Is a Permanent Peace Possible?
“If a better and saner world is to grow out of the horror of futile carnage, men must learn to find their nation’s glory in the victory of reason over brute instincts, and to feel the true patriotism which demands that our country should deserve admiration rather than extort fear.”
I.
When the war began, certain writers, notably Mr. H. G. Wells, exhilarated by the romance of great events, and yet believing themselves to be lovers of peace, invented the theory that this was ‘a war to end war.’ Both in England and in Germany, men who have professed a horror of war, but who do not wish it thought that they oppose this war, have argued that their own country is notorious for its love of peace, of which it has given repeated proofs laying it open to the charge of weakness; but that it has been attacked by unscrupulous enemies, and must quell their ruthless pride before the world can be relieved from the dread of war. This language is not insincere, but is the result of a very superficial analysis of the events and passions which led up to the conflict. Such an analysis, if allowed to pass unchallenged, is dangerous, since it leaves untouched all the misjudgment, suspicion, and pride out of which future wars, equally devastating, may be expected to grow in the course of the years. Something more than the mere victory of one party is necessary for a secure peace, and something deeper than a relief in the enemy’s wickedness is necessary if the nations are to move toward the goal. I shall attempt first an analysis of the causes of modern war, and then a discussion of means of preventing future wars between civilized state.
The present war springs from the rivalry of states. And the rivalry of states springs from certain erroneous beliefs, inspired and encouraged by pride and fear, and embodied in a political machinery intended to make the power of a state quick, effective, and terrible. If wars between civilized states are to cease, these beliefs must be seen to be mistaken, pride must take a different form, fear must become groundless, and the machinery of international relations must no longer be designed solely for rivalry.
In surveying the larger causes of the war, we may leave altogether out of account the diplomacy of the last fortnight in July. Since the conclusion of the Anglo-French entente in 1904 the war had been on the point of breaking out, and could have been avoided only by some radical change in the temper of nations and governments. The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine had caused a profound estrangement between France and Germany. Russia and Germany became enemies through the Pan-Slavist agitation, which threatened the Austrian influence in the Balkans and even the very existence of the Austro-Hungarian State. Finally, the German determination to build a powerful navy drove England into the arms of Russia and France. Our differences with those two countries were suddenly discovered to be unimportant, and were amicably arranged without any difficulty. By a treaty whose important articles were kept secret, the French withdrew their opposition to our occupation of Egypt, and we undertook to support them in acquiring Morocco, — a bargain which, from our own point of view, had the advantage of reviving the hostility between France and Germany at a time when there seemed a chance of its passing away. As regards Russia, our deep-rooted suspicions of its Asiatic designs were declared groundless, and we agreed to the independence of Tibet and the partition of Persia, in return for an acknowledgment of our suzerainty in Afghanistan. Both these arrangements show that, if good-will and reason presided over international affairs, an adjustment of differences might have been made at any time; as it is, nothing but fear of Germany sufficed to persuade us of the uselessness of our previous hostility to France and Russia.
No sooner had this grouping of the European powers been brought about than the Entente and the Alliance began a diplomatic game of watchful manœuvring against each other. Russia suffered a blow to her pride in the Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; Germany felt humiliated by having to acknowledge, though with compensation, the French occupation of Morocco. The first Balkan War was a gain to Russia; the second afforded some consolation to Austria. And so the game went on, with recurring crises and alternate diplomatic victories, first for one side, then for the other.
In all this struggle, no one on either side thought for a moment of the welfare of the smaller nations which were the pawns in the struggle. The fact that Morocco appealed to Germany for protection against French aggression was not held to put England and France in the wrong. The fact that the Persians—the intellectual aristocracy of the Moslem world—had freed themselves from the corrupt government of the Shah and were becoming liberal and parliamentary, was not regarded as any reason why their northern provinces should not be devastated by Cossacks and their southern regions occupied by the British. The fact that the Turks had for ages displayed a supremacy in cruelty and barbarism by torturing and degrading the Christians under their rule was no reason why Germany should not, like England in former times, support their tottering despotism by military and financial assistance. All considerations of humanity and liberty were subordinated to the great game: first one side threatened war, then the other; at last both threatened at once, and the patient populations, incited cynically by lies and claptrap, were driven on to the blind work of butchery.
