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THE WOELD WA 
 EOAD TO 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltdu 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE WORLD WAR 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ROAD TO PEACE 
 
 BY 
 
 T. B. McLEOD 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 By S. PARKES CADMAN 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

 Copyright, 1918 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and printed. Published, March, 1918 
 
 MAR 20 1918 
 
 ©CI.A494168 
 
TO 
 
 ALL LOVERS OF PEACE 
 
 WHICH IS THE OFFSPRING OF 
 
 RIGHTEOUSNESS AND TRUTH 
 
 AND TWIN SISTER OF 
 
 LIBERTY 
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE 
 
 OFFERED BY THE 
 
 AUTHOR 
 
 '*And the work of righteousness shall 
 be peace, and the effect of righteous- 
 ness quietness and assurance forever.^' 
 
FOEEWOED 
 
 Much that has been spoken and writ- 
 ten in these piping times about pacifism 
 and the pacifist has fallen short of its 
 purpose, and chiefly because the critics 
 have allowed their zeal to run into vio- 
 lence. 
 
 A people at white heat are apt to have 
 scant patience with lack of fervency, 
 and to give short shrift to any who may 
 hang back. Caution is mistaken for 
 hostility, and doubt for treason. We 
 are also prone to overlook the psycho- 
 logical fact that error is seldom if ever 
 cured by cursing it. Wrong opinion 
 like clay is stiffened rather than sof- 
 tened by fire. Men are not convinced 
 with a cudgel, or brought to terms by 
 recrimination. Opposition may for a 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 time be subdued, but it is not perma- 
 nently conquered by sheer force. Ke- 
 proval and rebuke in order to succeed 
 must be carried on with all longsuffer- 
 ing as well as doctrine. Even those of 
 us who count ourselves rooted and 
 grounded in the truth do not relish hav- 
 ing truth thrust at us on the prongs of 
 a pitchfork. 
 
 Then, besides, this damnatory method 
 of dealing with the pacifist fails to sat- 
 isfy a large number of people who, 
 though themselves militaristic for the 
 moment, are loath to believe that so 
 many men and women of exemplary 
 character are pacifistically inclined 
 without any rhyme or reason. Their 
 reason to be sure may not appear sound 
 on examination, but may it not be sin- 
 cere ? And if sincere is it not entitled 
 to the respect which men usually accord 
 sincerity? The American pacifist is 
 not necessarily a traitor, neither is he a 
 
FOEEWOE-D 
 
 fool, and many of us would like to have 
 his creed stated fairly and discussed 
 dispassionately. 
 
 The writer has endeavoured to put 
 himself in the pacifist's place; to catch 
 his point of view ; to meet him squarely 
 on his own ground and to show that his 
 position is not so impregnable as to ren- 
 der the reconsideration of it by himself 
 a waste of time. 
 
 The writer moreover entertains mod- 
 estly the hope that the following pages 
 may be of assistance to some who while 
 in hearty sympathy with the nation in 
 the present crisis may be at a loss on 
 the spur of the moment to give a reason 
 for the faith that is in them. 
 
 T. B. McLeod. 
 
i:tTTKODUCTOEY :n^0te 
 
 It is superfluous to introduce Dr. 
 McLeod to the religious world. He has 
 long been known and recognised on both 
 sides of the Atlantic as a thinker and a 
 preacher of ability whose usefulness in 
 common with that of many another di- 
 vine has in my judgment been curtailed 
 by his reluctance to give his utterances 
 the wider range which the press affords. 
 Fortunately I was permitted to read 
 the manuscript of this admirable and 
 weighty book, The World War and the 
 Road to Peace, and presuming upon 
 the long and intimate friendship with 
 which the author has honored me, I 
 urged its publication. After some dis- 
 cussion and rather because he deeply 
 felt the seriousness of the crisis now 
 
INTEODUCTOEY NOTE 
 
 upon the Cliristian Church than because 
 of my request, he consented to forego the 
 habit of a life-time and send out a mes- 
 sage which is as earnest and devout as it 
 is wise and timely. I shall not be 
 guilty of the impertinence of summar- 
 izing the argument which the author 
 pursues ; nor shall I in any way antici- 
 pate the profit to be obtained from the 
 author's discussion or the reader's pleas- 
 ure in a style which is as lucid as light, 
 and possesses a pungency reminiscent 
 of Thomas Huxley at his best. The 
 theme has already been treated by nu- 
 merous writers: by some with clarity 
 and conclusiveness: by others in that 
 sentimental temper which defeats jus- 
 tice in its yearning for a fictitious peace. 
 But few I have noted have brought to 
 the debate a fuller knowledge of its is- 
 sues than Dr. McLeod displays, and 
 none have expressed them to better 
 effect. The balance and sobriety of a 
 
INTKODUCTOEY NOTE 
 
 mature mind are apparent on every 
 page, and this putting of a vexed case 
 cannot fail to be greatly helpful and 
 even illuminating to thoughtful preach- 
 ers, teachers, lecturers, and laymen gen- 
 erally, who have constantly pondered 
 the questions at stake and doubtless have 
 often felt what Dr. McLeod here says 
 and says so well. Perhaps it is need- 
 less for me to add that I heartily indorse 
 the main positions he takes and so ade- 
 quately defends. J^or can I find any 
 satisfactory refutation for his apolo- 
 getic in behalf of righteousness as the 
 source of peace. The dangerous ten- 
 dencies which are neither moral nor im- 
 moral so much as they are non-moral, 
 and which make for peace as though it 
 were not a derivative of justice are here 
 candidly stated, and the appointed path 
 to the concord we all crave clearly indi- 
 cated. I am thankful that Dr. McLeod 
 has written this book and I believe it 
 
INTEODTJCTORY NOTE 
 
 will be an instrumentality for great 
 good in every circle where it is received. 
 It is much in small compass; a com- 
 pressed, concentrated, vigorous bro- 
 chure, catholic in spirit, unmistakable 
 in aim, and having the truest eloquence ; 
 the eloquence which belongs solely to an 
 unfaltering grasp of fundamental reali- 
 ties. 
 
 S. Paekes Cabman. 
 
CONTENTS 
 I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Plain Word with the Pacifist 1 
 
 II 
 
 Undebatable Ground . . . .16 
 
 III 
 
 Pacificism in Terms of Eeligion 31 
 
 IV 
 
 Pacificism in Terms of Con- 
 science 42 
 
 V 
 Pacificism in Terms of Humanity 57 
 
 YI 
 
 Compensations 77 
 
 VII 
 
 The Eeal Eoad to Peace ... 96 
 
The World War and 
 the Road to Peace 
 
 I 
 
 A PLAIN" WORD WITH THE PACIFIST 
 
 IN" these excited times words are apt 
 to run high and high words serve no 
 good purpose; certainly they do not 
 make for peace, whereas plain words if 
 spoken in a kindly spirit may hope for 
 a tolerant hearing, and if they do not 
 leave their auditor in a better mind they 
 at least do not leave him with a bitter 
 heart. 
 
 And yet it takes courage under some 
 circumstajices to speak plain words es- 
 pecially when you are to speak them to 
 1 
 
a THE WOELD WAR AND 
 
 your good friends whose flesh is still 
 quivering under the stinging lash of 
 criticism. Plain words however well 
 meant may prove under such circum- 
 stances as unacceptable as blisters on 
 raw wounds. 
 
 At the roll call of pacifists I hear 
 with no little regret responses from 
 some whom I am proud to number 
 among my personal friends who not only 
 deserve but command my confidence and 
 admiration — men of unchallenged in- 
 tegrity in the commercial world, of rec- 
 ognized standing and ability in the lit- 
 erary world, holding high places in the 
 Public Service, eminent as preachers of 
 righteousness and peace in the religious 
 world. It is easy to see therefore how 
 one possessed of ordinary modesty re- 
 coils from the task, though it be self- 
 imposed, of having a plain" word with 
 men to whom he is accustomed to listen 
 with deference, whose advice he covets 
 
THEi ROAD TO PEACE 3 
 
 on matters of business, whose writings 
 enrich his mind, at whose feet he gladly 
 sits and waits for instruction in right- 
 eousness and guidance in the way of life. 
 
 One does not like to find himself at 
 variance with such men, much less to 
 assume the role of censor or of counsel- 
 lor, though moved by an irresistible im- 
 pulse to speak a plain word to them for 
 the good of their souls. The writer be- 
 sides suffers from an instinctive aver- 
 sion to controversy of any sort, whether 
 with the sword, or with the pen, or with 
 the tongue. Dissension distresses him; 
 even discussion gets on his nerves. 
 Rather than insist on his point, his im- 
 pulse is to agree with his adversary 
 quickly. 
 
 There are two possible predicaments 
 which confront the man who is 
 prompted to speak to the pacifist just 
 now, neither of which can well be 
 avoided. One of these is the likelihood 
 
* THE WOELD WAR AKD 
 
 of being numbered with those offensive 
 opponents of pacificism who work off 
 their opposition in wordj abuse. They 
 call hard names ; they pronounce inflam- 
 matory judgments ; they rail ; they pre- 
 fer charges of disloyalty and treason. 
 In portioning out rebuke discrimination 
 has been cast to the winds. While it is 
 true that all pro-Germans, Sinn-Feiners, 
 Bolshevikis, slackers, cowards, traitors 
 are pacifists, it is not true that all pacif- 
 ists are pro-German. But all pacifists, 
 the pro-German and the patriotic alike, 
 have been brewed in the same mortar 
 with the same grinding pestle of wrath- 
 ful accusation. 
 
 Here then is one unpleasant predica- 
 ment, namely, that if I venture my plain 
 word I shall be turned down at the very 
 start as one more of those terrible ogres 
 who delight in billingsgate and love to 
 fondle every opponent with a club. 
 
 Failing to escape this fate I stand in 
 
THE BOAD TO PEACE O 
 
 for the other thing that I have dreaded. 
 For the pacifist is not as peaceable as 
 he looks. When set upon he is a hard 
 hitter. He does not sit down and ac- 
 quiescently accept as chastisement from 
 the hand of the Lord the criticisms of 
 men no better than himself. He strikes 
 back and fiercely sometimes; and I can 
 hardly expect to escape some share of 
 the retaliatory shelling meted out in 
 full measure to those who in their zeal 
 apply to the pacifist such terms as pussy- 
 foot, and molly-coddle, and fifty-fifty. 
 The recent lurid fulminations against 
 his foes by one of our most eminent and 
 influential pacifists ought to serve as a 
 warning to timid souls who may be 
 tempted to take issue with him and his 
 brethren. In his sabbath temper, he ex- 
 horts us all, when men are saying hot 
 and scorching things, to use language 
 which is free from heat, and to take 
 heed unto our ways that we sin not with 
 
b THE WOELD WAR Ain> 
 
 our tongue. After reading this ex- 
 hortation, one is more than surprised by 
 the bituminous rhetoric which this 
 peace-loving preacher of righteousness 
 employs as a vent for his holy wrath. 
 I dread being told as this pacifist has 
 told others that my patriotic utterances 
 are " bowlings/' that my best meant ef- 
 fort to inspire others with my own sen- 
 timents of loyalty is only a " feverish 
 frenzy/' and that if I attempt to stir up 
 the lukewarm I cannot hope to have the 
 countenance of the sanest and noblest 
 men of the country (meaning pacifists 
 of course) . 
 
 Even though my withers are as yet 
 unwrung, I can hardly abstain from 
 shivering as I read the mordant chas- 
 tisement which the press receives at 
 this pacifist's hands or rather his mouth. 
 " Fortunately/' he says, " E'ew York 
 papers are not taken seriously outside 
 of the city. They are despised in the 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 7 
 
 West and distrusted in the South. 
 They are Prussianized, and what they 
 are now teaching is the Gospel of Pots- 
 dam. The daily press with a few hon- 
 ourable exceptions — presumably the 
 Hearst papers and the Stoats Zeitung, 
 et al. — is owned by capitalists (let col- 
 leges and churches take notice, for they 
 are not altogether free from the baneful 
 influence of the capitalist), shouts for 
 big armies and navies and urges the na- 
 tion to war. Editors are dabblers in 
 world politics; they sit in their offices, 
 affect to speak with the oracular finality 
 of Jove, caricature and slander clergy- 
 men and others who believe in patience 
 and sacrifice, and show by their conduct 
 as well as by their words that they have 
 been with Jesus." 
 
 Nor is the business man spared. 
 " The munition makers, money lenders, 
 defence committees bring to bear on 
 Congress the utmost amount of pressure 
 
8 THE WOELD WAR AND 
 
 possible in order to plunge the nation 
 into war." 
 
 This is rather hard hitting by the man 
 who has just exhorted us to take heed 
 unto our ways that we offend not with 
 our tongue. Perhaps he makes a nice 
 distinction between offences with the 
 tongue and offences with the pen. 
 
 I have quoted these from abundant 
 sayings of like tenor by this preacher of 
 the gospel of peace in order to show that 
 unless one is prepared to take his medi- 
 cine, or to swallow whole the pacifist 
 creed, he might better keep away from 
 the front benches and remain mute. 
 
 l^evertheless, now that I have started 
 I am resolved to face the music and have 
 my say. Indeed my courage revives as 
 I think of the large number of honest, 
 open-minded pacifists who neither bark 
 nor bite, and who are seriously opposed 
 to militancy by word as well as by 
 sword. They see and understand that 
 
THE: ROAD TO PEACE 9 
 
 the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, 
 and is set on fire of hell ; that words can 
 do as much harm as bullets; are as a 
 matter of fact more dangerous, for the 
 worst thing a bullet can do is to kill the 
 body, whereas a word can kill the soul. 
 To shed the blood of an enemy in fair 
 fight is a venial sin compared with the 
 assassination of character by lying lips. 
 Indeed one need not even use the lips in 
 a deadly assault on character. A shrug 
 of the shoulder or a tilt of the eyebrow 
 will do the trick. There is no compari- 
 son as to the savagery of spraying one's 
 social rivals with labial vitriol and that 
 of spraying the enemy on the field with 
 shrapnel. Slashing other folks with a 
 serpent's tongue is a vile form of fight- 
 ing compared with the use of physical 
 force. 
 
 I am not saying all this by way of 
 justifying militarism so-called. Two 
 bad eggs cannot be depended on to make 
 
10 THE WOELD WAB ATTD 
 
 a good omelet; but I am saying it in 
 order to indicate that the pacifist is also 
 capable of bad blood, and also to suggest 
 that as long as he neglects to remove the 
 beam out of his own eye, he would better 
 not attempt to remove the mote from the 
 militaristic eye. 
 
