caused by want of, 69. Fatalism: in politics, 297, 392. Free Speech : suppressed in war time, 63, 221, 382. Free Trade: an evangel, 323; war for, 322. God : war leads from dependence on, 70. Goodness, Personal : a better defense than arms, 381 ; better than patriotism, 403; does not restrain from war, 31, 47. Gospel: a “transcendental” and a “ common-sense,” 287 ; mili- tary regulations superseding, 108 ; propagating, by force, 295. Governments: allegiance to, not absolute, 369; armaments can- not be reduced by, 27 ; capital- ism can manipulate, 315, 328; INDEX 455 extravagance of, 416; peace advocates not protected by, 386; personal morality destroyed by, 1 14; schools captured by, for the army, 97. See Politicians. Greed : war fosters, 66. Heathenism: tolerant of Chris- tian religion, 291. See Native Races, Paganism. Heroes: of missions, 275, 301; of peace, 90, 425 ; of peace called “traitors,” 387; wherein their heroism, 428. See Courage. History: as fraternal evolution, 302 ; children have it wrongly presented, 88 ; patriotism per- verts, 88 ; as it should be writ- ten, 90. Horses: in war, 30. See Animals. Humanity : greater than imperi- alism, 404; greater than patri- otism, 398. Hymnology: “impious,” 15, 87; of the British Army, 1 12, 250, 258. Ideals : “ active ” and “passive ” virtues, 293; betrayal of, 414; Christian, surrendered to polit- ical, 299 ; clash of, 1 10, 274, 286, 292, 347, 426; in commerce, 340; never wholly lost, 422; newspapers fostering low, 206. Imperialism : a pagan ideal, 292 ; an obsession, 359 ; appeal of, to sentiment, 331, 334; as land hunger, 358; as “New Israel- ism,” 278; cant of, 288, 355; capitalism in alliance with, 313, 328, 334 ; Christian missions de- graded by, 273; climax of, 443; commonwealth a nobler ideal than, 362, 391 ; conscription the end of, 364, 388 ; cost of, 370 ; Darwinism perverted into an ex- cuse for, 14 ; definitions of, 349; development of home land more important than, 277, 287, 312, 326, 366, 391 ; driving forces of, 330; ecclesiastical form of, 245, 253, 260; humanism to be pre- ferred to, 404; invading educa- tion and the schools, 98; jealousy provoked by, 360 ; “ manifest destiny” not a sufficient plea, 298, 392 ; national impoverishment caused by, 18, 328, 398; not genuine colonization, 399; phil- anthropy only a pretense, 294, 297, 327. 353 ; P ride of - 2 9 8 ; pride of, extends to persons, 361 ; ruling idea of republic and mon- archy alike, 17 ; self-government contrary to, 400; selfish, 349; self-righteous, 350. Jesus: beatitudes renounced, 191, 294 ; described as “ not a peace- at-any-price man,” 236; ethics reasoned away, 256, 261 ; ideals rejected for those of paganism, 294, 299; quoted, 2, 113, 191, 371 ; rejected in favor of Mars, 249 ; rejected in favor of Moses, 259 ; rejected in favor of Odin, 251; and soldiers, 113, 256; sufferings different from those of soldiers, 257 ; teachings prac- ticable, 263 ; teachings pro- nounced impracticable, 289 ; “what would Jesus do?” 112, 257. See Christ. Journalism: See Press. Justice: towards other nations, 3 8 4- Kant, Immanuel : on perpetual peace, 445. 456 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Kingsley, Charles: on Jesuit- ical surrender of conscience, 1 18. Kipling, Rudyard : quoted, 124, 35 6 > 358 - Labor : nobler than war, 367. Liberty: Browning, Mrs., on, 354 ; capitalism a menace to, 3 1 1 , 329, 336; imperialism a menace to, 388 ; war destroys, 67, 174, 383; war on behalf of, a mistake, 437. Libraries, Public: perverted to militarism, 99. See Books. Love : the proper basis of society, 438 - Low ell, J. R.: on change de- manded, 438 ; on duty before patriotism, 380 ; on peace heroes greater than those of war, 421 ; on war and civilization, 355. Lunacy : war increases amount of, 65. Mammon : elect deceived by, 331 ; headship of all the “interests,” 336 ; morality despised by, 334 ; press corrupted by, 204 ; war caused by, 65, 332, 335. Man : degraded into a