A world where such cruel absurdities are possible is not to be put right by a mere treaty of peace. War between civilized states is both wicked and foolish, and it will not cease until either the wickedness or the folly is understood by those who direct the policy of nations. Most men do not mind being wicked, and the few who do have learned ways of persuading themselves that they are virtuous. But, except in moments of passion, men do mind being foolish. There is more hope of preventing war in future by persuading men of its folly than by urging its wickedness. To a dispassionate observation its folly is evident, but most observation is not dispassionate: unconsciously men tend to adopt the opinions which will justify them in indulging their passions. Just as a libertine, in order to excuse himself, comes to think that the women have no deep feelings, so a militant patriot comes to think that the interests of his country are vitally opposed to those of some other country, in order that he may have an opportunity to indulge pride, have an opportunity to indulge pride, the desire for triumph, and the lust of dominion. What the pacifist has to contend against is a system of false beliefs, inspired by unrecognized evil passions which are thought to be justified by the beliefs. If the beliefs are seen to be false, there is some hope that the passions may be recognized as evil. And the falsehood of the belief in the essential conflict of interests between nations is easily recognized by any candid mind.
Among men as among all gregarious animals, there are two kinds of economic relation: coöperation and competition. There is coöperation when the activities which the one undertakes in his own interest tend to benefit the other; there is competition when they tend to injure the other. Neither coöperation nor competition need be conscious; it is not even necessary that either should be aware of the existence of the other. But in so far as they are conscious, they bring into play quite different sets of feelings. On the one side we have affection, loyalty, gratitude; on the other, fear, hatred, triumph. The emotions out of which war springs result from a combination of the two groups: they are the emotions appropriate to coöperation against a common competitor. In the modern world, where men are grouped by states, these conditions are summed up in patriotism.
Coöperation and competition have governed the lives of our ancestors since the days before they were human, and in the course of the struggle for existence our emotional nature has developed so as to respond deeply and instinctively to these ancient stimuli. There is in all men a disposition to seek out occasions for the exercise of instinctive feelings, and it is this disposition rather than any inexorable economic or physical fact, which is at the bottom of enmities between nations. The conflicts of interest are invented to afford an excuse for feelings of hostility; but as the invention is unconscious, it is supposed that the hostility is brought about by some real conflict of interest.
The cause of this absence of harmony between our instincts and our real needs is the modern development of industry and commerce. In a savage community, where each family lives by its own labor, there is no occasion for peaceful coöperation in any group larger than the family. But there is often occasion for warlike coöperation: if all the members of some other tribe can be killed, it is possible to appropriate their hunting-gournds and their pastures. In such a state of things, war is profitable to the victors, and the vanquished leave no descendants. The human race is descended from a long line of victors in war; for, although there have been just as many vanquished, they failed in early days to leave any posterity. The feelings which men now have on the subject of war and international relations re feelings which were in agreement with facts, so far as the victors were concerned, in those primitive internecine combats of savage tribes. But in the modern world our economic organization is more civilized than our emotions, and the conflicts in which we indulge do not really offer that prospect of gain which lets loose the brute within us. The brute within us refuses to face this disappointing fact, and turns upon those who bring it forward with savage accusations of unmanliness or lack of patriotism. But it remains a fact none the less.
The international character of our economic organization is due to division of labor, taking partly the form of exchange, partly the form of multiplying stages in production. Consider some quite simple example: say a loaf of bread baked in Holland from Argentine wheat grown by the help of English agricultural machinery made from Spanish ore. Holland, Argentina, England, and Spain, all, through this loaf of bread, have an interest in each other’s welfare; any misfortune to any one of the four is likely to cause some injury to the other three. And so it happens that times of good trade and times of bad trade are both world-wide. Yet in spite of the fact that when Germany is prosperous England is prosperous, and when Germany has hard times England has hard times, men persist, both in England and in Germany, in concentrating attention on the comparatively small amount of economic competition, to the exclusion of the very much greater amount of economic coöperation. It is though that if Germany were ruined England would be enriched, and vice versa. Yet every tradesman knows that the ruin of his customers is an injury to him, which cannot be compensated by the ruin of his competitors. Instinct makes us want a nation to hate, and diplomatists have decided that, for the last ten years, that nation should be Germany; and since we hate Germany, we imagine her interests opposed to ours. But one moment’s thought without hatred shows that the whole opposition is merely imaginary.