 My courage to go on with what I have 
 to say is further stiffened by the convic- 
 tion that as a general rule pacifists like 
 other folk are amenable to reason; and 
 not only so, but are keen enough to note 
 the difference between sound reason and 
 sophistry, even when sophistry drapes 
 itself in a gown and speaks from a pul- 
 pit. No more worthy of confidence is 
 it there than if it spoke from an anvil 
 and wore a leathern apron. Sophistry- 
 is to sound reason what charlatanry is 
 to science ; what pedantry is to scholar- 
 ship; what quackery is to medicine; 
 what daubery is to art. You may re- 
 bind and label one of Zola^s novels 
 
THE BO AD TO PEACE 11 
 
 "moral pMlosophy/' but by doing so 
 you will not make it wholesome read- 
 ing. 
 
 "A man may cry, Cliurch, Cturch, 
 And be no better than other people j 
 A daw isn't a religious bird 
 Because it keeps a cawing from a steeple." 
 
 Take a sample or two of the sophistry 
 to the use of which some pacifists will 
 descend for the purpose of supporting 
 their doctrine. One of them asks us to 
 compare pacifism and militarism, and 
 to aid us in the comparison he defines 
 pacifism and then he defines militarism. 
 How do you suppose he defines the lat- 
 ter ? " The militarist," he says, " be- 
 lieves in war; believes war is a good 
 part of the normal and wholesome life 
 of the nation, and that without war 
 nations stagnate and the fibre of civi- 
 lization rots. The militarist believes 
 that war is the mother of virtues and 
 that without war at short intervals men 
 
12 THE WOELD WAE AND 
 
 lose their fighting edge and that virile 
 qualities grow feeble and have a tend- 
 ency to disappear." 'Now the writer 
 of this stuff knew when he wrote it that 
 there is not a man or woman on the 
 continent of I^orth America who be- 
 lieves any such thing of an American 
 militarist, not one man or woman. 
 There are plenty of people in Germany 
 who believe it. In fact this is the Ger- 
 man appraisal of war, but this gym- 
 nosophist of ours in order to strengthen 
 his pacifist creed in the eyes of the 
 American people draws a picture, not 
 of American militarism but of German 
 militarism, hoping I suppose that lit- 
 tle children and feeble-minded folk will 
 be moved to tears by the contrast. 
 This is not sound reasoning; this is 
 cheap sophistry. 
 
 Take another specimen of intellec- 
 tual legerdemain by this same pacifist. 
 After examining it one is left in doubt 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 13 
 
 as to whether his aim is to make out a 
 case against the British, or to soften 
 our judgment of Germany's guilt, or 
 both; but whatever his purpose, the 
 baseness of his acrobatic performance is 
 apparent to all. " If Germany is 
 drowning the women and children of 
 England, England is starving the 
 women and children of Germany." 
 He has nothing to say, you observe, 
 about the murder of American women 
 and children by Germany. "It is as 
 devilish to starve German women and 
 children on land, as to drown English 
 women and children in the sea." " The 
 British blockade is as illegal, indefensi- 
 ble, devilish as the German blockade by 
 submarines " ; — and now that we have 
 placed an embargo on foodstuffs likely 
 to reach Germany, our act also is il- 
 legal, indefensible and devilish. 
 
 The blockade of the ports of an en- 
 emy has the sanction of international 
 
14 the: WOEIiD WAR ANB 
 
 law, whereas the murder of women and 
 children is an atrocity condemned of 
 heaven and earth. This author tries to 
 make out that the holding up of neutral 
 mail and the interruption of merchant 
 ships on their way with aid and com- 
 fort for the enemy is every bit as il- 
 legal, defensible, and devilish as the 
 slaughter of innocents on the high seas 
 which they have a perfect right to 
 travel. Why does he not go on and 
 ameliorate Germany's crime in bombing 
 undefended towns, hospital ships, and 
 hospitals, and murdering little children 
 in school and babies in their cradles; 
 why does he not? Because this would 
 rather hurt his case in the eyes of those 
 whom he wants to persuade. This 
 pacifist has surely lost his compass, and 
 his standard of values has been mislaid. 
 Pacifists generally will not hesitate to 
 repudiate this sort of work in their be- 
 half ; just as they will not hesitate to 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 15 
 
 repudiate all vituperation and the call- 
 ing of hard names. The subject which 
 is engaging the attention of Americans 
 just now is too serious to admit of word 
 play and mutual recrimination. 
 
II 
 
 UNDEBATABLE GEOUND 
 
 AS we approach a free, flexible, and 
 friendly discussion of this sub- 
 ject, we will be surprised to find at how 
 many points we find ourselves in agree- 
 ment. 
 
 1. We are all of one mind in our ab- 
 horrence of war. We all wish that war 
 could never vex the world, just as we 
 wish that fire would not burn, or water 
 drown, or frost freeze, or sin damn. 
 When now and then I am advised by 
 my pacifist friends that I would be sur- 
 prised to know how many of our people 
 detest war, my reply is that I would be 
 surprised to hear of a single individual 
 among our population of over 100,000,- 
 16 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 17 
 
 000, who does not detest war, and that 
 if detestation of war makes a pacifist 
 then we are all pacifists, and always 
 have been and always will be. The 
 grim business of war has no attraction 
 for any one of us. No American citi- 
 zen needs to be preached at or to be bom- 
 barded with tracts in order that he may 
 become sensitive to the horrors of war. 
 He hates war with a perfect hatred, 
 and he loves peace so much that he is 
 going to have it even if he must fight for 
 it. As a people we have many differ- 
 ences. We differ widely on questions 
 governmental, political, social, educa- 
 tional, religious. We are by no means 
 of one mind as to the best methods to 
 pursue in the development of our na- 
 tional life. We are far apart in our 
 ideas about labour, capital, taxation, 
 the franchise; about internal affairs 
 and foreign relation ; but we are all one 
 in our abhorrence of bloodshed. The 
 
18 THE WOELD WAE AND 
 
 tales that come to us of the loss of life, 
 the suffering and agony which the 
 soldiers and sailors endure are enough 
 to curdle the blood in our veins. The 
 very thought of it all fills us with a 
 strange dismay and dread, and I am 
 sure that if there were any way out of 
 it, if savage beasts and savage men could 
 be tamed and brought to terms by 
 magic, or magnetism, or moral suasion, 
 there never would be any fighting. 
 When it comes to the frightfulness of 
 war, the American people know neither 
 militarist nor pacifist. Indeed the 
 common use of these terms is an abuse 
 of language. The American militarist 
 is not a man who loves war, but who has 
 reluctantly come to see that the brutal 
 power organized to destroy the liberties 
 and civilization of the world can be met, 
 resisted, and overcome only by force of 
 arms. The pacifist on the other hand 
 is not a coward. He is not a man 
 
THE EOAB TO PEACE 19 
 
 afraid to fight if need be, but he believes 
 that rather than resist by force the des- 
 perate demon who has assaulted the 
 peace and security of the world we 
 might better submit, and suffer, and 
 waive our rights until such time as the 
 demon is brought to his senses by pacific 
 means. 
 
 2. Another point about which there 
 can be no dispute concerns the origin 
 and authorship of this war. E'obody 
 doubts which of the nations is to blame 
 for the precipitation of the dire conflict 
 which has involved the whole world in 
 such misery. 
 
 England with her contemptible little 
 army of 150,000 men was in no con- 
 dition to go out against the trained and 
 disciplined millions of the Central Pow- 
 ers. It is matter of record that Great 
 Britain, France, and Russia exhausted 
 every resource of diplomacy in their de- 
 sire to avoid war. They went on their 
 
20 THE WOELD WAR AND 
 
 knees almost before the Kaiser in their 
 entreaties that he would spare the world 
 the catastrophe into which he and his 
 Potsdam gang had chosen to plunge it. 
 Serbia surely did not want to fight. 
 Rather than get into trouble she offered 
 to yield everything short of her sov- 
 ereign rights as a nation. Poor little 
 Belgium — tortured and crucified by 
 that moral monster who has been out- 
 lawed by the civilized nations — did not 
 want to fight. She drew the sword only 
 when her territory was actually invaded 
 by the Hun in defiance of his solemn 
 oath to respect and protect Belgium's 
 neutrality. Italy did not want to fight ; 
 and for a year and a half after war 
 broke out maintained a strict neutrality. 
 And surely responsibility for this war 
 cannot be laid at our door. The United 
 States did not want to fight. For two 
 and a half years, in spite of numerous 
 provocations which no other great self- 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 21 
 
 respecting nation would have put up 
 with we succeeded in keeping out of 
 war. For two and a half years the 
 insolent, arrogant German ogre kept 
 thrusting his leering lineaments into 
 our face, but provoked nothing from us 
 in response save an occasional mild pro- 
 test. In the opinion of some of us we 
 kept out of the fight altogether too long ; 
 so long in fact that the enemy decided 
 we were cowards; our friends judged us. 
 to be morally indifferent; and we our- 
 selves had begun to lose all sense of self- 
 respect as a nation. During this 
 period of neutrality we endured unpar- 
 donable insult and outrage with unpar- 
 donable patience and long suffering. 
 Our hospitality was being barefacedly 
 abused by the guests of the nation. 
 The ambassadors of the Central Powers, 
 German military and naval attaches, 
 propagandists, agents, spies were plot- 
 ting against our peace; were subsidiz- 
 
22 THE WOBLD WAE AKD 
 
 ing our press ; were corrupting our leg- 
 islators ; were dynamiting our factories ; 
 were sowing the seeds of dissension 
 among our people; were seeking to em- 
 broil us in war with Mexico and Japan ; 
 were unleashing their submarines to 
 sink our merchant ships and to murder 
 our citizens, men, women and children. 
 There is no American fit to be at 
 large but knows that we are not respon- 
 sible for this war, that we did not pro- 
 voke it, unless indeed our refusal to 
 become a vassal under German suze- 
 rainty is to be regarded as provocation. 
 To quote the words of President Wilson, 
 " It is plain enough how we were forced 
 into the war. The extraordinary in- 
 sults and aggressions of the Imperial 
 Government of Germany left us no self- 
 respecting choice but to take up arms in 
 defence of our rights as a free people, 
 and of our honour as a sovereign gov- 
 ernment. The military masters of G^r- 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 23 
 
 many denied us the right to be neutral. 
 They filled our unsuspecting communi- 
 ties with vicious spies and conspirators 
 and sought to corrupt the opinion of our 
 people in their own behalf. They 
 sought by violence to destroy our indus- 
 tries and arrest our commerce. They 
 tried to incite Mexico to take up arms 
 against us, and to draw Japan into a 
 hostile alliance with her. They impu- 
 dently denied us the use of the high seas 
 and repeatedly executed their threat 
 that they would send to their death any 
 of our people who ventured to approach 
 the coasts of Europe. What great na- 
 tion under such circumstances would 
 not have taken up arms ? Much as we 
 have desired peace, it was denied us and 
 not of our own choice. This flag under 
 which we serve would have been dis- 
 honoured had we withheld our hand." 
 
 If any pacifist in spite of these facts 
 and this declaration still doubts which 
 
24 THE WORLD WAR ANIO 
 
 nation is to blame for this war, I would 
 lead him right up to the inner sanctum 
 of pacifist headquarters and have him 
 listen to what the High Priest himself 
 has to say. " One nation is more re- 
 sponsible for this war than any other, 
 and on that nation should rest the hot 
 indignation of all men who love right- 
 eousness. The trampling upon Belgium 
 was one of the most infamous and das- 
 tardly crimes committed by any nation 
 in a thousand years. If that was not 
 wrong, then there has never been a 
 wrong thing done on our planet." And 
 he expresses the hope that the Hohen- 
 zoUern dynasty will be overthrown. So 
 firmly convinced from the beginning of 
 Germany's guilt was this distinguished 
 leader in the pacifist school, and so 
 strongly did the current of his sympa- 
 thies run in the direction of the entente 
 allies that he deprecated the President's 
 
7'HE ROAD TO PEACE 25 
 
 advice to the American people to ob- 
 serve a strict neutrality. 
 
 3. One other point at which pacifists 
 and non-pacifists can meet without the 
 least danger of dispute concerns the pur- 
 pose with which we as a nation deter- 
 mine to enter this war. It will be uni- 
 versally admitted that we have entered 
 the war with hands as clean and hearts 
 as pure as those of the men who fought 
 at Lexington, at Bunker Hill, at Valley 
 Forge and at Yorktown. And what is 
 true of our purpose is we believe equally 
 true of the purpose of our allies. It is 
 quite a common way of ours — quite 
 cheap also and not at all satisfactory 
 in its result — when we wish to convict 
 a man or a nation of present guilt to 
 rake up the past and think of all the 
 evils that were done in those degenerate 
 days. It is admitted that many selfish, 
 aggressive, unrighteous wars have in the 
 
2Q THE WORLD WAE AND 
 
 past been wa^ed by European nations, 
 but it is not a respectable metbod of rea- 
 soning to take me back to wars waged 
 long ago in India, Africa, Cbina, Spain, 
 Ireland, in order to convince me tbat 
 England and France must be criminally 
 engaged in tbis war. Sucb a style of 
 reasoning as tbis is on about tbe same 
 moral plane as petty larceny. 
 
 'Not one of tbe entente belligerents is 
 figbting for Empire, for territorial ex- 
 pansion, for commercial supremacy, for 
 tbe suppression of a successful competi- 
 tor, or for any selfisb end wbatsoever. 
 Tbese nations are figbting, as we are 
 figbting, to make tbe world a safe place 
 for free men to live in. We are figbt- 
 ing in order to prevent a cruel, brutal 
 autocracy from overriding weak and 
 defenceless peoples. We are figbting 
 to secure for small nations tbe rigbt to 
 live tbeir own lives free from outside 
 interference, to enjoy political auton- 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 27 
 
 omy, and to develop their own ideals. 
 We have taken up the bloody pen to 
 write that never again on this planet 
 shall a brutal military power attempt to 
 establish the rule of might over right, 
 to set up a new moral code for the world, 
 and to dominate the thought and will of 
 other peoples; and while we are about 
 it to write it so indelibly that no reflu- 
 ent wave of barbarism can ever wash it 
 out. 
 
 " The object of this war," says Presi- 
 dent Wilson, " is to deliver the free peo- 
 ples of the world from the menace and 
 the actual power of a vast military estab- 
 lishment controlled by an irresponsible 
 government which, having secretly 
 planned to dominate the world, pro- 
 ceeded to carry this plan out without 
 regard either to the sacred obligations of 
 treaty or the long established practices 
 and long cherished principles of inter- 
 national action and honour." 
 
