A league to enforce peace

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Foreword

I WISH to express my sincere gratitude to several friends who have generously given of their time to read this book in manuscript. Some have made valuable suggestions which I have not infrequently adopted. I wish especially to thank Mr. William H. Short, Prof. John Bates Clark, Dr. Talcott Williams, Mr. Walter Lippmann, Prof. Walter Yale Durand, Mr. Glenn Frank, Mr. Frederick Harris, Mr. R. R. Lutz, Dr. Hugh Black and Dr. Thomas Blaisdell. The excellent bibliographies at the end of the book were prepared and contributed by my wife. In the preparation of the manuscript for the printer I have been ably assisted by Florence Sexauer. Also I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Thomas E. Green for suggesting the title for Part I.

Contents

PAOB iNTBODUCnON BY PRESIDENT A. LAWBBNGB LOWELL . . Ix

FOBEWOBD ZZYli

Part I The Forces That Failed Chapteb

In the Palace of Night 8

I The Tboubu: with Pacifism 6

II Do Ghbistians Want Wab? 12

lY What About the Women? 84

y Did Business Help ob Hindkb? 42

VI What's Wbonq with Diplomacy? 48

Part II A Programme To Prevent Wab

The Great DMde of History 09

YII A League of States 71

YIII A CouBT OF Reason 89

IX A CJONOBESS OF Nations 105

X The Age of Discussion 116

XI In R]estbaint of Wab 128

XII Will it Wobk? 147

PART III THE ORBED OF MILITARISM XIII MoBAL Majesty qb Guilty Madness? 189

XIV Eabthquakes ob Avalanches? 210

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XV Dbainino the Swamps 231

XVI The Fbontiebs of Friendship 240

XYII Souls in Revolt 248

A Sea Wall of Democracy 257

BiBLIOOBAPHY 307

Index 319

Part I The Forces That Failed

IN THE PALACE OF NIQHT

In his allegorical play, The Bltte Bibd, Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian poet, describes the journey of Tyltyl and Mytyl in their quest for happiness. After visiting the Land of Memory they go to the Palace of Night — the night of the dark ages of superstition and ignorance. In their fruitless search they open the doors to the rooms where ghosts, diseases, and other things are kept. At length they stand before the door behind which the Wars are kept. The Queen warns the children that " they are more terrible than ever. . . . Heaven knows what would happen if one of them escaped." The boy, however, opens the door on a little gap and as he does so one huge and awful War pokes its paw through and another its ugly head. "Quick! Quick!** shouts Tyltyl. "Push with all your might. . . . They are coming! They are breaking down the door!** The boy and girl (Man and Woman) and all the other actors push until they slam the door in the faces of the brutal Wars. Then the children pass on in their search for the blue-bird that means happiness.

But this is only drama and poetry and fiction. What really happened, of course, was very different. On June SO, 1914, Prinoeps (not Tyltyl) opened the door to the room where the Wars were kept. When he shot the Austrian Archduke at Serajevo the door was opened on a crack. Then Austria sent her demands to Serbia and the door was opened wider. A month later Russian forces were mobilised and (Germany sent her ultimatum which flung the door wide open. The beasts rushed towards the door which everybody, when it was too late, tried to slam shut. The workers of the world and the women of the world put their shoulders to the door. Diplomacy, statesmanship, religion and everything that we denominate under the word civilisation hurried to put their shoulders to the door to prevent the Wars from coming out. But it was soon evident that the organised forces of barbarism were more powerful than the disorganised forces of civilisation. The Wars broke their chains and rushed across the threshold, tearing from its hinges the massive door, which fell upon the broken bodies of humanity.