The diplomatic conflict is even more unreal and disproportionate to any possibility of gain than the economic conflict. Apart from the satisfaction of a somewhat childish pride, what does it matter to either France or Germany which of them owns Morocco? Neglecting the fact that France had to promise the open door in order to win Germany’s acquiescence, the extreme limit of possible advantage would be the capture of the whole foreign trade of Morocco. This is a limit which cannot, in practice, be reached, since, even with the most restrictive tariff, there will be some commodities which will have to be imported from elsewhere. But even if it could be reached, it is a mere fallacy to suppose that the necessary restrictions would be advantageous to France, England, after much experience, has abandoned the attempt to impose any restrictions on foreign trade in its Crown Colonies, because they hamper the development of colonies, diminish their purchasing power, and in the long run injure English trade more than they benefit it. With every disposition to profit by injury to others, experience has taught us that our own profit is best secured by allowing equal opportunities to other nations, and that injury to others, however delightful in itself, has to be paid for by a corresponding injury to ourselves. But even if we adopt, for the sake of argument, the view that a nation owning a colony can profit by securing the whole trade of that colony to itself, what proportion is there between the gain and the cost?
In order that the French might acquire Morocco, England and France, in 1905 and again in 1911, were brought to the verge of war with Germany, causing huge increases in the French army and the English navy, embittering the relations of both with Germany, and producing a state of public feeling which made the present war possible. A solemn international conference deliberated at Algeciras, and arrived at decisions which England and France regarded as ‘scraps of paper.’ Finally, Germany, as the price of abandoning its claims, acquired a bit of African territory, at the expense of a similar increase of armaments, a similar exacerbation of public feeling, and an exhibition of bullying methods which prepared the whole world to view all Germany’s proceedings with suspicion. And as everybody knows, the loss due to mere uncertainty, produced in industry and finance by a ‘vigorous’ policy, was so great that the German business world at last compelled the government to give way. And all this turmoil was over the question whether France should have the empty right to call Morocco ‘French’!
Viewed as a means of obtaining any tangible gain, a diplomatic contest such as that which was waged over Morocco is a childish absurdity. The diplomatists who conduct it, and the journalists who applaud their ridiculous activities, are ignorant men—ignorant, I mean, in all that is really important to the welfare of nations. Their only training is in the kind of skill by which a horse-dealer palms off a bad bargain upon a foolish customer, and in the knowledge of personalities which is required in all games of intrigue. But such training, though it had its importance in simpler times, grows less and less useful as the organization of society becomes more complex and as the interdependence of men in widely severed parts of the world increases. More and more the important facts are dry, statistical, impersonal; less and less are they of the sort that lends itself to expression in traditional literary form. Men’s imaginations are governed to an extraordinary extent by literary tradition; the fact that the really important knowledge can be acquired only by industrious investigation makes it ‘vulgar’ and not such as any aristocratic diplomatist would condescend to know.
The economic absurdity of our diplomatic and military conflicts is not denied by well-informed advocates of international strife. They will admit that, in a war between civilized states, even the victor can no longer hope to gain in wealth. But they reply that such considerations are sordid, and that they, the warlike party, have nobler ideals than mere money-grubbing. This is an even more preposterous absurdity than the pretence of trading advantages to be obtained by victory. Let us admit at once that the interest which most people felt in the Moroccan question was not, except in a very small degree, an economic interest. But was it something higher than an economic interest?
The main thing involved in all such contests, and the thing that makes the average man tolerate them, is national pride. The Germans felt that France had failed to treat them with proper respect by not informing them officially of the Anglo-French agreement; the English and French felt the sending of the Panther to Agadir an act of aggression which must be resented; the Germans felt Mr. Lloyd George’s high language at the Mansion House in 1911 a threat to which no great power could yield with dignity. This is the nobler stuff with which the idealists of war confront the money-grubbing economists! Compared with this schoolboy desire for cheap triumphs, money-grubbing is humane, enlightened, and noble. The man who builds up an industry confers benefits upon countless others in the course of pursuing his own advantage: he becomes rich because he is doing something of real use to the community. But the pride that wishes to humiliate, and the pride that can be humiliated, by yielding trivial diplomatic advantages rather than risk war, are alike childish and barbarous, springing from low ambitions, and enviously regarding one man’s gain as consisting in another’s loss. Diplomatic victory rests with the side most willing to risk war; so long as men feel proud of their country on account of its victories, and not on account of its contributions to civilization and the welfare of mankind, so long they will feel humiliated when their country is reasonable, and elated when it is brutal, overbearing, ready to plunge the world into the chaos of armed conflict. As against this state of mind, the man who urges the economic loss involved, nowadays, even in successful war, is a humane advocate of sane coöperation, not a man blinded by sordid considerations to the supposed splendors of what is really the most degraded form of ‘patriotism.’