28 THE WORLD WAR AND 
 
 Here then are three important points 
 about which we are all of one mind: 
 
 (1) We all hate war. We are a peace- 
 able and peace loving people. We are 
 so bj a temperament and by education. 
 
 (2) We are all agreed as to where the 
 blame for this war lies. We did not 
 provoke it, we were provoked into it, 
 as the President says, " we were denied 
 any other choice." (3) We are agreed 
 that in taking up the sword, we are not 
 actuated by revenge, or by greed, or by 
 lust of conquest, or by any sinister mo- 
 tive whatsoever, but only by the high 
 and fine resolve to help redeem this 
 world from slavery to an immoral mon- 
 ster, and to establish more firmly in the 
 earth the reign of righteousness and 
 truth. 
 
 But, alas, while accepting without re- 
 serve the facts and principles stated 
 above, we are not all of one mind as to 
 the method to be employed for the 
 
THE; BOAD TO PEACE 29 
 
 emancipation of enslaved peoples and 
 for the putting down of that arrogant 
 power which dares to impose its will on 
 the civilized world. The majority of 
 us believe that the savage enemy who 
 flouts all moral obligation can be mas- 
 tered by force only; that moral suasion 
 would be worse than wasted on the ram- 
 pant wild beast; and ghastly though it 
 be to even contemplate there is nothing 
 for it but to meet and down the demon 
 power with its own weapon. 
 
 On the other hand a respectable mi- 
 nority of the people calling themselves 
 pacifists insist on some other way for the 
 settlement of controversies than the way 
 of physical force and therefore they are 
 opposed to armies and navies and guns 
 and forts and everything suggestive of 
 war. 
 
 The grounds on which their oppo- 
 sition rests are various and of various 
 value. Indeed, to the average intelli- 
 
30 THE EOAD TO PEACE 
 
 gence many of them are of no value as 
 foundations. Some are as unsubstan- 
 tial as a dream, or as a mirage of the 
 desert which disappears as it is ap- 
 proached. Some are as undependable 
 as quick-sand, and some are so fluffy and 
 flimsy that they shrivel up like gossa- 
 mer in the judgment fires of criticism. 
 On such grounds as these is based the 
 opposition of all sorts of queer people, 
 visionary people, flighty people with 
 ephemeral interests who are ever ready 
 to be seized with any sort of novel no- 
 tion provided it be vague enough and to 
 organize themselves around it until the 
 novelty of it wears off, or until sup- 
 planted by some other notion still more 
 vague and unpracticable. Such people 
 are hopelessly unamenable to plain 
 words ; so I pass on to examine some of 
 the more substantial grounds on which 
 opposition to war is based by more sensi- 
 ble pacifists. 
 
Ill 
 
 PACIFISM IIS" TEEMS OF KELIGION 
 
 THERE is the ground of religious 
 belief. Many pacifists are the 
 enemies of war because they believe that 
 Jesus was the enemy of war. If this 
 be true that Jesus was the enemy of war 
 of every kind then none but Jews, athe- 
 ists, agnostics and secularists, would be 
 in this war or ought to be in this war; 
 for the bulk of the American people ac- 
 cept the teachings of Jesus as of ulti- 
 mate authority. We must not allow to 
 go unchallenged the implied claim of 
 the pacifists that they are the only peo- 
 ple who recognize and yield obedience to 
 the authority of Jesus. 
 
 But is it true that Jesus declared him- 
 31 
 
32 THE WORLD WAR AKD 
 
 self in opposition to war and forbade his 
 followers to fight? We know he for- 
 bade revenge, vindictiveness, bitterness, 
 hatred, retaliation, reprisal. Even if 
 he had never uttered a word in condem- 
 nation of these we wonld know that he 
 was dead against them. We would 
 know it from his own behaviour; from 
 the example he set the world of gentle- 
 ness, meekness, generosity, charity, and 
 compassion. 
 
 But was he against war of every sort 
 regardless of the purpose with which 
 men and nations fight ? If we take him 
 literally and not as the oriental mind 
 took him — and we must remember that 
 Jesus had to do with the oriental mind, 
 which was fed on imagery — then we 
 must admit that he was dead against 
 war. 
 
 " Resist not evil. If a man smite thee on the 
 one cheek turn to him the other also. If a man 
 compel thee to go with him a mile, go with 
 him twain. Love your enemy, etc." 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 33 
 
 These and other like sayings of his 
 do sound as if he did not intend his fol- 
 lowers to fight for any cause whatsoever. 
 If I am to take them literally and obey 
 them implicitly, then no rights of mine 
 are so sacred as to justify my vindica- 
 tion of them by force; and no wrongs 
 of which I may become the victim can 
 be so outrageous as to justify my resist- 
 ance of them. The burglar may have 
 my property ; the human swine may in- 
 vade and despoil my home, mistreat my 
 wife, and murder my children with im- 
 punity. 
 
 But while distraught and well-nigh 
 exhausted by my effort to adjust my 
 thinking so as to harmonize with these 
 sayings of Jesus, I suddenly come 
 upon other sayings of his for an 
 interpretation of which I must appeal 
 to the pacifist. That saying of his 
 for instance about hating my father, 
 mother, wife and children as a para- 
 
34 THE WORLD WAR AND 
 
 mount condition of disciplesihip ; and 
 that other saying of his, " I came not to 
 send peace on earth, but a sword; 
 to set a man at variance against his 
 father and the daughter against her 
 mother, and the daughter-in-law against 
 her mother-in-law," and that saying of 
 his, " He that hath no sword let him sell 
 his garment and buy one." Am I to 
 take these sayings of Jesus literally 
 also? The pacifist cannot have it both 
 ways. If the words of Jesus which 
 seem to be opposed to war are to be 
 taken literally, by what canon of inter- 
 pretation am I required to take figura- 
 tively these other sayings of his which 
 seem to imply that under certain cir- 
 cumstances he approves of war. 
 
 As a matter of fact any effort of ours 
 to arrive at an understanding of these 
 and other similar sayings of the Mas- 
 ter must lead to endless confusion un- 
 less we study them first in the light of 
 
THE BOAD TO PEACE 35 
 
 the circumstances under which they 
 were spoken, and secondly in the light of 
 the nature of him who spoke them. 
 
 The old Jewish custom of revenge 
 and retaliation was under discussion; 
 and Jesus was condemning that custom 
 according to which the Jew had a right 
 to demand an eye for an eye, and a 
 tooth for a tooth. A cruel custom this, 
 exclaims Jesus. Eather than insist on 
 the practice of it, it would be a better, 
 finer, nobler thing to suffer any indig- 
 nity even to the turning of the other 
 cheek to the smiter. 
 
 It relieves me to think that it was in 
 the spirit of this counsel that President 
 Wilson said on one occasion, " We as a 
 nation are too proud to fight " — that is 
 to say too proud to stoop to vindictive re- 
 prisals — too proud to repay outrage 
 with outrage. 
 
 Then again before we decide as to the 
 value of these sayings of Jesus, we 
 
db THE WORU> WAR Aim 
 
 should study them in the light of the 
 mind and spirit that were in him. He, 
 the chivalrous champion of the wronged 
 and the oppressed, was often moved to 
 anger. His pulses quickened and his 
 face grew white as he looked on cruelty 
 and injustice. While he never resorted 
 to the use of carnal weapons — unless 
 we make an exception of that whip of 
 small cords — he fought back neverthe- 
 less with terrific fierceness. The thun- 
 derbolts which the old law hurled 
 against wrong and the wrongdoer were 
 as feathers compared with his fulmina- 
 tions aimed at sin and the sinner. The 
 angry lightnings which played about 
 Sinai were concentrated in the Sermon 
 on the Mount. The tempests of the di- 
 vine wrath as reported in the Old Testa- 
 ments were dew falls compared with the 
 outpouring of Jesus' soul against in- 
 iquity. While recalling how the pro- 
 phets portray him as the Lamb of God, 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 37 
 
 let US not forget that they portray him 
 also as the Lion of the Tribe of Juda. 
 If they saw him coming as a preacher 
 of peace, they also saw him as a warrior 
 coming up out of Edom with dyed gar- 
 ments from Bozrah, sword on thigh and 
 travelling in the greatness of his 
 strength. 
 
 Jesus urged men to be generous and 
 gentle, but he never urged them to' be 
 molly-coddles. He forbade vindictive- 
 ness, but he never forbade vindicative- 
 ness. He required men to be long suf- 
 fering under personal grievance, but he 
 expected them to defend the weak even 
 to the death. He discouraged retalia- 
 tion, the taking of an eye for an eye, but 
 he never encouraged men to permit with- 
 out resistance the invasion of their 
 homes, the desecration of their sanctu- 
 aries, the ruin of their property, the 
 abuse of their wives, and the murder of 
 their children. 
 
38 THE WOELD WAR AIH) 
 
 Those of us who would shift over on 
 Jesus the responsibility for our oppo- 
 sition to fighting with or for our coun- 
 try owe it to ourselves to make sure 
 that our conception of his program in 
 the interest of mankind coincides with 
 the facts. It was, as stated by himself, 
 a part of that program to purify and 
 improve the moral and spiritual facul- 
 ties of men; but it was not any part of 
 his program to give them a new set of 
 faculties in place of the original ones. 
 He did not undertake to deal with men 
 as we are sometimes obliged to deal with 
 a decrepit and useless clock, namely, to 
 substitute an entire new set of works for 
 the old ones, leaving only the case intact. 
 He came to heal the morally sick, not to 
 supply them with a different set of or- 
 gans and senses; not to give them an- 
 other nature, but to reform their present 
 nature. He caused lame men to walk, 
 but he did not supply them with a differ- 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 39 
 
 ent kind of legs. He restored the par- 
 alytic, not by giving him a new set of 
 muscles and nerves, but by reviving the 
 power of the old ones. He caused the 
 blind to see and the deaf to hear, but he 
 did not alter the structure of their eyes 
 and their ears. Even so, he found 
 men's spiritual vision dinamed, their 
 spiritual powers partially paralyzed, 
 and he restored their defective vision, 
 revitalized the impaired faculties and 
 gave them a new aim, a new ambition, 
 a new outlook, and new ideals. To 
 eliminate all or any of their original en- 
 dowments would prove nothing less or 
 else than an annihilation of their iden- 
 tity and the turning out of other kinds 
 of creatures. Instead of doing this, his 
 object was to verify, vivify, purify and 
 empower the capacities with which men 
 come into the world. Among these are 
 love, sympathy, compassion, anger, 
 moral indignation. To eradicate these 
 
40 THE WOELD WAR AND 
 
 from the structure of the soul would 
 only be to dehumanize men. God 
 would not be God without them. Men 
 Z- would not be men without them. To 
 render men incapable of love, sympathy, 
 compassion, would reduce them to the 
 level of beasts. To render them in- 
 capable of anger and moral indignation 
 would reduce them to passionless paste. 
 To quench in man the iires of moral in- 
 dignation would be in a way as much of 
 a disaster as to render him incapable of 
 love. This would not be giving him a 
 new heart, but afflicting him with fatty 
 degeneration of the old heart. Better 
 leave him as he is than render him an 
 anemic and impotent non-resister of 
 wrong. 
 
 If I could be convinced that Jesus 
 meant to make of me a non-resister un- 
 der all circumstances ; meant to develop 
 in me a soft and easy tolerance of wrong 
 and the wrongdoer and an aversion to 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 41 
 
 dealing lustily with both; meant me to 
 lie down and be trampled on by a ruth- 
 less foe; meant me to compromise prin- 
 ciple and negotiate peace at any price 
 with an enemy rather than fight him, I 
 would feel compelled to select from 
 among the list of the world's heroic 
 worthies another teacher and guide who 
 would bid me sacrifice and suffer, fight 
 and die in behalf of honour, liberty and 
 righteousness. 
 
IV 
 
 PACIFISM IN TERMS OF CONSCIENCE 
 
 ANOTHER class of pacifists base 
 their objection to war on moral 
 grounds. They fall back not on the au- 
 thority of Jesus but on the authority of 
 conscience. They are conscientious ob- 
 jectors. They have no desire to search 
 the scriptures for ammunition where- 
 with to pop militants. They have no 
 use for the sentimental stuff that is be- 
 ing served up in the name of religion. 
 They are too intelligent to think of ex- 
 ploiting in support of their position cer- 
 tain moral maxims of Jesus couched in 
 oriental imagery and used for the pur- 
 pose of pointing out to a revengeful 
 people a more excellent way of behav- 
 iour. They have chosen what they be- 
 42 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 43 
 
 lieve to be more solid ground for their 
 objection to war. Let us see whether 
 this ground they have chosen is rock or 
 shifting sand. 
 
 1. The presumption seems to be 
 against them, though we are not going 
 to be satisfied with presumption. A 
 man who persists in setting up the au- 
 thority of his individual conscience 
 against that of the collective conscience 
 on any public question ought to make 
 very sure that he is in possession of a 
 direct divine revelation. When the 
 question is a private and personal one, 
 the imperatives of conscience are su- 
 preme and must not be meddled with or 
 gainsaid by the outsider, however wise 
 the outsider may be. But when the in- 
 dividual conscience comes into collision 
 with the public conscience on questions 
 affecting the state, the presumption is 
 that the decision of the individual con- 
 science is not to be trusted. 
 
44 THE WOELD WAR AKD 
 
 2. We are compelled to listen to much 
 that is being said in these days about 
 rights — constitutional rights, moral 
 rights, religious rights — supposed to 
 be sanctioned and secured to the indi- 
 vidual not only by public statute but by 
 private conscience. On this double 
 ground the soap box orator claims and 
 defends his right to preach sedition ; the 
 peace at any price man his sentimental 
 piffle; the teacher his corruption of the 
 minds of the youth of the land; the 
 preacher his pathetic appeals to sensi- 
 tive children and suffering women; the 
 legislator his treasonable appeals to the 
 masses; the anarchistic demagogue his 
 red shirted damnation of the prosperous 
 and his impudent effort to build a devil's 
 bridge between the home of him who has 
 and the home of him who has not. 
 