soldier, 1 19; evolving into a moral being, 425, 438 ; going on to a peaceful future, 445 ; more than nations, 1 ro ; physically brave, 5. Martyrdom: of nations, 441. Materialism : as a national ideal, 69, 186. Mazzini : on British policy, 346; on nationalities, 401. Might v. Right : the prevailing law, 183. Militarism: a disease, 69; as Moloch, 42, 65, 81 ; attractive exterior of, 80 ; capitalism fosters, 313 ; citizenship discouraged by, 347, 362 ; conscience abrogated by, 114; gospel abolished by, 108; national suicide, 18, 398, 431 ; stupidity of, 178, 394 ; stu- pidity of “coast defenses,” 396; tending to a world-wide catas- trophe, 432; tyranny promoted by, 174, 364, 387, 431. Miller, Joaquin ; on religious cowardice, 248. Milton : on a free press, 205 ; on Satanic pride, 442; on the folly of war, 435 ; on the shame of war, 5. Missions and Missionaries: cor- rupted by commerce, 276, 288 ; corrupted by imperialism, 273, 295 ; doing evil that good may come, 286; force employed in promoting, 281, 286, 301, 309; heroic types of, 275, 301 ; mar- tyrdoms compared to lynchings, 290 ; political motives in, 284 ; war encouraged by, 278. Mob Law : assaults upon peace, men, and meetings, 63 ; mob violence, 65, 219; the press en- couraging, 385. Moloch : militarism as, 42, 65, 81. Montesquieu: on the fate of Europe, 371. Moral Sense : corrupted by school training, 88 ; hot ex- hausted, 441 ; obliterated in professional fighters, 127; re- volts against warring govern- ments, 369; war injures, 41, 71, 81, 147, 415. Moral Warfare : greater than physical, 382 ; necessary in our time, 405. Morality : children taught a dual, 92 ; Christendom entertaining INDEX 457 a dual, 93 ; human nature ad- vancing in, 425 ; imperialism dis- courages, 358 ; more important than money, 370 ; more powerful than intellect to prevent war, 33 ; “off the slate,” 334 ; standards of, differ in personal and public matters, 32, 42, 47 ; war the abolition of, 42. Morley, John : on the newspaper press, 200. Nationalism, Nationality: cherished in right ways, 397, 401 ; on the mission field, 290; should become international, 439 - Nations: a martyr nation, 441 ; bankruptcy their sure fate, 17 ; brotherhood of, 403 ; cannot wage effectual war when Chris- tian, 67 ; capitalism controlling, 328, 336; capitalism destroying, 310, 329; caring only for “in- terests,” 349 ; degraded by their armies, 107, 147; “destinies of,” in collision, 14; development of, better than foreign conquest, 277, 287, 312, 326, 367, 391; emblems of, 135 ; flags as com- mercial assets of, 326; home land neglected for foreign in- vestments, 193, 31 1 , 326, 391; imperialism a cause of poverty to, 18 ; individuals their salva- tion, 71, 381 ; jealousy of each others’ trade, 320 ; killing them- selves with their own weapons, 19, 431 ; land hunger of, 358; “manifest destiny” of, 184; materialistic ideals of, 69 ; pride of, 58, 350 ; rebuking their own vices in others, 208 ; self-love of, 58 ; sharing the plunder of war, 67 ; similar capacities for good and evil in all, vii ; their wars regarded as just and necessary, il; war spirit demoralizing to, 41, 415. Native Races: appeal for jus- tice, 284, 318 ; corrupted by civ- ilization, 284 ; corrupted by traders, 356; exploited by cap- italism, 313, 326, 355; exploited by imperialism, 398 ; superior to civilized soldiery, 283 ; their im- pression of Christian races, 2S9; war upon, for trade, 276 ; war upon, for religion, 284. See Savages. New Israelism: doctrine of, 278, 294. New Testament: beatitudes im- perially revised, 191 ; soldiers and, 246 ; twisted into a defense of war, 256. See Old Testa- ment, Bible. Newspapers : See Press. Nursery: a training ground for the army, 83. Obedience : immorality of the soldier’s, 42, 115; irrationality of the soldier’s, 1 1 5 ; to Christ, 263. Old Testament: employed to encourage war, 94; a favorite during war time, 241 ; preferred to New Testament, 2 5g. See Bible. Paganism : Christendom