The disease from which the civilized world is suffering is a complex one, derived from the failure of men’s instincts to keep pace with changing material conditions. Among savages, where there is no trade and little division of labor, the only economic relation between different tribes is that of competition for the food-supply. The tribe which attacks with most cunning and ferocity exterminates the greatest number of others, and leaves the largest posterity. Disposition to ferocity and cunning is, at this stage, a biological advantage; and the instincts of civilized men are those developed during this early stage. But through the growth of commerce and manufactures it has come about that nine tenths of the interests of one civilized nation coincide with nine tenths of the interests of any other.
So long as the disposition to primitive ferocity is not excited, men are able to see their community of interest, — as, for example, most men do in America. But there remains in the background a readiness for enmity and suspicion, a capacity for all the emotions of the savage on the warpath, which can be roused by any skillful manipulator; and there remain many men who, from a brutal nature or from some underground effect of self-interest, are unable to see that friendship between nations is possible and that hostility has lost whatever raison d’être it once possessed. And so the old rivalries, now become an unmeaning and murderous futility, go on unchecked, and all the splendid heroism of war is wasted on a tragic absurdity.
II.
The old methods have brought us to the present disaster, and new and better methods must be found. So much is agreed on all hands.
But as soon as we attempt to specify better methods, disagreement breaks out, partly from conflict of opinion concerning the facts which have brought about the present situation, partly from desire to find a heroic solution which shall once for all make war impossible by some mechanical arrangement.
The steps to be taken for securing a lasting peace fall into three categories: (1) the conditions of peace; (2) the subsequent machinery for adjusting international disputes; (3) measures for producing, throughout Europe, a more sane, well-informed, and pacific public opinion.
(1) Nine men out of ten, in all the combatant nations, consider, or at least considered when the war broke out, that the conditions of peace are the only question of importance. Nine out of ten Englishmen believe, or believed, that England, France, and Russia are essentially peace-loving countries; that they made every conceivable effort for the preservation of peace; and that the one thing necessary to secure the permanent peace of the world is that they should smash the military power of Germany and Austria. Nine out of ten Germans believe, or believed, that Germany and Austria are essentially peace-loving countries; that while they were struggling to preserve the peace, Russia, secretly encouraged by England, treacherously mobilized under cover of negotiations between the Czar and the Kaiser; and that the one thing necessary to secure the permanent peace of the world is that Germany and Austria should smash the military power of the Allies.
These opposing views are merely melodramatic: no nation is quite black, and none is quite white, but all are of varying shades of gray. Like every one else in Europe, I think my own nation of the lightest shade of gray; but no participator in the game of Alliance and Entente which statesmen have played for the past ten years, ought to flatter itself that it is wholly unspotted. And in any case, as a solution, the complete destruction of the enemy has the defect of being impossible. England and Germany will both exist after the war; if they fought each other for five centuries, like England and France, they would still both exist. This fact is beginning to be realized on both sides, and to compel even the most bellicose to seek some way by which they can learn to endure each other’s existence with equanimity. What is wanted is a change of heart, leading to a change of political methods; and victory or defeat must be considered in the light of their power of producing a change of heart.
From this point of view, it is important that no nation should make such great gains as to feel that it was worth while going to war, and that none should suffer such humiliating losses as to be impelled to revenge. The result of 1870 was the worst possible from the point of view of mankind. The Germans were encouraged in militarism by success, the French were goaded into militarism by the intolerable shame of defeat and dismemberment. Whatever happens at the peace, there should be no new Alsace-Lorraines: any transfer of territory should be such as can be recommended to neutral opinion on the ground of the wishes of the inhabitants. So far as the West is concerned, it may be reasonably hoped that this condition will be carried out; but in the East it is to be feared that none of the combatants will respect it. No one believes that any part of the Turkish Empire will be allowed any voice in deciding its fate; but it must be admitted that the Turks, throughout their history, have done as little to deserve consideration as any nation on earth.