A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE

PEACE

Chapter I The Trouble With Pacifism

No sooner had the war broken out than a cry of derision went up from every quarter charging that the whole movement towards peace had come to naught — that pacifism was a delusion and a snare. Wreaths of hypocritical praise were placed on the brows of prophets who dreamed of a distant day of peace. Insincere encomiums were pronounced upon Isaiah and Micah, upon Kant and Penn, but^ as soon as one's back was turned, these prophets were ridiculed as having been the victims of vagrant visions. Pacifists were told to wake up and look about them upon whole nations ^^ wading in slaughter.^' They were reminded of the deserted Peace Palace at The Hague, and of treaties held as lightly as a libertine holds his marriage vows. The fact was noted that the country which had produced the author of Eternal Peace was one of the prime movers in the war, while the country whose Czar had assembled the First Hague Convention was another major belligerent. It was pointed out that a century of propaganda, urging universal peace, had been like casting pearls before swine. Without consulting any of the ^^professional pacifists^^ or any of the institutions, such as the church, that would be most likely to counsel restraint, recourse was had to arms. Of course, not everybody argued in this fashion, but certainly all the disciples of militarism and all the apostles of force did. They cynically inferred that pacifism was a pretty but innocuous sentiment and that so long as there were no vital issues to be determined there could surely be no great harm in subscribing to the sentiment. And so, with a sneer, " practical people " wished the pacifist God speed on his silly errand.

Two things may be said in reply. The first is that there were some pacifists who were not surprised by the outbreak of the war. Dr. Alfred Fried,^ for one, had said again and again that such a war as this was certain to come unless the

iSee his The Restoration of Europe, Ch. VII, particularly pp. 149 and 150.

THE TROUBLE WITH PACIFISM 7

programme of prevention he advocated was adopted. That is why he and others laboured^ in season and out of season, not merely to spread the sentiments of peace but to construct the machinery that might make the preservation of peace possible. They went ahead and built their Peace Palaces and held their Hague Conventions and their International Congresses. They spared no efforts to organise the opinion of the world and to persuade the most influential people in the leading nations to build on more substantial foundations than shifting sand. The rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house till it fell. Now, they maintain, and not without some justification, that the collapse came precisely because the structure of society was not based on the solid rock of mutual goodwill plus the machinery they wanted to set up. It is not reasonable to charge that international law failed, inasmuch as the aggressor nation gave international law no chance either to succeed or fail. It is confusing to say that arbitration failed, inasmuch as the Central Powers refused to try arbitration, even when it was suggested by Serbia in reply to Austria's demands.^ It is not accurate to say

1 '* If the Imperial and Royal Goveniment [Austria-Hungary 1 that conciliation failed, inasmuch as the offers of a conference for the purpose of coming to an understanding, made by Sir Edward Grey in his telegram to the British Ambassador at Berlin, dated July 26, 1914,^ and by the Czar of Russia in the communique issued on August 2, 1914, by the Minister of Foreign Affairs,^ were rejected by Germany.^ The plain truth is that the machinery for

are not satlsfled with this reply, the Servian Gtovemment, considering that it is not to the common interest to precipitate the solution of tills question, are ready, as always, to accept a pacific understanding, ... by referring this question to the decision of the International Tribunal of The Hague." — Note of July 25, 1914.

1 " Would Minister for Foreign Affairs be disposed to instruct Ambassador here to join with representatiyes of France, Italy, and Germany, and myself to meet here in conference Immediately for the purpose of discoyering an issue which would prevent complications? You should ask Minister for Foreign Affairs whether he would do this. If so, when bringing the above suggestions to the notice of the Governments to which they are accredited, representatives at Belgrade, Vienna, and St. Petersburg could be authorised to request that all active military operations should be suspended pending results of conference."^- The British White Paper, No. 36.

2 '* The Imperial Government declared that Russia was ready to continue the pourparlers towards a pacific solution of the confiict, either by means of ^rect negotiations with the Cabinet of Vienna, or, following the proposal of Great Britain, by means of a conference of the four great Powers not directly interested, namely, England, France, Germany, and Italy." — ^The Russian Orange Book, No. 77.