 3. 'Now this whole question about 
 rights, even when the rights men claim 
 sound reasonable enough, is a very com- 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 45 
 
 plex one. It is, however, a well estab- 
 lished principle of which the pacifist 
 should take notice that when even the 
 conscientious rights of the individual 
 conflict with the rights of society, the 
 rightejof society musi remain paramount 
 even though the individual suffer 
 martyrdom for conscience' sake. For 
 instance, the people in their organized 
 capacity resolve to have courts of jus- 
 tice, school houses, a system of police, 
 public roads, canals, breakwaters, 
 bridges, lighthouses, etc. Some of us 
 never have need of the courts or the po- 
 lice or the canals or the lighthouses 
 and we might therefore quite conscien- 
 tiously claim as our right exemption 
 from taxation for the support of these 
 institutions, and call the forcible collec- / 
 tion of taxes for this purpose an in- 
 fringement of our rights. But such as- 
 sertion of our rights would very prop- 
 erly be laughed out of court. The bach- 
 
46 THE. WORLD WAR A.WD 
 
 elor has rights, but nobody will regard 
 seriously his right to claim exemption 
 from the school tax on the ground that 
 he has no children to be benefited by the 
 schools. The Quaker has rights, but 
 what becomes of his conscientious objec- 
 tion to fighting when his country is 
 driven to war? The state recognizes 
 nothing as the right of the individual 
 which interferes with its own suprem- 
 acy. To allow an individual citizen to 
 count himself absolved from conformity 
 to the expressed will of the majority be- 
 cause that will comes in collision with 
 his scruples is to invite anarchy. When 
 the state guarantees to the individual his 
 legal rights, his constitutional rights, it 
 does not extend that benefit to his whims, 
 I his caprices, his prejudices, or even to 
 1 his conscientious convictions, or pledge 
 ■ itself to respect the imagined rights of 
 the Jew, the Quaker, the Mormon, the 
 anarchist or the pacifist. 
 
THE EOAI> TO PEACE 47 
 
 4. But the conscientious objector 
 raises the point that what is wrong for 
 an individual to do can never be right 
 for a hundred or a million individuals to 
 do. If it is wrong for two men to quar- 
 rel and to settle their controversy with 
 deadly weapons it can never be right for 
 two organizations of men called nations 
 to use force in the settlement of their 
 controversy. The number of men en- 
 gaged in a fight does not justify the 
 fighting. This is plausible reasoning. 
 Let us see if it has any merit above that 
 of plausibility. How about the major 
 premise of the syllogism ? Even a very 
 young child will see at once that it is a 
 baseless assumption. He will see that 
 it is not always wrong for a man to fight 
 and with deadly weapons at that. He 
 will see that it is not pacifism but paltry 
 cowardice in a man who does not put 
 up a fight when a fellow man attempts to 
 take his property or his life. 
 
48 THE WOEIiB WAR AND 
 
 But granting for the sake of argument 
 the assumption that it is wrong for an 
 individual to fight, does that fact, allow- 
 ing for the moment that it is a fact, 
 prove that it is wrong for a community 
 or a nation to fight? To allow that is 
 to disregard and disown a primary vital 
 truth, namely, that moral duties are 
 often determined by moral relations. I 
 am not insisting, mark you, that all 
 moral duties are so determined. 'No re- 
 lations or complications or combination 
 of circumstances can make murder, or 
 theft, or lying other than immoral. 
 ^Nevertheless it is true as we may see by 
 a simple illustration or two that certain 
 acts take their moral complexion from 
 the character of the relations in which 
 the actors stand to one another. 
 
 A little boy is severely and cruelly 
 treated by his big brother, who seems to 
 take pleasure in torturing those who are 
 not big and strong enough to defend 
 
THE: KOAD TO PEACE 49 
 
 themselves. The little fellow feels 
 keenly for a time the wrong that has 
 been done him and his heart is full of 
 anger and resentment; but by and by 
 when the smart of his bruises has 
 passed away, he forgets his injuries, for- 
 gives his cruel brother and is ready to 
 join him in the next game as if nothing 
 had happened ; and we applaud the little 
 fellow's magnanimity and we say what a 
 splendid, generous and noble spirit that 
 boy possesses. But the unhappy inci- 
 dent comes to the knowledge of the 
 father of the boys. What will he do? 
 What is his duty in view of what has 
 taken place? Shall he ignore the af- 
 fair ? Shall he take no notice of the big 
 brother's vicious behaviour? Shall he 
 treat the boy as if he had committed no 
 offence, and condone his cruelty? To 
 do so would not only he a crime against 
 justice but a crime against the boy 
 for whose moral training he as a father 
 
50 THE WOELD WAR AOT> 
 
 is responsible. If he winks at his son's 
 brutality he will have nobody to blame 
 but himself if by and by he finds he 
 has a Cain on his hands. You see that 
 what was noble in the little brother to 
 do, would be base in the father to do. 
 Moral duties are sometimes determined 
 by moral relations. 
 
 A good citizen going about his law- 
 ful business is set upon and brutally 
 beaten and left for dead by a beastly 
 bruiser of a man who knows no law but 
 that of force and recognizes no author- 
 ity but that of his own will. The in- 
 jured man is taken to the hospital and 
 recovers. His heart is for a time hot 
 with indignation against his assailant, 
 but being a kind-hearted, magnanimous, 
 charitable man he not only refuses to 
 take reprisals but forgives his enemy. 
 And we say what a fine generous thing 
 to do ! But the assault is witnessed by 
 an officer of the law who hales the crim- 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 51 
 
 inal to court for punishment. AVhat 
 now will the judge do with the prisoner ? 
 Will he get down from the bench, pat 
 the savage on the back, poor-poor 
 him, and give him money to pay his fare 
 home ? That would be to encourage the 
 man in his evil courses, to confuse his 
 moral consciousness — if he should hap- 
 pen to have any moral consciousness 
 left — to put bad men on a par with 
 good men, and to expose the court and 
 the law to contempt. T\niat was noble 
 in the injured citizen to do would be 
 base in the judge to do. Moral duties 
 are determined by moral relations. 
 What we might applaud as a shining ex- 
 ample of generosity on the part of the 
 injured individual we would denoimce 
 as an atrocious outrage of justice on the 
 part of the judge who is the agent and 
 representative of the social organism. 
 
 5. We have too much respect for our 
 fellow citizen of the pacifist brand to 
 
62 THE WOEIJ> WAE AI^D 
 
 suspect that there is even one of their 
 number who objects to the agencies and 
 implements in the way of courts, juries, 
 judges, police, prisons which we employ 
 to fight the lawless within our gates. 
 This being so, it is hard to understand 
 why they should object to our use of all 
 the resources at our command to fight 
 the lawless who thunder at our gates 
 from without. 
 
 6. A brutal and unbarbarous nation 
 given over wholly to war — its people 
 trained not merely in military camps, 
 but in universities, schools, churches, 
 homes and nurseries — inspired by the 
 lust of conquest, marshalling its forces 
 during the lifetime of a generation for 
 the subjugation of the civilized world, 
 has without provocation assaulted this 
 country which has dwelt in peace, cul- 
 tivated the arts of peace, and lived on 
 terms of good will with all its neigh- 
 bours. It has trampled on our flag. 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 53 
 
 betrayed our good faith, broken its 
 signed and sealed contracts with us, 
 maltreated our citizens, murdered our 
 women and children, sunk our merchant 
 ships bound on peaceful errands, cor- 
 rupted our press, sown sedition among 
 our people. What is our duty as a na- 
 tion under these circumstances? The 
 man who on moral grounds and 
 prompted by his conscientious scruples 
 counsels us to waive our rights rather 
 than to fight; to surrender and submit 
 to these unspeakable indignities and ir- 
 reparable injuries, yes, and even allow 
 this demonic power to overrun our land, 
 devastate our fair fields, burn and pil- 
 lage our cities and homes and reduce us 
 to the condition of prostrate Belgium 
 without ever striking a blow in vindica- 
 tion of our national honour and in de- 
 fence of the oppressed whose cry rises 
 up into the ears of the Lord God of 
 Sabaoth; this man would better look to 
 
54 THE WOELD WAE AND 
 
 that conscience of his and see of what 
 sort it is. 
 
 7. Conscience, however we may de- 
 fine or think of it — an inward moni- 
 tor ; the voice of God ; God's vice-gerent 
 in the heart of man; the tongue that 
 tastes the flavour of an intention — may 
 be in one of several states. Meant to be 
 an infallible guide in conduct, it is often 
 dimmed, blurred, dulled, perverted, 
 prostituted by passion, by selfishness, 
 by prejudice, by pride, by ambition, by 
 ignorance. When therefore a man sets 
 the authority of his private conscience 
 over against the testimony of the public 
 conscience he should make very sure 
 that his conscience is in good order. 
 The conscience of some of us is in the 
 condition of an old sun dial in a neg- 
 lected garden. Once trustworthy, it 
 is now hurled from its pedestal and lies 
 overgrown and smothered by tall rank 
 weeds. Conscience may be sensitive or 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 55 
 
 it may be seared as with a hot iron. It 
 may be alive or it may be dead. It may 
 be independent of the will or it may be 
 the creature of the will. It may see 
 clearly or be purblind or totally blind. 
 It may serve as a guide or it may serve 
 as a mask for cowardice. If it be true 
 that conscience makes cowards of u& all, 
 it is equally true that cowardice makes 
 for some of us the only shred of con- 
 science we possess. O ! Conscience, 
 what crimes are committed in thy name ! 
 One man persecutes the Christians, 
 hauling them to prison and to judgment 
 under the stress of his conscience and 
 believing the while he is liquidating a 
 heavy debt to God. Another betrays 
 his master for thirty pieces of silver 
 and then, urged on by his conscience, 
 goes out and hangs himself. 
 
 8. Keeping in mind these considera- 
 tions and also a couple of facts about our 
 entrance into this war, namely, first. 
 
66 THE KOAD TO PEACE 
 
 that the enemy denied us the privilege 
 of keeping out of it, and secondly, hav- 
 ing gone into it, we are not in it for re- 
 venge, or for a division of the spoils, or 
 for any selfish purpose whatsoever, but 
 in order that we may help make the 
 world a safe place for peaceful peoples 
 to live in, I must be allowed to doubt 
 the firmness of this foundation on 
 which the pacifist rests his objection to 
 war. 
 
PACIFISM IN TEEMS OF HUMANITY 
 
 OF all the reasons, specious and 
 otherwise, which have been ad- 
 vanced by the non-militant in support 
 of his contention, the most plausible and 
 by all odds the most powerful is that 
 based on humanitarian ground. It is 
 an appeal to men's hearts, and while 
 hearts are being played upon and 
 stirred heads are of little value and 
 might as well beat a strategic retreat. 
 The argument unseals a mighty flow of 
 emotion against which reason can hope 
 to make but little headway, while 
 the pacifist having launched his bark on 
 this current finds the pulling easy. 
 1. Knowing it to be easy, others be- 
 57 
 
58 THE WOELD WAE Ain> 
 
 sides the genuine philanthropist get 
 aboard. The purely selfish man finds 
 it a benefit to himself to join the goodly 
 company on the voyage. He cares little 
 for men, but he has a profound interest 
 in money. The lives of others he holds 
 cheap enough, but he has great regard 
 for his own precious skin. His horror 
 of bloodshed is mild compared with his 
 horror of taxes. He is thinking not so 
 much of loss of life as of loss of prop- 
 erty. His fear of the results of war on 
 trade and commerce and incomes is his 
 uttermost fear. His voice was never 
 heard in opposition to war as long as the 
 controversy was confined to European 
 peoples, for that meant the sale of rich 
 cargoes of cotton and corn and muni- 
 tions; meant heavy loans and fat prof- 
 its; but as soon as the possibility of 
 our joining in the fray loomed on the 
 horizon he added his voice to the chorus 
 of lamentation over the horrors of war. 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 59 
 
 War involving this nation threatened 
 his peace of mind and the comfort of 
 his easy chair in the cozy corner, and 
 he began to croon out his complaint. 
 " Why are the nations fighting ? Why 
 do they not compromise here and there, 
 and yield a point or two for the sake 
 of peace? The Belgians butchered to 
 make a German holiday could have 
 saved themselves from martyrdom by 
 conceding to the Imperial Government 
 a right of way through their land. 
 France could have escaped the woe 
 which has overwhelmed her by re- 
 fusing to approve of Russia's quar- 
 rel. England could have avoided war 
 by accepting Germany's bribe, and 
 thus the catastrophe which has over- 
 taken the world could have been 
 avoided." So speaks this man of peace 
 who finds it convenient now to sail un- 
 der the flag of humanitarianism. He 
 may be dismissed. His voice is that of 
 
60 THE WORLD WAR Ain> 
 
 the sluggard. His protest is the prat- 
 ing of the petty egotist; and the great 
 body of the American people may be 
 trusted to appraise him and his pacifis- 
 tic plea at their proper value. 
 
 2. And in dealing with the humani- 
 tarian pacifists it is no more than fair 
 to assure them that they are not to be 
 held responsible for or to be bulked in 
 with a group of persons who from mo- 
 tives 'of their own (which if not mili- 
 tant are mixed) desire to be identified 
 and recognized as humanitarian in their 
 aims. They are easily distinguished 
 by their foreign dialect (if one may 
 speak figuratively). They cannot pro- 
 nounce the humanitarian shibboleth. 
 They are for the most part women, and 
 as a matter of course women are hu- 
 mane ; and from humaneness to pacifism 
 the road is short and easy. But though 
 pacifists they are not so from humani- 
 tarian motives particularly. Profess- 
 
THE ROAB TO PEACE 61 
 
 ing a deep interest in humanity, what 
 really absorbs them is a passion to pos- 
 sess and wield a power which the cruel 
 opposite sex has hitherto denied them, 
 and to turn themselves out a product 
 worthy of the God that made them. 
 Pacifists they are, but their love of 
 peace is not so ardent as to cause them 
 while in pursuit of their object to re- 
 frain from doing things of which gen- 
 tlemen would be ashamed — hector- 
 ing statesmen, bombarding the White 
 House, pestering the President in the 
 midst of perplexing and burdensome du- 
 ties, committing deeds of violence, and 
 acting in other very militaristic ways — 
 not so dead in love with peace as to ab- 
 stain from distracting the public mind 
 from the serious business in hand; not 
 so high-minded as to be above the use 
 of political machinery and methods the 
 very mention of which would bring a 
 blush to the cheek of any hardened Tam- 
 
62 THE WOELD WAR AIS'D 
 
 many sacliein. They must have their 
 way even though to gain their ends they 
 are ohliged to make use of socialists, an- 
 archists, pro-Germans and the mixed 
 multitude which hangs on the skirts of 
 the host of Israel, eating the children's 
 bread while they breathe dissension and 
 discontent in the hearts of their bene- 
 factors. Theirs not to strive to perpet- 
 uate the best city administration we 
 have had in fifty years. Theirs not to 
 try and purify the franchise and 
 quicken the sense of responsibility in 
 those who possess the franchise, and if 
 need be to take it out of the hands of 
 thousands who have it until they have 
 learned how to use it, but they have 
 been using every art of the politician to 
 multiply this dangerous power which is 
 as apt to explode when handled by an ig- 
 norant woman as by an ignorant man. 
 