based on Roman, 438 ; twentieth-cen- tury revival of, 292, 368. See Heathenism. Passive Resistance : to war and war taxes, 368. Patriotism: bias of, 53, 222; cant of, 190; different kinds of, 458 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 383; duty before, 3S0; false, 71, 85, 87, 352; humanity greater than, 401 ; living for one’s country better than fight- ing for it, 381, 396, 402 ; national prejudice, vi ; religion before, 384 ; repudiated for fraternity, 4 ° 3 - Peace : Bryant on, 447 ; Burns on, 446 ; certain in the future, 446 ; choice of peace or war is absolute, 26, 171 ; church has machinery for promoting, 141 ; commerce promotes, as its high- est interest, 307, 338; free trade promotes, 322 ; heroes of, 90, 425; how to work for, 436; politics should aim at, 169. “Peace Crusade, The”: in what sense a disappointment, 21, 414. Peace Movement : adherents subjected to violence, 386 ; basis of, 46 ; future of, 439 ; Hague Conference and Convention, 24, 439 ; schools of thought united amid differences, xi. People, The : deluded by capi- talism, 314, 329, 336; deluded by the classes, 389 ; deluded by newspapers, 202, 216, 383 ; deluded by their rulers, 183, 212, 309, 329, 363; deluded by schemers, 332 ; enslaved by mil- itarism, 175; held down by arma- ments and debt, 18, 328, 416; on the side of peace naturally, 17 1; preventable loss of their lives, 396 ; war passions and ex- citements, 61, 202, 332, 385. See Democracy, Nations. Persecution : of faithful preach- ers, 238 ; of missionaries for political reasons, 291. Politicians : alarmed but impo- tent, 17, 26; Christianity re- nounced by, 1 90 ; claiming preach- ers for war policy, 245, 252 ; conniving at mob law, 63 ; de- luding the people, 183, 363; empire preferred to common- wealth by, 391 ; enemies insulted and slandered by, 188; force preferred to reason by, 1 78 ; ma- terial preferred to moral inter- ests by, 1 39 ; missionaries as, 284, 291 ; plotting against other na- tions, 186; proper object of, is peace, 169; soldiers flattered by, 419; thwarting the pacific intentions of a people, 17 1; untruthfulness of, 185; vicious sayings of, 20, 28, 173, 176, 186, 190,191; war covering their mis- takes, 169, 180; war nourishing their pride, 172, 180; war pro- moting their personal ambitions, 175; war proving their stupidity, 178, 394; working on the peo- ple’s passions, 176, 179. See Governments. Politics : See Imperialism. Pope, Alexander: on exploita- tion of native races, 400. Poverty : increased by war, 65, 417 - Press, The: bloodthirsty, 206, 221 ; bought over to advocate war, 209; censorship of, 217; commercial, 204; conspiring to bring about war, 207, 222, 317; enemies insulted and slandered by, 52, 56, 213; false patriotism of, 221 ; free speech suppressed by, 221; low ideals of, 206 ; lying, 203, 209 ; military control of, 364; mob violence encouraged by, 383; popular passions INDEX 459 awakened by, 202 ; purpose of, 201; religious, the, 48, 225; unfairness of, 218, 226; vicious sayings of, 28, 32, 362 ; war corre- spondents, 223 ; war encouraged by, 47, 207. Pride: defeat does not subdue, 60; imperialism feeding, 361, 443 ; national, 58, 298, 350 ; of politicians nourished by war, 173,180; pulpit nourishing, 253. Pulpit, The : apostasy of, 243, 248; Bible bullies, 248, 253; casuistry of, 256; defaming ene- mies, 56, 247 ; demoralized by war spirit, 236, 252, 257 ; double- minded, 259; ethics of Jesus reasoned away, 256, 262 ; fear of losing “influence,” 240; fos- tering national pride, 233 ; inhu- manity of, 254 ; opportunities of, 235 ; preachers, some faith- ful, 237 ; silence of, 241; vicious utterances in defense of war, 13, 14, 15, 16, 29, 1 1 1, 1 12, 226, 236, 240, 241, 245, 247, 248, 250, 253, 2 54 . 2 SS. 2 57 . 