8 On July 27 Sir Edward Goschen, the British Ambassador at Berlin, telegraphed Sir Edward Grey that the British proposal had been rejected by the Foreign Minister, who "maintained that such a conference as you proposed was not practicable." — The British White Paper, No. 43.

On July 28 Sir Maurice de Bunsen, the British Ambassador at Vienna, telegraphed Sir Edward Grey :

" Minister for Foreign Affairs said quietly, but firmly, that no discussion could be accepted on basis of Serbian note; that

THE TROUBLE WITH PACIFISM 9

motailismg peace sentiment and for adjusting just such diflFerences as those which arose in July, 1914, was rather clumefy and inadequate and could not be made to operate as rapidly as the machinery of war, particularly as one party to the controyen^ was bent on having war.

The other thing that may be said in answer to the charge that pacifism has failed is that a certain type of pacifism, and what is usually meant by ^ pacifism '' has failed. Its failure, however, clears the ground and makes room for saner and more practical efforts. There is no denying the fact that a good deal of pacifist sentiment was hardly distinguishable from mild-mannered sentimentality. The disciples of this school were unquestionably sincere enough and perhaps were rigorously logical, but they refused to look the facts of life in the face and to deal with men and nations as they actually are. They were naive. Their plans were visionary and their schemes chimerical. "The peace movement," writes Ellen Key in her most

war would be declared to-day, and that well-known pacific character of Emperor, as well as, he might add, his own, might be accepted as a guarantee that war was both just and inevitable. This was a matter that must be settled directly between the two parties immediately concerned. I said that you would hear with regret that hostilities could not be arrested, as you feared that they might lead to complications threatening the peace of Europe."— The British White Paper, No. 62.

10 A LEAGUE TO ENP0RC3E PEACE

recent book,^ " that has only appealed to the emotions has never put the sxe to the root of the problem. ... So long as it was only a proclamation of Christian humanitarianism^ it never built on a foundation of reality/^ These pacifists too oftai thought of countries and statesmen in the abstract^ gave free rein to their imaginations, and dreamed of a day when blessed peace would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Their ignorance of RealpoUtik was both profound and comprehensive. They evidenced but little genius for practicality, and dogmatically refused to compromise. Like Brand in Ibsen's drama, they could have "all or nothing," and because they could not have all, they were perforce obliged to take nothing, or, what is infinitely worse — war. Maybe the time will come, in the far future, when human nature will not merely acknowledge the wrong and waste and folly of war, but will go ahead and actually forge its swords into ploughshares, remodel its ships into schools and transform its arsenals into factories that produce the goods the people need. But that time has not yet come and we shall gain nothing but disappointment by deluding ourselves with f an-

1 War, Peace, and the Future, pp. 122, 123.

THE TROUBLE WITH PACIFISM 11

tastic yisions. It can hardly help to speculate on when, if ever, this desired day will dawn.

Because pacifism has failed in its endeavour to prevent war, it must now, willingly or involuntarily, make way for statesmanship, for a new kind of statesmanship. The pressing task now is to make statesmen out of pacifists and pacifists out of statesmen. We «hall have to quit gazing into the heavens and turn our attention to the actual problems that confront men and nations in a real world. We shall have to lay aside every weight of vain visioning and run with patience the long race. We shall have to substitute willing for wishing and cultivate a talent for details. We shall have to organise the world for peace and not for war. We must be ready to reckon with the facts as they are, and with human nature as it is. It will probably be conceded without discussion that this particular kind of ^^ pacifism,'' this new statesmanship, has not yet had a try-out. Whether or not it can succeed in preventing war is still unsettled and uncertain. We shall know more about that a decade or a century hence.

Chapter II Do Christians Want War?