(2) But changes of territory are the least important part of what may be hoped from the peace. In all nations every sane man and woman will desire a completely new system in international affairs. The only men who will desire to prolong the present system are statesmen, sensational journalists, and armament-makers—the men who profit by slaughter, either in credit or in cash, without running any risk of being slaughtered themselves. Since these men will control the actual Congress, they will be able to postpone the inauguration of a happier age, unless America undertakes the championship of mankind against the warring governments. All humane people in Europe would wish America to participate: if possible, they would wish the Congress to take place in the neutral atmosphere of Washington, with Mr. Wilson as its president. The governments may oppose this plan, from the wish of officials to retain power in their own hands, and of combatants to avoid having to hear the voice of reason. But public opinion is against the governments in this question, though for the moment it has difficulty in expressing itself.
New methods in international affairs are required, not in the interests of one side or the other, but in the interests of mankind, lest civilization and humanity should perish from the world. It would be disastrous if new methods were imposed by the victors upon the vanquished as part of the humiliation of defeat: they ought to be adopted by all, at the suggestion of neutrals, as an escape from the tragic entanglement which has dragged a horrified Europe, as though by the compulsion of an external fate, into a cataclysm not desired beforehand by one man in a hundred in any of the nations involved in the struggle. In every nation, men believe they are fighting for the defense of home and country against wanton aggression; for they know that they themselves have not desired war, and they know or suspect the sins of foreign governments while they are ignorant of the sins of their own. In every nation, when this war comes to an end, men will welcome any means of avoiding the risk of another such war in the future.
Most of the friends of peace are agreed in advocating some kind of international council to take cognizance of all disputes between nations and to urge what it regards as a just solution. But it is not easy to agree either as to the powers or as to the composition of the council.
The council ought not to be composed merely of diplomatists. A diplomatist represents national prestige, and his credit among his confrères depends upon his skill in securing supposed advantages for his own nation. He focusses in his own person the spirit of rivalry between states, which is the chief obstacle to internationalism. The mental atmosphere in which he lives is that of the eighteenth century, with its ‘Balance of Power’ and other shibboleths. Classification by nations is only one way of classifying mankind, but the diplomatic machine ignores all other ways. The world of finance, the world of learning, the world of socialism—to take only three examples—are international, each of great importance in its own way, each having certain interests which cut right across the divisions of states. If each nation appointed to the council, not only a diplomatist, but also a financier, a representative of learning, and a champion of labor, there would often be cross-divisions, and the voting would not always be by nations. International interests, as opposed to merely national advantage, would have some chance of a hearing in such a council, and it might occasionally happen that the welfare of civilization would be the decisive consideration. Foreign policy has remained everywhere the exclusive domain of an aristocratic clique. What they have made of it, we see. It is time to secure a less ignorant and less prejudiced conduct of affairs by the admission of the democracy to an active administrative share.
The deliberations of the council should be public, and it should refuse to regard as binding any treaty, agreement, or understanding, of which the terms had been kept secret. By means of secrecy, an air of mystery and hocus-pocus is preserved, of which the sole use and purpose is to keep power in official hands, and to prevent the intrusion of common sense into the arcana of diplomacy. The public is hoodwinked by the assurance that secrecy is essential to national security. Hitherto, on this plea, even the most democratic countries of Europe have handed over their destinies blindfold to men who have abused their trust by policies diametrically opposed to what their followers desired. Only publicity can prevent a repetition of this crime.
In urging that men who are not professional diplomatists ought to take part in the international council, I am not intending to suggest that diplomatists, as individuals, are any worse than other men, but only that their training, their traditions, their way of life, and the fact that they represent the national interest to the exclusion of all other considerations, must tend to close their minds to an order of ideas which lies outside the scope of their official duties. Even men who are wholly estimable in private life will be governed in their political ideas by the interests which they represent. The secretary of the Automobile Association—I speak hypothetically, since I do not know who he is—may be an ardent patriot, and anxious, as an individual, to bear his share of the expense of the navy, but he will infallibly protest when it is proposed to put a tax on petrol. The editor of the Licensed Victualler’s Gazette may be a zealous temperance man in his private capacity, but as an editor he is bound to raise an outcry when any fresh burden is placed upon ‘the trade.’ So a diplomatist may, during his holidays, be an international pacifist, but in his working hours he will struggle to obtain small advantages for his country, even by threatening war if necessary. This is the inevitable effect of the interest which he represents, and can be counteracted only by men who represent interests which conflict less with those of civilization in general.
Should the powers of the council include military intervention for the enforcement of its awards? Very strong arguments may be urged on both sides.