 And now that these women posing in 
 the garb of humanitarianism have won 
 
THE BO AD TO PEACE Od 
 
 their victory and gained the vote, some 
 of them are proposing to bring their 
 newly acquired power into the market 
 place and sell it to the highest bidder. 
 They will agree to be for their country 
 if their country will consent to negotiate 
 a peace with them and pay them their 
 price for patriotism. While the nation 
 is striving and straining every nerve and 
 muscle in order to defend them and 
 their children from the fate of the Bel- 
 gians these women are plotting new de- 
 vices whereby they may embarrass the 
 Government and force it to become sub- 
 servient to their will. Suroly, real 
 bona-fide humanitarian pacifists, male 
 and female, will know how to rate the 
 value of such a contingent ambitious to 
 march under their flag. 
 
 3. Having said this much by way of 
 separating the chaff from the wheat we 
 come to the pure, genuine, humanitar- 
 ian pacifist who by the purity of his 
 
64 THE WOELD WAB AlO) 
 
 purpose connnands our respect though 
 we are compelled to take issue with his 
 conclusions. A sincere desire for the 
 weKare of our fellow-heings and an 
 earnest purpose to lighten their burdens 
 and save them from suffering can never 
 fail to win the admiration of all good 
 people. The humanitarian pacifist has 
 this advantage to begin with. In seek- 
 ing to prevent war and in arguing 
 against it he is above suspicion. He 
 has no by-ends to serve, no personal am- 
 bition to gratify, no grievance to air, 
 no grudge to work off. He is not influ- 
 enced by the thought of possible gain or 
 loss. BQis enthusiasm is not chilled by 
 lack of patriotism, nor rendered hys- 
 terical by blare of trumpets. ITor is 
 this kind of man tempted to take advan- 
 tage of a serious crisis in the life of his 
 country to push his pet scheme or to 
 acquire deferred rights real or imag- 
 ined. 
 
THE! BOAB TO PEACE 
 
 65 
 
 4. This being so we can well afford to 
 follow his thought and listen to what he 
 has to say. He is not thinking solely 
 or even very solemnly of the wastage 
 of property, the interruption of com- 
 merce, the disturbance of trade and the 
 shrinkage of prices caused by war. He 
 is thinking of vastly more serious 
 things, of the suffering and misery and 
 agony and bloodshed and slaughter that 
 war involves. He is thinking of count- 
 less young lives sacrificed on war's 
 altar ; of homes left desolate and hearts 
 broken; of wives widowed and children 
 orphaned; of hosts of wounded return- 
 ing from the battlefield, maimed, blind, 
 disabled, wrecked mentally and phys- 
 ically. He is thinking of great multi- 
 tudes of the bereaved going down sor- 
 rowing to their graves. And thinking 
 of these things he can paint pictures 
 that draw tears from all eyes — pic- 
 tures pathetic, tragic, gruesome, 
 
66 THE WOELD WAR AITD 
 
 ghastly; sucL. pictures as only those 
 with hearts of stone can look upon un- 
 moved. 
 
 5. A powerful argument this, of the 
 humanitarian against war, an argument 
 worthy the attention of all serious 
 minded people. 'No douht President 
 Wilson anticipated the force of it; was 
 thinking these same thoughts and see- 
 ing these same sad pictures for two 
 years and a half, and perhaps the vision 
 of them had a great influence in decid- 
 ing him to endure for so long the in- 
 famous behaviour of the Hun rather 
 than lead our nation into war. So fear- 
 ful was he of being drawn into it that 
 he urged the people to observe a strict 
 neutrality not only in action but in 
 word and thought. He deemed it wise 
 to turn a deaf ear to the call that came 
 from many quarters of the land urging 
 preparedness, fearing maybe that such 
 a course on our part might prove an 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 67 
 
 offence and an aggravation to some one 
 of the powers; or perhaps because lie 
 was the victim in common with many 
 others of the delusion that fitness to take 
 one's part makes him a scrapper. At 
 any rate he refused for some time to lis- 
 ten to the demand. In his detestation 
 of war and horror of the havoc it works 
 he was for a time inclined to judge the 
 nations engaged in it as mad. Moved 
 by a humanitarian desire to avert the 
 calamitous results of war he suffered 
 with patience almost super-human the 
 presence among us of the plotter and the 
 propagandist. He withheld his hand 
 while the enemy's spies and incendiaries 
 destroyed our property; while his sub- 
 marines sank our ships and drowned our 
 fellow-citizens; while his emissaries 
 schemed to embroil us in war with our 
 neighbour across the border and with 
 a friendly power beyond the Pacific. 
 6. But there came a day when he saw 
 
68 THE WOELD WAR AND' 
 
 himself and the nation over which he 
 presides confronted by an alternative 
 from which there was no escape. The 
 great pacifist must choose for himself 
 and for the country whether he shall 
 surrender or fight; whether the nation 
 shall abase itself in terror before the 
 lawless bandit or resist him; whether 
 the country shall survive as an indepen- 
 dent and free nation or become the vas- 
 sal and slave of German autocracy; 
 whether the nation which the fathers 
 founded in faith and for whose liberty 
 they proudly fought and gloriously died 
 shall be preserved and held intact or 
 pawned away by their heirs for an in- 
 glorious peace. He saw more than this. 
 As time went on and events developed 
 his horizon widened as he looked. He 
 saw the embattled hosts of a mighty 
 monarchy, inspired by an ambition to 
 control all the kingdoms of the world, 
 march forth to slay democracy wherever 
 
THEI BOAD TO PEACE by 
 
 found and all free institutions. Not 
 only were the honour and interests of 
 our own nation threatened but the life 
 and honour of all free peoples. They 
 must bow down and worship before the 
 image of the beast or perish. They 
 were to be offered a new moral code, a 
 new religion, a new god. The new law 
 was to be force, the new religion was 
 to be German kultur, the new god was 
 to be a deity of German make. As 
 events developed the President saw that 
 the resolve of the entente powers to take 
 up arms was neither f anatioal nor fatu- 
 ous, but a holy resolve to resist this de- 
 monic assault of the arch enemy of 
 honour, righteousness, liberty and civ- 
 ilization. What then shall be the Pres- 
 ident's choice, the nation's choice — 
 fight or surrender ? To fight will mean 
 sacrifice, suffering, wastage of property, 
 loss of precious human lives ; to submit 
 will mean the loss of honour, liberty. 
 
70 THE WOELD WAR AND 
 
 self-respect and all that free men liold 
 dear; will mean slavery, shame, and 
 everlasting contempt. The President 
 made the choice and the nation from 
 ocean to ocean has responded Amen ! 
 
 7. And the pacifist? He too has 
 made his choice, a choice determined by 
 his sympathies, his love for his fellow 
 beings, his tender regard for human life, 
 his desire to avert the suffering and mis- 
 ery and loss which are the fruit of war ; 
 and he asks " Can anything be worse 
 than war ? " If he will for only a mo- 
 ment cease to discuss the matter in the 
 abstract and view it in the light of con- 
 crete facts we can simply leave him to 
 answer his own question. Is anything 
 worse than resisting by force the man 
 who feloniously breaks into one's home 
 to carry away his property ? Why, cer- 
 tainly. Compromise with lawlessness 
 is worse, to say nothing of the meanness 
 of showing the white feather. It 
 
THE BOAD TO PEACE 71 
 
 would be nice if the houseliolder could 
 hypnotize the intruder, or by use of 
 some unusual endowment of spiritual 
 power constrain him to turn from his 
 wicked ways ; but having no such power 
 he must fight him or yield him the right 
 of way to plunder his victim's home to 
 his heart's content. 
 
 Is anything worse than fighting to the 
 death the fiend who invades the sanctity 
 of your home? Why, yes; your per- 
 mitting him to do so without a blow 
 by way of resistance; that is infinitely 
 worse. What is worse than fighting? 
 Why your cowardly pacific non-inter- 
 ference when you see a weak and inno- 
 cent man being beaten to a jelly by a 
 brutal bully ; that is unspeakably worse. 
 What is worse than war? This is 
 worse, to look on and see unmoved the 
 infamous tyrant pounce on a feeble na- 
 tion, loot its treasures, devastate its 
 fields, pillage and burn its homes, dese- 
 
72 THE WOELD WAR A]S"D 
 
 crate its temples, murder its old men 
 and little children, and dishonour its 
 women. Unless the will of God has 
 broken down and all moral sanctions 
 have lost their authority nothing could 
 be worse than for a strong nation to look 
 on in moral indifference and see that 
 thing done without striking a blow. 
 The pacifist has raised the question ; let 
 him answer it. 
 
 8. He is not the only kind of man 
 who deplores war and contemplates with 
 dread consequences of it. Still it may 
 turn out to be true that we are placing 
 too high a value on lives. Life is cer- 
 tainly worth more than meat, but it is 
 not worth more than honour. A man 
 may be more precious than gold, but he 
 is not more precious than moral princi- 
 ple. Better every way that he sacri- 
 fice his body than that he sacrifice his 
 ideals; better that a man, yes, better 
 that a whole nation of men should perish 
 
THE! EOAD TO PEACE 73 
 
 than that they should negotiate a truce 
 with iniquity. This globe is the burial 
 place of extinct nations, and the disease 
 of which they one and all died was a 
 godless compromise with evil. What 
 can it profit a nation if it win peace by 
 bartering its soul ? We think and talk 
 of with pride, and keep green with tears 
 of reverence the memory of the heroic 
 men who counted not their lives dear 
 unto them if they might victoriously 
 resist the tyranny of the Kaiser George. 
 But one wonders what would have been 
 the future of this continent if the col- 
 onists had turned pacifist and, moved by 
 a humanitarian horror of war had 
 yielded their necks to the yoke of the 
 oppressor. This at least we are sure 
 of that the peace secured at such a 
 price would have proved a legacy for 
 which their descendants could not have 
 been grateful. 
 
 9. They counted not their lives dear 
 
74 THE WOELD WAE AITD 
 
 unto them. It is just possible that we 
 think too much about the worth of life 
 and altogether too little of what makes 
 life worth living. In these soft aeolian 
 times, and in this lotus-eating land 
 where it is always afternoon we have 
 become hyper-sensitive. Our tender 
 flesh shrinks under any roughness and 
 the only evils we know or care to avoid 
 are discomfort, pain and hard usage; 
 and we are apt to forget that the great- 
 est things this world owns have been 
 purchased at the cost of much suffering 
 and blood, and that the lives that have 
 blest the world the most have been con- 
 secrated by the baptism of sorrow. 
 From the schoolhouse of suffering and 
 sacrifice have come forth into the world 
 the noblest virtues. It took Scotch 
 glens to raise covenanters, and the rude 
 realities of Swiss mountains to breed 
 French patriots in the long ago. 
 
THB BO AD TO PEACE T5 
 
 It is worth considering while honour- 
 ing the lads in the army, and we can- 
 not honour them too highly ; and while 
 doing all we can for their comfort, and 
 we cannot do too much ; we may at the 
 same time be wasting much compassion 
 on them. Having a due regard to 
 moral values we may well believe that 
 the youngest of them who dies in the 
 trenches with the good cause in his heart 
 has lived longer after all, and climbed 
 higher, and compassed more spacious 
 reaches of spiritual vision, and achieved 
 more for humanity than the selfish 
 sordid stay-at-home will ever dream of 
 though he fill out the natural span of 
 human life. He who saves his life, 
 loses it, but he who loses his life in the 
 service of humanity not only finds it 
 and keeps it but ennobles and glori- 
 fies it for all time and through etern- 
 ity. 
 
76 THE EOAB TO PEACE 
 
 " To every man upon this earth 
 Death eometh, soon or late; 
 And how can man die better 
 Than facing fearful odds 
 For the ashes of his fathers 
 And the temples of his gods! " 
 
VI 
 
 COMPENSATIONS 
 
 WHILE the losses involved in this 
 most disastrous of all wars must 
 baffle the power of tongue to tell or of 
 thought to measure or of the imagina- 
 tion to conceive, we must not allow 
 ourselves to overlook the profits which 
 war brings to a people who engage in 
 it from high motive. To engage in 
 war for the sake of the profit: that is 
 another matter. That is execrable. 
 That is exclusively an idea of the Prus- 
 sian who has not outgrown the instincts 
 of primitive man. The Prussian says 
 war is profitable, therefore let us fight. 
 We say, no possible profit accruing to 
 a nation from war could justify the 
 77 
 
78 THE WOELD WAE AWD 
 
 starting of a fight. The Prussian loves 
 war; we hate it. He plans it; we 
 avoid it, and only as a last resort do 
 we accept a challenge to fight. The 
 Prussian thinks of war as a gymnastic. 
 We think of it as an affliction. Yet as 
 an affliction when borne in the right 
 spirit it is sure to work out for a na- 
 tion an exceeding weight of glory. We 
 have already begun to prove this. 
 