A 6SBAT many people contend that this war has demonstrated the futility of Christianity, the impotence of all organised religion. Whichever way we turn some one is ready to remind us that if Christianity stands for anything at all it stands for peace on earth, good will to men. We are not permitted to forget for an hour that the Gospel of Christ, whatever else it may be, is an evangel of peace ; that the message of Jesus was a challenge to a warring world. The force of love and righteousness, it is explained, came into the world to displace the force of Roman arms. Furthermore, it is pointed out that this Gospel has now been preached to the uttermost parts of the world, that every European nation is nominally Christian, and that the Church numbers its adherents by the millions — more than twenty-four million Protestants and more than thirteen million Roman Catholics. And yet when war threatened, the whole structure went to pieces like a frame house in San Francisco.

That Christianity has failed has been whispered among churchmen in their cloistered retreats, and proclaimed from the housetops by the enemies of the Church. It is one of those half-truths that are more dangerous than falsehoods. The ready reply to the accusation is that Christianity has not failed because Christianity has never been tried. As well say, as some do, that democracy has never been tried. Of course both have been tried — after a fashion. Those who say that Christianity failed to prevent this world war speak the unvarnished and undeniable truth. The Christianity that has been tried has certainly failed. And the fact of the war is the reproach of Christianity. But the particular kind of Christianity that has been weighed in the balance and found wanting is nominal and formal and mystic Christianity : theological, ecclesiastical and sacerdotal Christianity. Some other kind of Christianity will have to be tried.

The old kind of Christianity could not withstand the shock of the earthquake. It did not succeed in fireproofing the world against the flames of war. When certain rulers and statesmen were determined to have war they brushed aside all the compunctions of Christian conscience. Apparently they were not only not bothered by their own private consciences, but were equally indifferent to the moral judgments of mankind. It is true that they have since spared no efforts to win the goodwill of the neutral world. When the tornado of war struck a tranquil world it swept away the moral and social teachings of Jesus. At any rate it did so far as their political application was concerned. Was this because there is bound up in Christianity no compelling power to prevent war? Was it not rather the perfect demonstration that, as nations, we have been pretending to worship a God whom we despise, to believe a Prophet whom we ignore, and to be stirred by motives which really do not impel us? Of course, if what we mean by the failure of Christianity is that the appeal of Jesus to his own contemporaries that they substitute a vital religion for a formal religion, a religion of deed for a religion of creed, a practical religion for a doctrinal religion, has failed of acceptance by modern society, why then, yes, in that sense, Christianity has failed. The war itself is convincing proof of that fact. The formal Christianity of ritual and dogma has failed as it was bound to fail. We are swiftly coming to realise that for all too many years and centuries we have been taught, and have not repudiated the teaching, that this world is a ship that has sprung a leak and is rapidly sinking, and that our wisest course is to get onto a raft of personal salvation and make sure of our indiyidual escape. But the conyiction is growing that we have emphasised the importance of personal salvation to the neglect of the redemption of society — a contravention of the simple teachings of Jesus. No attempt is made to deny that religion is, in a very profound sense, a personal matter — the establishment and maintenance of right relations between the individual and his Maker; but it is firmly believed by many that to stress this Efyllable of personal salvation in the word Christianity and to slur over the syllable which has to do with its social implications is to make religion esoteric and morbid. It may be that this explanation of why Christianity, when the crisis of the centuries came, was not effective may be the true explanation. Perhaps it is, as claimed, because the majority of preachers have for generations concentrated upon the spiritual value of religion and have slighted its social significance that the churches have been so comparatively impotent in "business, industry, politics and diplomacy. Has the time not come, at last, to shift the accent?

A further explanation sometimes offered for the failure of the churches to prevent the coming of the war is that religious teachers have taken our minds off this present world and have put them on another — distant in time and place. They have exhorted us patiently to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune here, and have confidently assured us that compensation would come hereafter. It must be perfectly obvious that we cannot make the present world better by riveting our attention on a future world. As long as religion turns men's minds away from the pressing problems of the present and spends its force on vagrant dreams of future bliss it will fail to redeem this world from crime and misery and greed and war. While there are still many thousands of preachers and teachers who specialise in otherworldliness^ it is a fortunate fact that most niodern ministers at least divide their time between eschatology and sociology. Christianity must come to grips with all the practical problems of this life ; it must take a real interest in searching for an answer to the Immigrant Question, to the Liquor Question, to the Labour Question.