It is assumed that, when a dispute arises, the council will at once invite the powers concerned to submit to its arbitration, and that, if one party expresses willingness to abide by its award while the other does not, it will throw whatever weight it possesses against the intractable party. It should also have the power of examining questions likely to cause disputes in the future, and of suggesting such adjustments and compromises as many seem just. But if its authority is flouted, shall it rely upon moral force alone, or shall it have power to invoke the armed support of all those neutrals which send delegates to it?
In favor of armed intervention, it may be urged that otherwise the council will be futile, and will afford no security against an aggressive military power. It will therefore not allay panics, prevent wars, or tend to diminish armaments. If, on the other hand, neutrals can be relied upon to be willing to threaten armed intervention, and if their intervention would always secure an overwhelming preponderance of force on one side, then the mere threat would be sufficient, and actual war would be prevented.
But this argument involves many doubtful hypotheses, and is perhaps inspired less by a sober review of the facts than by the wish to find a short cut to universal peace. Unless almost all the powers sincerely desire peace, an alliance among the more bellicose powers might be strong enough to flout all the others, and in that case the only result of the council would be to make the war world-wide. Also it is much to be feared that neutrals could not be trusted to intervene by force of arms in a dispute in which they had no interest beyond the desire to preserve the peace: the whole system would be in danger of breaking down just when it was most needed. The most pacific powers—notably the United States—would probably refuse altogether to enter a system entailing such vast and manifold obligations. And within each nation, the necessity of being constantly prepared to go to war would run counter to the wishes of peaceful people, although it is from such people, although it is from such people that the scheme would have to derive its support, since its aim would be the prevention of war. For these reasons, it does not seem desirable at present that the decisions of the international council should be enforced by military intervention.
I do not think the decisions of the council would have no weight if they rested upon moral force alone. The efforts made by both sides in the present war to persuade the United States of the justice of their cause show how highly the sympathy of neutrals is valued, when there is hardly a thought of their abandoning neutrality. And the mere existence of an impartial tribunal, to which each side could yield without loss of dignity, would in most cases suffice to prevent the diplomatic deadlock which precedes war. Public opinion, which at present has no means of hearing any unbiassed statement, would be powerfully influenced by an authoritative award, and the pacific forces in the countries concerned could bring pressure to bear on the governments to bow to the decisions of the council. If the pacific forces were strong, this pressure would probably be sufficient; if not, no system could make peace secure. For, in the last resort, peace can be preserved only if public opinion desires peace in most of the great nations.
(3) Far more important than any question of machinery is the problem of producing in all civilized nations such a horror of war that public opinion will insist upon peaceful methods of settling disputes. When this war ends, it is probably that every nation in Europe will feel such an intense weariness of the struggle that there will be little likelihood of a great war for another generation. The problem is, so to alter men’s standards and outlook that, when the weariness has passed away, they shall not fall back into the old bad way, but shall escape from the nightmare into a happier world of free coöperation.
The first thing to make men realize is that modern war is an absurdity as well as a crime, and that it can no longer secure such national advantages as, for example, England secured by the Seven Years’ War. After the present war, it should be easy to persuade even the most ignorant and high-placed persons of this truth.
But it is even more necessary to alter men’s conceptions of ‘glory’ and ‘patriotism.’ Beginning in childhood, with the school textbooks of history, and continuing in the press and in common talk, men are taught that the essence of ‘glory’ is successful robbing and slaughter. The most ‘glorious’ nation is the one which kills the greatest numbers of foreigners and seizes the greatest extent of foreign territory. The most ‘patriotic’ citizen is the one who most strongly opposes any attempt at justice or mercy in his country’s dealings with other countries, and who is least able to conceive of mankind as all one family, struggling painfully from a condition of universal strife toward a society where love of one’s neighbor is no longer though a crime. The division of the word into nations is a fact which must be accepted, but there is no reason to accept the narrow nationalism which envies the prosperity of others and imagines it a hindrance to our own progress. If a better and saner world is to grow out of the horror of futile carnage, men must learn to find their nation’s glory in the victory of reason over brute instincts, and to feel the true patriotism which demands that our country should deserve admiration rather than extort fear. If this lesson can be taught to all, beginning with the children in the schools, we may hope for a lasting peace, and the machinery for securing it will grow out of the universal desire. So long as hate and fear and pride are praised and encouraged, war can never become an impossibility. But there is now, if men have the courage to use it, an awakening of heart and mind such as the world has never known before: men see that war is wicked and that war is foolish. If the statesmen will play their part, by showing that war is not inevitable, there is hope that our children may live in a happier world, and look back upon us with the wondering pity of a wiser age.