 1. There is the moral glory which 
 comes to the nation which wages a right- 
 eous war. As nothing but shame, con- 
 tempt, and degradation can be the re- 
 ward of a people who will go to war 
 for revenge, or for the sake of gaining 
 a few more square leagues of earth, 
 or for commercial expansion; so noth- 
 ing but glory and honour await the 
 people who are willing to sacrifice and 
 suffer and give the lives of their sons 
 for the defence of the weak, the redemp- 
 tion of the oppressed and the vindica- 
 
THEI BOAD TO PEACE 79 
 
 tion of righteousness. Had we behaved 
 in this crisis as if the conflict was no 
 concern of ours, as if it made no differ- 
 ence to us which side should win ; which 
 principle should prevail — that of force 
 or that of freedom — we could not have 
 retained our self-respect, nor deserved 
 the respect and confidence of any nation. 
 We would have richly deserved to have 
 our brow branded with the execration 
 pronounced on an ancient tribe for its 
 lack of fealty. " Curse ye Meroz, said 
 the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly 
 the inhabitants thereof; because they 
 came not up to the help of the Lord, to 
 the help of the Lord against the 
 mighty." But thank God that though 
 we hesitated for a long time, weighing 
 the pros and cons — self-interest in 
 one's scale and the life of civilization 
 in the other — we allowed the latter to 
 tip the balance. Our flag still waves un- 
 desecrated by foreign hands, and un- 
 
80 THE WOELD WAR AKD 
 
 siillied by our own. And just as we are 
 proud of tlie f atliers who listened not to 
 tlie voice of self-love, nor yielded to 
 their natural dread of bloodshed, but 
 gave themselves and all they had to the 
 cause of liberty; so the generations to 
 come will be singing our praises because 
 our natural love of peace and our 
 natural shrinking from son nd 
 
 agony were swallowed up of j 
 passion and a holy pu^^pose to s ^lo 
 once for all that right-^of way must be 
 denied to any arroga^it, truculent, pira- 
 tfeal power that '^ef'^s to dominate the 
 v\)rld. •' 
 
 •^' 2. Another oi "benefits sec^Jred to 
 us by this w^ '^11 sc ch 
 
 dreaded and ; ^*s t" 
 
 aC'^''^' 3 thor' d!^j.±j^.^ -j. v±ix^ na- 
 
 Abib^^^Th^'-- -cal sneer- 'jied at our 
 ^mU '^P^ ' after ?^ -^ a rope of 
 
 ^ ' ' ^ nlenc ; ' '-"^ile o"^ 
 
THEi EOAB TO PEACE 81 
 
 deed it ever fitted ; nor does tliat of the 
 links of a chain, nor even that of the 
 strands composing a cable. The union 
 has become vital. It is that of the 
 various functions in the human body. 
 !No one of them can say to any of the 
 others, I have no need of thee ; nor can 
 any one of them suffer without the 
 qth^. -vexing affected. Many members 
 i??:i,.>;iy^g^ody. If there has been any 
 _ ij/ or rivalries in the past, they 
 h^ve disappeared. There is no north, 
 no south, no east, ;io west. Ours is no 
 longer a mere po 'tigal union, but a 
 moral and spiriti ideration. W*. 
 
 were uj-iited by agt int, by the pro 
 
 Vi^; ;/r ( of f 
 
 ^ 
 
 '., by certain 
 
 s^ .^cion^ 
 
 
 ire united by 
 
 a-— ox- 
 
 .. -' ^■' 
 
 •obs in •^'^■Tv 
 
 vein of the 
 
 '^Y- politic, 
 
 ^^h ... 
 
 a common '' 
 
 ">f count 
 
 0' ion 
 
 }la,tred ^-^ 
 
 a COT 
 
 'or 
 
 Use 
 
 
 0- 
 
82 THE WOKIiD "WAR AND 
 
 tion to the defence of liberty and civili- 
 zation; and these have made us forget 
 almost that there ever was any other 
 kind of bond. By and by we may re- 
 sume once more our competitions and 
 rivalries and again give attention to our 
 local interests as if they were the only 
 interests, but not until we have com- 
 pleted the business on hand which is the 
 making of the world fit for the habita- 
 tion of free peoples. 
 
 3. We will be grateful also for this 
 war in time to come because of its aid 
 in obliterating the prevailing social disr 
 tinctions among us which are so arti- 
 ficial and so irritating. There are dis- 
 tinctions among us which are neither ar- 
 tificial nor irritating. They are natu- 
 ral, real, inevitable, and as such we rec- 
 ognize and respect — -the distinctions 
 for instance that are conferred by 
 unusual character, or unusual brain 
 power, or by superiority in art, or lit- 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 83 
 
 erature, or statesmanship. We not only 
 allow these distinctions, we insist on 
 them. But the petty, superficial, man- 
 made distinctions, which have split soci- 
 ety into classes — distinctions created 
 mostly by income, by clothes, by the 
 possession of mere things — these are 
 being rapidly wiped out by this war. 
 The valleys in the social landscape 
 which are mere creases after all are be- 
 ing exalted, and the mountains and hills 
 which are but pimples on a sphere are 
 being brought low. Rich and poor are 
 meeting together. The lady and her 
 maid, the son of the house and the son 
 of the cook are seeing eye to eye. Ele- 
 ments that for one reason or another 
 had fallen apart have come together. 
 Animosities have been forgotten. An- 
 tagonisms are no longer heard of. We 
 have but one faith just now, one hope, 
 one aim, one baptism. The stream of 
 the nation's life had forked at various 
 
84 THE WOELD WAE AND 
 
 points in its course, tlie various channels 
 in which its divided waters flowed being 
 called by different names. But after 
 they had taken their own courses for a 
 while — some sulking through this or 
 that valley, some fretting through this 
 or that ravine, some storming around 
 the shoulder of this or that obstructing 
 height — they have found their way to- 
 gether once more, their waters converg- 
 ing and mingling in a mighty flood of 
 devotion to country and to the rights of 
 mankind. 
 
 4. This war has ushered in a new era 
 of consecration to service. Multitudes 
 of men who have been living selfish 
 lives hitherto or, if charitably inclined, 
 have been playing at charity as a sort 
 of diversion, allowing the poor to pick 
 up some of the crumbs from beneath 
 their tables, have found themselves and 
 opened up. They have unlocked their 
 treasure houses and are pouring out the 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 85 
 
 contents of them in streams of benev- 
 olence which are making glad the hearts 
 of the destitute abroad and the poor at 
 home. They are putting into practice 
 what has been only a theoretical belief 
 hitherto, namely, that life is more than 
 meat and the body than raiment; that 
 a man's life consists not in the abun- 
 dance of the things which he possesses. 
 They have come to see that a man's true 
 worth is determined, not by what he 
 has but by what he is; not by what he 
 gets but by what he becomes; not by 
 what he accumulates from without but 
 by what he develops within; and im- 
 pelled by this new vision, they are 
 giving not only money, but they are giv- 
 ing themselves, their time, their trained 
 talents, their experience, their executive 
 ability and all their powers of devotion 
 to the service of the nation. 'No thought 
 now of hoarding for one's self, but of 
 spending for the good of others. No 
 
86 THE WOELD WAR AKD 
 
 more striving and straining to build up 
 fortunes on the graves of dead rivals. 
 The lust for getting has been supplanted 
 by the passion for dispensing. 
 
 This war has also helped many who 
 have gone wandering through the world 
 half dazed — doped in a way by the 
 poor pleasures the world gives — to find 
 themselves, and to find a place of rest 
 and service. They have been spending 
 their days and nights fluttering in the 
 light of fashion as moths about a lamp ; 
 feeding their stomachs and preening 
 their feathers; restlessly loitering 
 around ballrooms and card tables and in- 
 sufferable afternoon teas; but this war 
 has given them something to think about 
 and something to do that will keep their 
 hearts from turning to stone and their 
 brains from turning to pulp. "No finer 
 phase of social development has ap- 
 peared in half a century than the eman- 
 cipation of many of the women of the 
 
THB EOAD TO PEACE 87 
 
 land from parocliial and petty interests. 
 They have moved out into the open 
 where deep breathing is possible, and 
 the free swing of their powers. Their 
 equality with men has been proven in 
 these trying days, not indeed by elec- 
 tioneering on street corners, or by fol- 
 lowing brass bands in procession through 
 the streets, or by exploiting feminine 
 men and the unwary of every sort who 
 could be used in their campaign in be- 
 half of what they choose to call their 
 sovereign rights, but by their masterful 
 seizure and superb use of a great oppor- 
 tunity for serving the world at a time 
 when hearts and brains are needed as 
 they have never been needed before. 
 Within the past three years women have 
 risen to heights of devotion and achieve- 
 ment of which they themselves never 
 dreamt themselves to be capable. Many 
 of them have gone so far along the hard 
 road of service that they can never find 
 
88 THE WOELD WAE AND 
 
 their way back to the dainty lives they 
 used to lead and to the sequestered places 
 into which rough experiences never in- 
 truded. There has been no call yet for 
 our women to undertake men's jobs in 
 field and mine and machine shop and 
 munition factory^ but they are ready 
 for the call when it comes. Meanwhile 
 they are organizing their forces and 
 have become a mighty power to be re- 
 lied on for the winning of the war. 
 
 5. Then closely associated with this 
 consecration to service which the war 
 has brought us is the call to economy 
 which it has sounded. We were a 
 spendthrift people. One of our grave 
 national vices if not the very gravest 
 has been that of extravagance. We 
 were certainly going the pace. Indeed 
 we had covered a good bit of the well 
 worn road that leads from prosperity to 
 luxury and from luxury to effeminacy 
 and from effeminacy to death. Though 
 
THE KOAD TO PEACE 89 
 
 we knew it not, we were slowly near- 
 ing the fate tliat befell another 
 commonwealth long ago which perished 
 because when the people had eaten 
 and were full, built goodly houses 
 and dwelt in them, and their herds and 
 their flocks multiplied, and their silver 
 and their gold multiplied, and all that 
 they had multiplied, they forgot the 
 Lord their God and said that their own 
 power and the might of their own hand, 
 had gotten them their wealth. Well 
 may we as a people be grateful for any 
 discipline however severe, even for the 
 discipline of war, if it save us from the 
 prosperity which leads to the wealth 
 which leads to the pride which leads to 
 the godlessness which leads to national 
 degradation and death. And this war, 
 cruel though it be, coming just at the 
 time it did has saved us by compelling 
 us to retrench our expenditures, to cur- 
 tail our luxuries, and to live more 
 
90 THE WOELD WAE AND 
 
 simply. Already we see througliout the 
 land liow self-denial has taken the place 
 of self-indulgence. Instead of being 
 something to be ashamed of, thrift has 
 become the fashion. The hall mark of 
 superiority is not the amount spent but 
 the amount saved; not the number of 
 things we can purchase, but the number 
 of things we are learning to do without. 
 A new commandment has been given to 
 us requiring economy, and we are writ- 
 ing it on the lintels and doorposts of 
 our houses and on our gates — a com- 
 mandment the keeping of which will 
 not only enable the people to contribute 
 more amply to the resources of the Gov- 
 ernment, but will encourage our return 
 to a simpler and saner philosophy of 
 living, which in turn will prove a gain 
 of incalculable value in the virility of 
 our national character. 
 
 6. This war has opened the eyes of 
 our people to a fresh revelation of moral 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 91 
 
 values. I believe it will be freely 
 acknowledged by all that tbe power in 
 us which recognizes and responds to 
 moral imperatives has been greatly in 
 need of repair. In fact the old stan- 
 dards of moral values had been con- 
 signed by many of us to the scrap heap 
 with other antiquated and outworn 
 things. Other standards had lost their 
 value and had become obsolete, why not 
 this one? As a consequence of our 
 modem methods and machineries, our 
 inventions and improvements, old things 
 have passed away and most things have 
 become new. We have now new ways 
 of doing almost everything: of tunnel- 
 ing mountains, navigating the seas, and 
 communicating with those at a distance. 
 We have uncovered the secrets of the 
 waters, the secrets of the rocks, the 
 secrets of the stars. The school-boy of 
 today knows more than Sir Isaac lN"ew- 
 ton ever thought of; is familiar with 
 
92 THE WORLD WAE AKD 
 
 facts of nature which, would have 
 astounded that prince of philosophers. 
 We have invented ways of economizing 
 time, and space, and labour, and cost. 
 We no longer consult, we command the 
 winds and the waves. We harness the 
 forces of nature and compel them to do 
 our bidding, we flash our thought or 
 resolution from city to city and from 
 continent to continent with the rapidity 
 of lightning and with the accuracy of a 
 mental faculty. 
 
 IRow all these changes and these dis- 
 placements of the old by the new have 
 made many of us sceptical of the value 
 of any old thing. The ways our father 
 trod are overgrown and almost indis- 
 tinguishable, and so we are tempted to 
 think that the principles by which they 
 lived are out of date also. We have a 
 new astronomy^ a new chemistry, a new 
 physics ; why not a new ethics ? 
 
 I wonder if we have not here a part 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 93 
 
 explanation at least of our loose hold of 
 moral obligations and our slack applica- 
 tion of them. But whether or not, it is 
 true that our sense of moral values has 
 lost its fine edge. We too as well as the 
 German people were coming to think too 
 much of natural law and too little of 
 moral law, too much of the material and 
 too little of the spiritual. We were 
 paying so much attention to the sciences 
 pure and applied, to chemistry, phys- 
 ics, and physiology that we had little 
 time to give to the ten commandments, 
 the sermon on the mount, the Lord's 
 prayer and the Golden Kule. We too 
 were beginning to prize efficiency above 
 fidelity ; to be more concerned with ends 
 than scrupulous as to the means of at- 
 taining them, and to place brilliant 
 achievement above invincible obedience 
 to the will of God. 
 
 This being so, then even war is not 
 too costly, if in lieu of gentler methods 
 
94 THE WOEI.D WAR AITO 
 
 whicli have failed, it stir our dormant 
 moral consciousness into proper recog- 
 nition of moral values. In spite of all 
 its horrors it will have proved a blessing 
 in disguise. 
 
 All that has happened before our eyes 
 the past three years and a haK, the 
 faithless violations of treaties, the im- 
 pudent repudiation of international 
 agreements, the disregard of all law 
 human and divine, the disregard of the 
 piteous appeals of suffering peoples for 
 mercy, the ferocities, cruelties, inhuman 
 barbarities committed by a nation pro- 
 fessing to be civilized, has stirred us 
 as nothing else could stir us to a review 
 and if need be to a revision of our easy 
 moral code ; has stirred into activity our 
 power of moral indignation which had 
 become flabby, has put an edge on our 
 blunted regard for righteous dealing, 
 and has given us a fresh vision of the 
 pricelessness of honour and truth. 
 
the: road to peace 95 
 
 " Blow, bugles, blow ! they brought us for our 
 
 dearth 
 Holiness, lacked so long, and Love and Pain. 
 Honour has come back as a King to earth 
 And paid his subject with a royal wage. 
 And nobleness walks in our ways again 
 And we have come into our heritage." 
 
VII 
 
 THE EEAL ROAD TO PEACE 
 
 SOOE'EE or later this war will come 
 to an end. We believe it will end 
 right. There will be no let-up on the 
 part of the allies until the Teutonic 
 powers are beaten down, brought to 
 terms, and compelled to atone (as far as 
 atonement is possible) for their barbaric 
 crimes against the world. Then and not 
 till then there will be peace; that 
 is to say, there will be a cessation of 
 hostilities. Fighting will cease. There 
 will be an-^nd to bloodshed and slaugh- 
 ter. The various contending armies 
 will be demobilized. The forces in the 
 field will be returned to their homes and 
 vsdll resume once again their places in 
 96 
 
THE E.OAI> TO PEACE 97 
 
 the various departments of peaceful in- 
 dustry. There will also be in due time 
 a resumption of commercial relations 
 and later on, when the bitterness pro- 
 duced by the war has passed, there will 
 be a renewal of social relations between 
 the peoples who have been shedding each 
 other's blood. 
 