Still another explanation given for the comparative inefficiency of the Church in relation to the practical problems of social and political life is the wastage of its energy through meaningless competition. There are in America no less than one hundred and sixty-four different denominations and sects, most of them differing in little more than name. One of the most hopeful signs of the times is the movement towards Christian co-operation through the old Evangelical Alliance and the present Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America.^ If the churches could and would speak with one voice and in no uncertain tones proclaim their determined protest against war, they would be heard above the shouting and the tumult of conflict. These truths have been burned into us by the fires of war. Probably now the simplest way out would be for us all to acknowledge, without the piling up of apologetic words, that the kind of Christianity that has been most commonly practised is impotent to save society. Why not make up our minds once for all as to whether or not we really want to make this world a fitter habitat for humanity? And if that is what we want we shall have to transfer our thoughts and affections from a future world to a present world, from a distant world to a world in which we live and move and have our being. It

1 For an excellent review of the work of the Federal Conndl see an Article by Dr. Frederick Lynch In the Independent for December 4, 1916.

may require no little display of moral courage, but perhaps now is as good a time as any for us to quit our rigmarole of dogmatism and ritualism and get down to the actual job of *^ saying the world/' When the religion of Jesus shall come to mean the religion of justice in all human relations — between man and woman, between capital and labour, between citizen and alien, between nation and nation, and between race and race — we shall be very near to the beginning of the end of war. Such a reyival of religion would be worth more to the world than a hundred calculated campaigns of clap-trap. There ought to blow over the Church to-day some Pentecostal wind that would stir its dormant energies. What else, unless this, does the word enthusiasm mean, — the breath of God blown on the smouldering embers of the heart until it be kindled into a living flame? It may be well to recall that, paradoxical as it may seem, this war has deepened doubt at the same time that it has inspired faith. ^ Pessimism and unbelief have come up like the blackdamp of a coal mine and have choked what faith we had. It has been hard to answer the questions of the sceptics. War makes for a return to ma-

1 See Article on '* War and ReUgion/' by the Rev. Sidney M. Berry, Minister of Carr's Lane Church, Birmingham, England, in Current HUtory for November, 1916.

terialism and a seeming dependence upon brute physical forces; and yet, just because so many millions of men are daily on the verge of death, religious devotion and a profound sense of dependence upon some Power not ourselves, mightier than the powers that be, is quickened and strengthened.

Nor is this all. Friends of progress have always put much confidence in the restraining influences of culture and enlightenment. Education has long been esteemed one of the most potent factors in human life, and the school has been valued as one of the greatest institutions making for advance Many of us had almost come to believe that ignorance and barbarism were practically syn^ onymous. We thought that the hope of the world lay in dispelling ignorance, with its accompanying train of superstition, intolerance, savagery and cruelty. When a great European war was predicted many doubted, saying that modern education would tend to inhibit war, and that men who had submitted themselves to the refining processes of culture could not let themselves go with the old abandon of the savage. If education has failed at the crucial test it should be made sun-clear that what has failed is not education, but mis-education and partial education. We have gone on mumbling the phrases of a scholastic learning that has had little or no vital relation to the real world. We have trained men's heads without training their hearts and wills, and then have wondered why our education has not been successful in preventing war.

Revolutionary changes are certain to follow in the wake of this war — many of them changes of an unprecedented character. Hardly anything will continue to be as it has been in the past. There will be reformations in every department of human life. And not the least of these will take place in the field of education. The school will cease to be thought of as a place where scholars may retire from the real world to contemplate the problems of life, and will become a vital factor in the transformation of society. We shall have to surrender the notion that education is the process of filling an empty skull with the accumulated knowledge of past ages and conceive of it rather as a process of training human faculties — the memory, the judgment, the will, and the conscience. Education must be moral as well as mental, volitional as well as intellectual.