259, 276, 277, 284; vicious utterances in praise of soldiers, 112. See Church. Reason : discarded for force, 177 ; eliminated from the soldier’s mind, 115 ; Swift, Jonathan, on, 12 ; war not prevented by appeal to, 9. Reformer: disappointed, 413; fight for a free press, 201 ; need of patience, 442 ; put lower than warrior, 90, 418; Tennyson on, 412. Reforms : almost within reach, 414; domestic improvement v. foreign conquest, 392 ; thwarted by new forms of evil, 99; thwarted by war, 415; thwarted by war expenditure*, 18, 416. Religion : alone sufficient to abolish war, viii ; best national defense, 381 ; ethical transfor- mation of, 235 ; politician dis- carding, 191 ; politics should be shaped by, 265 ; war cannot be prevented by a formal, 70; war for, a mistake, 437 ; war incom- patible with true religion, 70, n 5, 235. • See Christianity. Revenge: for death of mission- aries, 281, 301 ; sanctified by the church, 254. Revolution : suggested by wars of aggression, 277. Robertson of Brighton : on military brutality, 283. Ruskin, John : commerce as a cause of war, 308 ; covetousness the root of war, 334 ; enlisting men for labor, 367 ; heroism in labor, 428 ; how women could stop all wars, 102; The Crown of Wild Olive , 41, 235, 416. Sacrifices: cant of, 190, 257, 352 ; genuine, 441. Savages : their endurance of pain, 424; war against, 68, 136, 140. See Native Races. School, The : Bible in, 94 ; con- flicting with the home, 92 ; edu- cation should be for peace, 89; false patriotism taught, 85 ; mil- itary training in, 84 ; recruiting ground for army, 97 ; the army as a school, 365. Scott, Sir Walter: on fighting Christians, 279 ; on the soldier’s irresponsibility, 1 1 5, 119; on trade and war, 327 ; on wealth, and war, 333'. 460 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR Shakespeare: on the terrors of war, 174. ' Sin : death preferable to, 441 ; of imperialism, 362 ; original sin of nations, 349 ; war must be regarded as, 7, 16, 23, 35. Slander: of “the enemy,” 54, 56, 143, 189, 215, 290. Social Service: all should en- gage in, 367 ; nobler than war, 367. 415- Soldier : an advocate of war, 122,421, 442; a pagan survival, 1 10; brute symbols of his char- acter, 135; citizen more guilty than, 43, 55 ; courage of, not the highest kind, 422 ; creed of, 1 18 ; cruelty of, inevitable, 44, 1 1 7, 1 25 ; degraded and tortured, 119; de- moralized by war, 109, 112, 124, 137, 225; dishonesty a part of his training, 94, 129, 133; dis- likes the reformer, 421 ; encour- aged by the priest, 247; feelings of, in battle, 141; honors conferred on, 418 ; indifference of, to life, 139, 148 ; oath of obedience of, antichristian, 1 1 4 ; oath of obe- dience of, immoral, 42 ; oath of obedience of, irrational, 1 1 5 ; the “ Christian soldier,” 1 1 1, 421; “war madness” of, 143, 147. See Army. Soldier’s Pocket Book, The : quoted, 94, 120, 123, 124, 126, 130, 131, 132, 133, 138, 140, 217, 418. Spencer, Herbert: on the bias of patriotism, 53. Sufferings : approved by the pulpit, 254; cannot deter men from war, 5, 20, 43, 141, 334, 362 ; nature of the soldier’s, 423; of noncombatants, 127,145. Swift, Jonathan: on the causes of war, 40 ; on the cruelty of war, 53, 140; on the perversion of reason, 12. Taxes : refusal to pay, 368; the people pay, 314. Tennyson: jingoism of, 416; on the corrupting power of false- hood, 218 ; on the reformer’s disappointment, 412 ; on the sol- dier’s oath of obedience, 116. “Thou shalt not kill”: in- difference to life, 48, 144, 148. “To the Victors the Spoils”: annexation of conquered coun- tries, 67, 185. Tolstoy: on the gospels and the military regulations, 108; on military degradation, 1 19 ; on the Sermon on the Mount, 272 ; on the soldier declining to think, 1 16; on the true church, 25 1 - Trade: war for, 68, 309, 315, 320. See Commerce, Free Trade. Treason : patriotism counted as, 382; peace counted as, 387. Tyranny : imperialism creates, 354, 388 ; militarism promotes, 174; “necessity the tyrant’s plea,” 184. War: against savage tribes, 68, 136, 140, 276, 284; as confes- sion of failure, 180 ; as divine chastisement, 15; as fatal to the conquerors as to the con- quered, 16; barbarities