 1. We all want it. It is the thing 
 we talk about and pray for ; and nobody 
 wishes more or prays harder for it than 
 the men on our fighting ships and in the 
 trenches. But ardently as we all desire 
 it and devoutly as we pray for it, we 
 will not be content with a peace secured 
 by surrender or by compromise or by 
 negotiations. We may if we will have 
 peace tomorrow, that is to say, we 
 may if we will have an end of 
 hostilities. If we want peace so 
 badly as to be willing to pay his price 
 for it, the Hun will grant it to us, and 
 will undertake on certain conditions to 
 
98 THE WOELD WAE AND 
 
 leave us undisturbed in the enjoyment 
 of it. But we do not allow ourselves to 
 talk or think of such a peace. We are 
 not ready to barter our birthright for 
 a mess of pottage. We will have noth- 
 ing short of peace with honour; peace 
 based on righteousness and wedded to 
 liberty. The Teutonic powers are more 
 than ready to make peace, and are quite 
 willing to enter into a covenant of peace 
 with the nations against which they 
 have made war. But of what value 
 would their signatures be to any pact? 
 By their outrageous disregard of former 
 pledges they have forfeited the confi- 
 dence of all civilized nations. And to 
 trust the word of the military masters 
 of Germany until they have repented 
 and brought forth fruit meet for repen- 
 tance would be as absurdly foolish as 
 to build a city in the crater of an in- 
 active volcano which for the moment ap- 
 pears to be harmless. The resultant 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 99 
 
 peace would at best be only a truce to 
 be treacberously ended at the conven- 
 ience of a foe who has proved himself 
 so utterly faithless to all former treaty 
 obligations. 
 
 2. But when the German menace to 
 ^he independence of the world has been 
 Polished, and the German will to dom- 
 inate the world has been destroyed, and 
 the wrongs which have threatened the 
 liberty of the world have been redressed, 
 then what? How can all further dan- 
 ger of war be averted ? By what means 
 can a universal and permanent peace 
 based on righteousness be established 
 and maintained ? Some of our more in- 
 fluential leaders strongly recommend as 
 a preventive of war and a promoter of 
 peace, a fresh and final definition of 
 national frontiers which shall be de- 
 fended with bristling guns. In other 
 words, each nation must be prepared for 
 war in order to make sure of peace. But 
 
100 THE WOELD WAR AIH) 
 
 there are serious objections to the adop- 
 tion of this way to peace. In the first 
 place, the enormous cost of the plan 
 would doom the peoples to perpetual 
 poverty, and besides the peace secured 
 by this method would after all be but a 
 strained concordat. That is not a very 
 high order of peace which reigns be- 
 tween men who envy one another and 
 are ready to fly at each other's throats, 
 being prevented from doing so only by 
 the impassable barriers which separate 
 them. Burglar alarms and loaded re- 
 volvers do afford us a sort of protection 
 and peace, but a peace after all which 
 we can enjoy only with fear and trem- 
 bling — the kind of peace which the 
 wives and children of long ago enjoyed 
 wihile the men folks kept guard on the 
 hills against the inroads of Indian sav- 
 ages. 
 
 3. Others propose a way of peace 
 by the abolition of all frontiers which 
 
THBi EOAD TO PEACE 101 
 
 hereafter shall be mere imaginary lines, 
 and by the amalgamation of the peoples 
 under a uniform system of government. 
 Such a proposal is about as fatuous as 
 the kind of religious union which some 
 good people are hysterically striving to 
 bring about. Pan-christian conventions 
 are periodically arranged, and are at- 
 tended by bishops and clergy and laity 
 of the various denominations, who get 
 together, fraternize, and have a sweet 
 millennial time. They talk and pray 
 and resolve in the interests of unity, 
 thinking that if only all churches could 
 agree to repeat the same creed, and use 
 the same prayer book, and appear in the 
 same vestments, and adopt the same sac- 
 ramental forms, and submit to the same 
 discipline and government there would 
 be unity and peace. They fail to see 
 that even if all this that they aspire 
 after should come to pass the resultant 
 peace might not after all be much better 
 
102 THE WOELD WAR A.Tn> 
 
 than that which prevails in the family 
 vault. They seem to have forgotten 
 that just this very kind of unanimity 
 and uniformity obtained in Christen- 
 dom some centuries ago, and that this 
 was the time when the church was the 
 deadest. There was a kind of peace, 
 but there was a lamentable absence of 
 life, and action, and ambition, and 
 achievement. But just as soon as there 
 were the stirrings of life in the valley of 
 dry bones and men began to think and 
 move once more, the uniformity was 
 broken up and war ensued. If we can 
 imagine that the nations — weary and 
 exhausted by war — could be made to 
 forget differences and to unite under one 
 flag, be it that of universal autocracy, 
 or democracy, or socialism, in no time 
 at all, unless fused together by some 
 mighty irresistible spiritual power, ri- 
 valries and contentions would spring up 
 
THE KOAD TO PEACE 103 
 
 and there would be a renewal of hostil- 
 ities. 
 
 4. A more promising program for the 
 promotion of peace among the nations 
 and one in which many of us have put 
 great faith is that of the Peace Soci- 
 eties which have been in operation for 
 many years. These societies have num- 
 bered in their membership many of our 
 prominent and gifted men who have 
 assembled themselves together at fre- 
 quent intervals to talk peace, and to de- 
 vise ways and means whereby thfe public 
 should be enlightened and brought into 
 active sympathy with a movement look- 
 ing to the settlement of all disputes — 
 national and international — by arbi- 
 tration. The movement gained rapid 
 headway — one of the outward and vis- 
 ible signs of its prosperity and power 
 being the erection of a magnificent peace 
 temple at The Hague, the gift of a 
 
104 THE WOELD WAB AND 
 
 wealthy and entbusiastic member of the 
 organization. Other societies similar 
 in character and purpose to the one 
 which has flourished in this country 
 were organized in several of the Euro- 
 pean states and enlisted the approval 
 and support of thoughtful and influen- 
 tial people everywhere, who like our- 
 selves had an unbounded faith in their 
 power to bring about a condition of per- 
 manent peace among the nations. Only 
 one more thing was needed to complete 
 the efiiciency of this movement, and that 
 was the binding together of these sep- 
 arate and already powerful organiza- 
 tions in one international body. But at 
 the very moment when this union was 
 about to be consummated, in spite of 
 all our faith and hopes, the bloodiest 
 and most disastrous war ever seen on 
 this planet broke out and the various 
 Peace Societies which promised such 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 105 
 
 great things were blown to bits by the 
 explosion. 
 
 5. And now in place of this a brand 
 new society has been organized on an 
 entirely different basis, whose object is 
 to bring about and maintain permanent 
 peace by force. The organization is 
 known as " The League for the Enforce- 
 ment of Peace." When it gets under 
 way there will be no more eruptions. 
 Lids are to be fitted and screwed down 
 on all craters. The underworld may 
 boil but it can have no vent. The 
 various nations are to unite in legis- 
 lating into existence a police force which 
 will do for the world at large what the 
 police do for a city by proving them- 
 selves a terror to evil doers. The pact 
 of peace once signed any nation show- 
 ing symptoms of disloyalty is to be 
 watched and if guilty of an overt breach 
 of the peace is to be indicted, convicted 
 
106 THE WOELD WAE ATTD 
 
 and punished. Peace by the forcible 
 suppression of the peacebreaker is the 
 gist of the scheme. 
 
 The experiment may prove well 
 worth while. It will be interesting to 
 watch how this new legislation will 
 work. Its operation will certainly have 
 the spice of variety, the culprit of today 
 being one of the jury tomorrow. The 
 plan may secure us a kind of peace, but 
 not quite the peace we need and most de- 
 sire. The mother may enjoy the quiet 
 but hardly the peace which reigns in the 
 house while Young Irrepressible is do- 
 ing time in the closet. But we may 
 surely aspire to a higher kind of peace 
 and follow a better road to it than that 
 afforded by legislation, national or in- 
 ternational. Law at its best can only 
 muzzle the vicious dog; it cannot cure 
 his viciousness. It may restrain the 
 horse's heels with kicking straps but it 
 cannot cure his evil temper. It may 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 107 
 
 clip the tiger's claws but it carmot 
 change the tiger's nature. Law may be 
 able to clear a devil out of the house, and 
 sweep and garnish it, but it cannot pre- 
 vent seven or more other devils from 
 entering in. Regulations and restraints 
 imposed by law are a social necessity 
 under existing conditions, but the most 
 and the best they can accomplish in the 
 direction of peace is to carry on an in- 
 exorable and unending war against the 
 law-breaker. Before the world can 
 have the peace it needs and longs for 
 the fires of evil passion must be subdued, 
 and the will to do wrong broken down. 
 But to try to compass these ends by 
 legislation would be as foolish and futile 
 as to try to extinguish Vesuvius with a 
 garden hose or to demolish Gibraltar 
 with a pop-gun. 
 
 6. Seeing the hopelessness of secur- 
 ing a righteous and permanent peace by 
 either of these methods, many of us are 
 
108 THE WOELD "WAR AND 
 
 putting our faith in education as a pan- 
 acea for the world's ills. Men are 
 quarrelsome and blood-thirsty because 
 they are ignorant. Educate and en- 
 lighten them and they will not only be- 
 come peaceable, but peace makers. But 
 highly as we prize the benefits of educa- 
 tion and knowledge, the theory that they 
 are not merely a specific but a cure-all 
 and an effective preventer of war is dis- 
 credited by the fact that the best edu- 
 cated nation on the earth today is the 
 most warlike, and not only so but the 
 most cruel in its practice of the art of 
 war. 
 
 Knowledge after all is but a weapon ; 
 a weapon that may be wielded by a bad 
 man or a good man for purposes of de- 
 struction or for purposes of construc- 
 tion. The educated man is armed, but 
 if knowledge is all that his education 
 has given him, he is not full armed for 
 the highest achievements of life. When 
 
THEI BOAI> TO PEACE 109 
 
 a boy has completed his. schooling you 
 are not dead sure whether he will put 
 the schooling to good or bad uses; 
 whether you have prepared him to make 
 an honourable livelihood and to be a 
 blessing to the community, or to write 
 iniquity and read putrescence and to 
 figure up the difference between his 
 small income and the enormous one of 
 the man next door. The doctor's knowl- 
 edge of physiology, of hygiene and 
 drugs does not keep him from abusing 
 his body, l^or does the lawyer's knowl- 
 edge of law preyent him from becoming 
 a law breaker. A man's education may 
 multiply his power for peace if he be a 
 man of peace, or it may multiply his 
 power to kill his fellowmen if he be a 
 man of war. Education has not made 
 Potsdam pacific, because to the mind 
 of a G-erman knowledge and morality 
 are as mutually exclusive as frost and 
 fire. Germany — the schoolroom of 
 
110 THE WOELD WAB ANI> 
 
 the world — has subsidized the school- 
 room, the university, the professor, the 
 doctor of divinity, the student in the 
 interests of war. Education of itself 
 does not make men less proud, less 
 haughty, less arrogant, less intolerant of 
 their fellows. At best it but drapes 
 with a thin disguise his natural sav- 
 agery, while it enables him to convert 
 the arts of peace into the most deadly 
 devices for destruction. 
 
 Education, legislation, arbitration, 
 leagues for the enforcement of peace — 
 all good as far as they go — are inade- 
 quate to the end they aim at because 
 they all work on the outside. They 
 deal with symptoms and not with the 
 disease. They fail and must fail of a 
 cure because they attempt to treat the 
 patient for some cutaneous affliction 
 when the real trouble of the sufferer is 
 disease of the heart. 
 
 7. What the world needs for the pro- 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 111 
 
 motion of peace is power to change men. 
 Wlien that power is brought to bear on 
 society we shall have peace, permanent 
 peace. Change men and their laws will 
 be changed. Make men just and their 
 laws will be just. Make men kindly 
 and the social order will be kindly. Let 
 this new power infiltrate the people, and 
 then war will not only be averted but 
 war will be impossible. There will be 
 differences of opinion still, diversities 
 of gifts, differences of organization and 
 of administration, but there will be 
 peace, just as peace reigns between the 
 diverse organ and functions of the hu- 
 man body. 
 
 What is this power which promises 
 to pacify the world and put an end to 
 strife? It is the power of the Gospel 
 of Jesus Christ. !N^ineteen centuries 
 ago He the Prince of Peace came an- 
 nouncing his program to the world. 
 Eighteousness was the girdle of his 
 
112 THE WOELD WAR Ain> 
 
 loins and faithfulness the girdle of his 
 reins. He did not call out his program 
 on the highways or introduce it with 
 noisy demonstration. J^either beating 
 of drums nor blare of trumpets an- 
 nounced his appearance. His doctrine 
 dropped as the rain and his speech dis- 
 tilled as the dew. He did not cry or 
 lift up or cause his voice to be heard in 
 the streets. His expectation of the ul- 
 timate success of his program though 
 confident was modest. While taking 
 for granted that it would win ascend- 
 ancy in the long run, he foresaw that 
 its progress would be slow ; but he could 
 bide his time. One day with him was 
 as a thousand years and a thousand 
 years as one day. A few faithful fol- 
 lowers were all he could boast of at the 
 close of his earthly career, but these 
 few were men of faith who won other 
 converts, and these in their turn still 
 others until as the years and the cen- 
 
THEi EOAD TO PEACE 113 
 
 tiiries came and went, tlie disciples of 
 Jesus were numbered by millions — 
 visionary men and women if you please, 
 idealists, dreamers of dreams — who, no 
 longer deceived by the gospel of force, 
 the gospel of hate, the gospel of selfish- 
 ness, the proud gospel of human effi- 
 ciency, were committed to that Kingdom 
 into which the glory of the nation would 
 yet be brought. They foresaw that all 
 kings should yet bow the knee before 
 this Prince of Peace, and that on his 
 head would be many crowns — the 
 crown of politics, of commerce, of sci- 
 ence, of art, of literature, and that under 
 his gentle but omnipotent sway war 
 would cease unto the ends of the earth, 
 and that the matin of the angels heard 
 over the fields of Bethlehem would in 
 the fulness of time be chanted around 
 the world. 
 
 But many of the adherents of Jesus 
 in these days have grown sceptical con- 
 
114 THE WOELD WAR AND 
 
 cerning the efficiency of his scheme for 
 the woes of mankind. They have stud- 
 ied it with interest, have been attracted 
 by it, have admired it, but they have 
 come to lose faith in it as a practical 
 solution of the hard, unrelenting and 
 inveterately hostile conditions that curse 
 humanity. Christianity has been on 
 trial for nineteen centuries and seems 
 to have failed as a promised panacea 
 against the evil forces which continue 
 to disturb the peace of the nations. 
 