To the Church and the School, as forces that create and mould public opinion and sentiment, must be added the Press. Modem newspapers wield a power second only to the autocratic power of Old World States. They are able immeasurably^ to advance the cause of civilisation; they are capa; ble of doing an immense amount of mischief. It is hard to overestimate the potential influence of a free press^ for good and for evil.

It is platitudinous to speak of the tremendous force of public opinion. . " There can be no doubt whatever/' wrote Havelock Ellis more than a year before the present war broke out/ "that during recent years, and especially in the more democratic countries, an international consensus of public opinion has gradually grown up, making itself the voice, like a Greek chorus, of an abstract justice. ... A popular international voice generously pronouncing itself in favour of justice, and resonantly condemning any government which clashes against justice, is now a factor of the international situation. It is, moreover, tending to become a factor having a certain influence on affairs." That there is a latent power in the will of the world which, when aroused and organised, can accomplish miracles is not to be denied. And that is why so much confidence had been placed in the power of public opinion, in common conscience, to thwart the de-

1 The Task of Social Hygiene, signs of selfish politicians and financiers. ^^We had hoped " — like the disciples on the road to Em- !Baii6 — that popular sentiment^ as inspired and cultivated by the churches, the schools and the newspapers, would make a wholesale war in this enlightened age impossible.

The three familiar arguments against war — ^the horror of war, the waste of war, and the folly of war — were unanswerable. Especially was it true that no reply could be made to the moral argument. The shame and crime of war we knew to be axiomatic. Surely, we said, nobody needs to be convinced to-day that war is essentially and fundamentally wrong. Men who held no extreme doctrines of non-resistance maintained not that all wars are wrong, but that all war, as such, is wrong. And there is a difference, a vital difference, that is not unlike that between man-slaughter and justifiable homicide. It was held that a war fought to rid the world of a condition worse than war itself is right, but that all other wars are wrong. The justification of war is its justice. The law that is written on the human heart is the Moral Law, and that cannot be abrogated by a declaration of war.

This mental and moral aversion — not to speak of a natural revulsion, detestation, abhorrence — it had been hoped would prevent war. Stilly in spite of everything, the war came. But what of the future? In times past it was possible wholly to ignore the world's sad voice of discontent. It will not much longer be possible to continue indifferent. The latent power of public opinion is not going to remain latent. Its pressure can already be felt. If any proof of this were needed, it could readily be found in the way that all the belligerents have sought the good will of the neutral world.

It has already been suggested that the minds of men are made up on this subject of war and peace. There is no mistake about this as a fact. Nor is it any snap judgment. They have taken nearly four thousand years to come to a decision, and that decision is, with scarcely a dissenting voice, that war, particularly as waged under modem conditions, is not only incredibly horrible but also incalculably expensive. This war has demonstrated beyond doubt that, whatever the results, direct or indirect, they are certain to be entirely incommensurate with the cost in treasure and suffering.

Chapter III Where Were The Workers?

Nob are these the only forces that have failed. Many had counted on the workers to preserve the peace of the world. We were assured that in these latter days the labourers of one country had much more in common with the labourers of another country than they had with other groups in their own land. Among the socialists a group had grown up who called themselves Internationalists, and it was argued that nothing could possibly induce them to take up arms against their brother workers in other lands. Class-consciousness was esteemed more powerful than nation-consciousness, and it wa^ freely claimed that a new sentiment of solidarity and humanity had arrived to take the place of the old sentiment of nationality and patriotism. Perhaps the logic of history was on the side of those who thus reasoned, but here, as so often happens, abstract logic broke down in the presence of concrete life. Inspired and urged by sentiments that have a very deep rootage in the human spirit^ these