inevi- table, 67, hi, 127, 136, 223; cannot be prevented by appeal to pity, 5, 20, 43, 1 4 1, 334, 3 62 1 cannot be prevented by appeal to reason, 9, 115, 442; cannot INDEX be prevented by considerations of expense, 18, 416; cannot be prevented by culture, 33 ; can- not be prevented by motives of expediency, 17; cannot be pre- vented by personal goodness, 31, 47 ; cannot be prevented by theories of lawful and unlawful kinds, 10 ; capital consumed in, 320; Carlyle on, 170, 348; causes of, 40, 65 ; church in favor of, 245, 264, 273 ; citizen responsible for, 43, 56 ; classes interested in, 66, 174, 212, 329, 434 ; commerce could abolish, 315, 339; courage required to dissent from, 7, 382; covetous- ness the root of, 334 ; crime fos- tered by, 48, 65, 100, 147; does not benefit human nature, 41 ; does not counteract luxury, 65 ; drink and, 136; evil consists in its evil passions, 8, 46; excuse always found for, 10 ; faith can abolish, 35, 442 ; for the sake of commerce, 308, 323 ; for the sake of dominion, 308 ; for the sake of freedom and religion, 437 ; for the sake of free trade, 322 ; for the sake of the gospel, 278, 287 ; governments gain too much power through, 171 ; horses and other animals in, 30, 126; hypocritical arguments for, 14, 69, 190; “if you wish for peace prepare for war,” 430 ; “impious hymnology ” in praise of, 15, 87; inconsistent with Christianity, 235 ; inconsistent with democracy, no; looting in, 133, 147 ; lunacy increased by, 65; meanness of, 137; might for right in, 183; moral damage of, to the consciences of 461 nations, 9, 41, 42, 109, 120, 415 ; moral damage of, to politicians, 169; moral damage of, to re- ligious teachers, 13, 235; moral damage of, worse than physical, 9, 43, 82, 103; not a problem but a crime, 34; not “inevi- table,” 435; not to be “human- ized” but abolished, 30, 126; passive resistance to, 368 ; pov- erty produced by, 65, 417 ; ro- mantic side of, 54, 80, 129; science perverted into an ex- cuse for, 14; secondary wrongs of, 19; sin, viii, 16, 26, 31, 41; “sinews of war,” 333; strata- gems of, 135; sufferings of non- combatants, 127, 145; the Great Stupidity, 120 ; toilers sacrificed to, 396, 414; “ war is hell ” used as an excuse, 29, 136; wounded in, 138 ; wounded and prisoners killed in, 139, 223. War Spirit, The: advantages of those who are free from, 41, 283 ; antichristian, 47, 70, 190, 240,384; canting, 190, 288, 353; cowardly, 67, 128, 423 ; cruelty of noncombatants, 43, 50, 109, 220, 254, 332; demoralizing all nations alike, vi ; demoralizing Christian missions, 273; demor- alizing the church, 244, 261, 273; demoralizing commerce, 307 ; demoralizing literature, 100; de- moralizing the preacher, 235 ; demoralizing the press, 202 ; de- moralizing women, 32 ; fostering civil discord, 63 ; fostering dual morality, 93, 414; fostering in- difference to life, 48 ; fostering national pride, 58, 173, 253, 298, 351 ; hostile to citizenship, 347, 362; hostile to free speech, 63, 462 MORAL DAMAGE OF WAR 221, 383; hostile to liberty, 174, 382 ; hostile to national sim- plicity, 65, 416; in the nursery, 83 ; in the public library, 99 ; in the school, 84; irrational, 177; is the real enemy, 46 ; lying, 94, 129, 185 ; mammon worship of, 65; moral atheism of, 96, 251, 299; persecuting, 239,382; per- verting history, 88 ; press en- couraging, 47, 202 ; revengeful and ungenerous, 49, 173, 184, 254, 349; slanderous, 54, 188, 213, 247, 290; utilizing the Old Testament, 94; war madness, 143- 147- Weapons: deadliness of modern, 429 ; what they may come to, 442. Whitman, Walt: on the greatest heroes, 427 ; on the ultimate religion, xiii. Women : effect of the war spirit on, 32 ; how they can put an end to war, 102; must rescue childhood from militarism, 102; prostituted to armies, 124, 144; sufferings of, in war, 52, 128, 145, 433 ; their instincts against war, 433. Wordsworth: “Carnage is God’s daughter,” 258. Date Due £8 2 3 194k ■ -i j &#&** w if ...1 nr f)