 And others of us find our faith 
 strained almost to the breaking point 
 by the delayed success of Jesus' pro- 
 gram. Like a weary bird flying into an 
 icy air our faith grows afraid and 
 faint, and we are tempted to ask where 
 is the promise of the coming of the 
 kingdom of peace ? 
 
 'Now it will help to revive and rein- 
 vigorate our faith if, curbing our im- 
 patience, we ponder seriously and fre- 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 115 
 
 quently two or three plain but important 
 facts : 
 
 In tlie first place, the fact that Jesus 
 nowhere holds out the hope that the 
 progress of His Kingdom in the world 
 would be rapid. He Himself had no 
 such expectation. On the other hand 
 he understood and gave his disciples to 
 understand that the growth of his 
 Kingdom would be slow; that it would 
 come without observation — first the 
 blade, then the ear, then the full corn 
 in the ear. Unlike mechanical, spir- 
 itual forces work slowly. We can erect 
 in a few months structures ample 
 enough to house thousands of men and 
 thus provide for their physical com- 
 fort, but it is a different matter when we 
 come to make saints of thousands of sin- 
 ners. Given forces enough, a great mili- 
 tary genius like Napoleon can plough 
 Europe with cannon shot and in a short 
 time conquer a continent, but to win 
 
116 THE WOEIiD WAK AND 
 
 the affection and devotion of a dis- 
 obedient and rebellious people, that 
 is beyond bim. Comparing spiritual 
 things with natural we see how the 
 higher and more complex the result, 
 the longer the time consumed in its 
 development. It takes months for the 
 seed cast into the furrow to become a 
 harvest of golden grain; and years for 
 the little babe to become a stalwart man ; 
 and centuries for the hollow log to grow 
 into the ocean greyhound, or for a 
 country sparsely peopled by savages to 
 become a populous nation of millions of 
 civilized men. It took millenniums for 
 the hope begotten in the heart of a 
 prophet to ripen into reality in the in- 
 carnation of Jesus. Why then wonder 
 and lose heart because the spiritual con- 
 quest of the world through gentleness, 
 patience and love should progress so 
 tardily. 
 
 A second fact we would do well to 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 117 
 
 ponder is that slow as the progress of 
 the Kingdom must from its very nature 
 be, it has been seriously retarded by the 
 perfidy of the very organization to 
 which Jesus committed its fortunes. 
 That organization is known as the 
 Church. As long as the Church ad- 
 hered to and was inspired and con- 
 trolled by the simple principles of its 
 founder she made rapid progress. She 
 outstripped in celerity the marches of 
 an Alexander. Within a brief period 
 she had planted the standard of the 
 Cross in most of the important capitals 
 of Europe and Asia Minor. By faith 
 the followers of Jesus subdued king- 
 doms, wrought righteousness, stopped 
 the mouths of lions, quenched the vio- 
 lence of fire. Even a Christian Em- 
 peror occupied the throne of the 
 Csgsars. Kome, that moral cesspool of 
 the nations, began to feel the cleansing 
 power of the Gospel ; her temples which 
 
118 THE WOELD WAE AND 
 
 were brothels were turned into pure 
 sanctuaries, her priests — the ministers 
 of vice — became zealous preachers of 
 righteousness. Gladiatorial shows and 
 Eleusinian mysteries were supplanted 
 by moral and spiritual services. Her 
 women who had been slaves, and her 
 slaves who had been ill-used cattle came 
 to be regarded and treated as human 
 beings. 
 
 But by and by the Church designed 
 to remain separate from the world be- 
 came merged in the world. She became 
 inoculated with the world's philosophy, 
 became mixed in politics and infected 
 by worldly ambition. Controversies 
 arose which splintered her into frag- 
 ments and weakened her influence. 
 Her lust for political aggrandizement 
 and power paralyzed her. Forgetting 
 her mission which was to redeem men 
 from sin, she made converts by force, 
 and drove them to baptism by the power 
 
THE; EOAD TO PEACE 119 
 
 of the sword. Tlie meek and lowly 
 Jesus was no longer represented by a 
 Paul who was aflame with a passion for 
 souls; or a John who walked in inti- 
 mate fellowship with his Master, or by 
 a Barnabas the son of consolation; but 
 by a Hildebrand or an Innocent — 
 haug'hty, arrogant, tyrannical, cruel, 
 lustful, before whose swaggering au- 
 thority Kings must come on their 
 knees. 
 
 To be sure during all this period of 
 degeneracy a remnant was preserved 
 who kept the pure fires of devotion 
 alive in caves and dens of the earth, 
 in catacombs and in secret places. 
 ISTow and then a saintly hero like 
 Savonarola would arise to denounce the 
 corruption of the times and defy the 
 Vatican with its wriggling minions. 
 Reformations too and revivals occurred 
 at intervals in the history of the Church 
 which in a measure cleansed the clogged 
 
120 THE WOELD WAR AIH) 
 
 channel through which the pure water 
 of life was meant to flow for the healing 
 of the nations. And yet the most lojal 
 Churchman of us must acknowledge 
 that there is still a good bit of the road 
 of repentance to travel before the 
 Church gets back to the simple charter 
 which alone justifies her existence. 
 
 Meanwhile deploring as we must this 
 shameful record of the Church and see- 
 ing as we do how her aberrations have 
 seriously hindered a more rapid realiza- 
 tion of the program of Jesus we will 
 not fail to remember that these grave 
 and disgraceful departures of the 
 Church from the faith once for all de- 
 livered to the saints are not chargeable 
 to Christianity. The perversions, dis- 
 tortions, and corruptions which dis- 
 figure the history of the Church; the 
 clericalism, priestism, sacerdotalism, 
 and tawdry symbolisms which have 
 crept into the life of the church are 
 
THE BOAD TO PEACE 121 
 
 no more an essential feature of 
 Christianity than barnacles are an es- 
 sential feature of the structure of a 
 ship, or than leprosy is an essential 
 feature of the human form divine. 
 .The purity of the spring is not dis- 
 credited because the stream which flows 
 from it is fouled miles away from its 
 source. 'Nor are the purity, vitality and 
 power of Christianity discredited by the 
 ghastly caricatures of it which the cor- 
 rupted church has from time to time 
 presented to the world. 
 
 Still another thing we have to bear 
 in mind as we wonder and ponder over 
 the delay of the Kingdom of peace is 
 that while the church has gotten rid 
 of many of the abuses which have in- 
 capacitated her as an instrument of the 
 power of Jesus she has yet in large 
 measure to learn to mind her own 
 business and to attend to the one thing 
 which has been given her to do. Jesus 
 
122 THE WOELD WAE AND 
 
 said : " As the Father hath sent me 
 into the world, so send I you into the 
 world." He has left ns in no doubt as 
 to his purpose in coming into the world 
 — a purpose which he never lost sight 
 of, and from which he was not to be 
 diverted. He came to save sinners; to 
 seek and to save the lost; to give re- 
 pentance to men and the remission of 
 their sins. Men were slaves and he 
 came to set them free. They were 
 spiritually dead and he came to give 
 them life. They were blind and he 
 came to open their eyes. They were 
 selfish, wilful, unrighteous, cruel, and 
 he came to restore them to moral 
 sanity. They were lost sheep and he 
 came to bring them in out of the wild 
 pasture and out of the stormy night. 
 
 This was his mission and this is the 
 mission of the Church. IsTever was the 
 Church numerically stronger than she 
 is today, ^ever was she so active and 
 
THE EOAD TO PEACE 123 
 
 busy as at present. ^Never were so 
 many well-disposed people engaged in 
 works of philanthropy and benevolence 
 as now. !N^ever were men more intent 
 on the business of softening hard con- 
 ditions, relieving distress, feeding the 
 hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the 
 sick than today. But if we are to ac- 
 cept the ]N"ew Testament definition of 
 the Church all this that her adherents 
 are so largely devoting themselves to 
 must be regarded as but an incidental 
 feature of her great commission, just 
 as healing the sick in body, opening 
 blind eyes, cleansing lepers, feeding the 
 hungry multitude were incidental 
 features of Jesus' mission. He did 
 not come to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a 
 philanthropist, or a dispenser of alms. 
 He came to make bad men good, un- 
 righteous men righteous, heartless men 
 merciful, impure men pure, wandering 
 prodigals sons of God. The Church 
 
124 THE WORLD WAR AND 
 
 does well to build hospitals and alms 
 houses, to fill storehouses for the sup- 
 ply of the needy, to devise better 
 methods for the care of men's bodies 
 and the education of their minds; but 
 the church was called and commissioned 
 to preach the Gospel which is the power 
 of God unto salvation, the power of God 
 to turn men from wickedness, from self- 
 ishness, from pride, from the lusts of 
 the flesh. The Church is an am- 
 bassador with instruction, a messenger 
 with a message which she has been ap- 
 pointed to deliver to all men — the 
 message of forgiveness, of love, of good 
 will and peace. Teed men and they 
 will be hungry again ; gratify them and 
 they will be ungrateful again; house 
 them and they will be improvident 
 again ; make concession after concession 
 and they will demand the more. The 
 Gospel which Jesus put into our hands 
 was not the Gospel of improvement 
 
THE ROAD TO PEACE 125 
 
 merely, the Gospel of social betterment, 
 the Gospel of soap and sand paper, a 
 sort of remedial measure for the cure 
 of u.ncouthness, a sort of drapery where- 
 with to disguise men's natural feroci- 
 ties. This might have been his Gospel 
 if his conception of sin had been that 
 of many of us — a fall up, an in- 
 teresting phase of moral evolution; a 
 misfortune at the very worst; the 
 stumbling of a blind man; the in- 
 firmity of a defective man. But look- 
 ing upon sin as the most awful fact in 
 the universe; as separation from God; 
 as alienation from the highest and the 
 holiest; as denial and defiance of all 
 moral restraints ; as that thing which if 
 uncontrolled would dethrone God; the 
 remedy Jesus proposed and which He 
 commanded the church to proclaim 
 must match the disease — the Gospel 
 of Moral and Spiritual regeneration. 
 Give men this Gospel and then the 
 
126 THE EOAD TO PEACE 
 
 rich will be humble and the poor 
 will be content; the ferocious will be 
 tamed and the meek will come into 
 their own ; the great and the strong will 
 kneel by the side of the ministering 
 Christ in service and the weak will 
 bless and not curse. The frontiers of 
 the nations will be defined bj walls of 
 salvation and gates of praise. The art 
 of war shall be forgotten; and the wolf 
 shall dwell with the lamb, and the 
 leopard shall lie down with the kid, and 
 the calf and the young lion and the 
 f attling together ; and a little child shall 
 lead them. 
 
 FEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEEIOA 
 
'T'HE following pages contain advertisements 
 of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred 
 subjects. 
 
Through War to Peace 
 
 By albert G. KELLER 
 
 Professor of the Science of Society in Yale 
 
 University, and Author of " Societal 
 
 Evolution." 
 
 Cloth, i2mo. 
 
 Professor Keller discusses the present war 
 from the point of view of the sociological, or 
 the societal, theory. This theory, briefly, is 
 that society expands by developing certain cus- 
 toms, manners or folk-ways. Gradually these 
 customs become a religion, ultimately develop- 
 ing into what may be called a code. There has 
 been growing up an international code of re- 
 cent years and the progress of civilization is 
 determined by the character and efficiency of 
 this code. The Germans marked a variation 
 from this code and notably during the last few 
 years have been developing a code of their 
 own, sharply opposed to that of civilization. 
 The present war is then regarded as an in- 
 evitable conflict between the code of civiliza- 
 tion and the German variant. Professor Kel- 
 ler writes in a vigorous and popular style, pre- 
 senting his theoretical and rationalistic sup- 
 port of the American cause in a way that the 
 average reader can understand and appreciate. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64^66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
TWO BOOKS BY WALTER E. WEYL 
 
 The American 
 World Policies 
 
 i^** $2.25 e. 
 
 The United States is deeply concerned with 
 the peace which is to be made in Europe, and 
 with the Great Society to be re-constituted 
 after the war. With world influence come 
 new responsibilities, opportunities and dan- 
 gers. This book relates our foreign policy to 
 our internal problems, to the clash of indus- 
 trial classes and of political parties, to the de- 
 cay of sectionalism and the slow growth of a 
 national sense. It is a study of " American- 
 ism " from without and within. 
 
 The End of the War 
 
 Preparing 
 
 Here Dr. Wejd gives us a new interpreta- 
 tion of the war and of America's entrance into 
 it. He points out the end toward which the 
 war is moving and outlines an American policy 
 for the war and for the peace which is to fol- 
 low it. His purpose is to show the relation 
 of this struggle to the whole history of Amer- 
 ican thought and action, and to forecast the 
 future policy of this country toward Europe 
 and the world. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
The Soul of Democracy 
 
 By EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS 
 
 Cloth, i2mo. $1.25 
 
 What at bottom does the war mean? Why- 
 has it been our war from the beginning? 
 What will be the effect of the war upon our 
 social philosophy and upon the future of 
 democracy? These are the questions which 
 this volume undertakes to answer. The re- 
 spective values of democracy and paternalism 
 for efficiency, endurance and finally for the 
 welfare and progress of humanity are studied 
 in a series of vital chapters culminating in an 
 analysis of the effect of the war upon social- 
 ism, feminism, religion, education and litera- 
 ture. Those who have heard the author's pub- 
 lic addresses will readily realize the signifi- 
 cance of a volume embodying his whole philos- 
 ophy of the world's struggle with its effect 
 upon the future. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
America Among the Nations 
 
 By H. H. powers 
 
 Author of "The Things Men Fight For," etc. 
 
 Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 
 
 To arrive at an estimate of national char- 
 acter from the homely facts of our national 
 history, is the purpose of this volume, as ex- 
 pressed by the author. He would, too, dis- 
 card the time-honored prepossessions and epi- 
 thets which have too long done duty with us as 
 estimates of foreign nations, and arrive at a 
 juster conclusion based on their actions. In 
 short, he says, this book is an attempt at an 
 historic interpretation of our national char- 
 acter and of our relation to other nations. 
 With this purpose in mind he devotes the first 
 part of his text to a consideration of America 
 at home, taking up such topics as. The First 
 Americans ; The Logic of Isolation ; The Great 
 Expansion; The Break with Tradition; The 
 Aftermath of Panama; Pan- Americanism and 
 the Dependence of the Tropics. The second 
 division is entitled America Among the World 
 Powers, and considers among other things: 
 The Greater Powers ; The Mongolian Menace ; 
 Greater Japan; Germany, The Storm Center; 
 The Greatest Empire; and The Greatest Fel- 
 lowship. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64r-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
 W92 
 

 
 
 
 
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