Part 4 (1/2)
The young American is essentially ambitious. He is wont to seek the shortest path to leaders.h.i.+p, and, when blocked at one highway, to turn with undiminished ardor to another. And his ideal is a mirror of the age in which he lives. In revolutionary days he covets the glory of a minuteman, and in the deeds of Warren and Putnam finds the consummation of his hopes. Again, in the hour of civil war his eyes turn toward the battlefield--and from her boys under twenty-one the Union draws eighty-five per cent of her defenders. But fortunately for America this drama of the youth's ideal has one more act. The lure of fife and drum has become a thing of the past. The glamour of military life has become a dream of yesterday. The young man is learning that the prize of battle is never equal to the price. And with the growing conviction of the folly and futility of international strife must disappear the last apology for war. Nations will cease to struggle, not when they have learned that war is a tragedy but when they have discovered that it is a farce.
And the youth of to-day is learning it. In the same deplorable conditions which the nation's critics have regarded as an alarming tendency toward militarism, he reads a message of the absurdity of war. Militarism itself is revealing a mission. Based as it is on the spirit of aggrandizement, it is teaching to youth the economic value of a human life. It is uncovering its own selfish motives and betraying its own senseless ends. It is impressing the world with the truth that battles are fought for purse string and not for principle.
It is teaching to youth a new ideal; it is itself the answer to complaints of friends and calumnies of foes. It is the cloud before the dawn. It heralds the coming of the brightest epoch yet chronicled in American history. It is the realization of that glorious prophecy of John Hay that the time is coming when ”the clangor of arms shall cease, and we can fancy that at last our ears, no longer stunned by the din of armies, may hear the morning stars singing together and all the sons of G.o.d shouting for joy.”
And is this but the dream of a visionary? Is it merely the fancied perception of an inexistent star? Is it nothing more than a groundless hope and an alluring vagary? The answer is visible everywhere. And the hope of peace finds its safest a.s.surance among the inst.i.tutions of learning in America. James Bryce has referred to the United States as the nation having the largest proportion of its young men in college. In the last month of June more than fifty thousand collegians wore the cap and gown of graduation. It is to the trust of the college-bred man that the peace movement confides its future, and modern education a.s.sumes no greater responsibility than the training of the new world-citizen. Already the school has become the most potent factor in the new uplift. The youth is no longer dependent upon the newspaper for his knowledge of world-politics. An intelligent study of foreign affairs is at last regarded as of as much importance as a study of the past. To broaden the young man's vision of the world, prominent educators are even advocating traveling fellows.h.i.+ps.
In twenty-five of the larger universities of America an a.s.sociation of Cosmopolitan Clubs is establis.h.i.+ng the groundworks for a wider international fraternity. Plans are already under way to have an organized delegation of more than a hundred students of all nationalities present at the third Hague Conference. Day by day the problem of world-unity is becoming more and more deeply embedded in the mind and thought of the rising generation. More and more is youthful patriotism becoming a realization of the truth that ”Above all nations is humanity.” The lure of war is losing its magnetic power and the brotherhood of man becoming more and more an international reality. A sentiment for universal peace is sweeping the world, and behind the defenses of advancing civilization, armed with the strength of a lofty and unselfish purpose, stands an army of America's young men, mustered from the nation's colleges, enlisted to serve for an eternity, and invulnerable in the protection of a new and a conquering ideal.
Therefore the significance of the young man in the world's affairs to-day is something more than a fancy. Again and again the plea for world-harmony hears a response in the changing ideals of a new generation. The growing sentiment of the educated youth of j.a.pan finds its crystallization in the efforts of Count Ok.u.ma toward the consummation of world-disarmament. The spirit of the youth of England finds expression in the ambitious dream of George V, whose hope it is to tie the bond of Anglo-Saxon unity, long since dissevered by George III. Among the young men of Russia the life of the great philosopher of world-citizens.h.i.+p has left a lasting conviction of the senselessness of war. Even in imperialistic Germany the reckless building of dreadnoughts brings out a vigorous and uncompromising protest from the thinking youth of the land. In America a vision of the international parliament of man, growing large in the minds of her leading statesmen, finds expression in the continued philanthropy of a great industrial king. And, most significant of all, these are the world-wide examples that the college man enthrones in the empire of his thoughts. Sixty thousand European students, bound together by the cosmopolitan ties of a peace fraternity, have ceased to glorify the triumphs of the battlefield. The commentaries of the hero-wors.h.i.+per to-day do not record the names of a Marlborough or a Bonaparte. Rather does the young man find his idols in the more humble annals of a Tolstoy or a Hay. And the new ideal of international peace is not merely the religion of a few enthusiasts. In an individual way these apostles of peace voice to the world the spirit of the unnumbered thousands of obscurer men whose lives and talents are directed, not to the construction of material kingdoms but to the building of a better and more world-wide brotherhood.
Such is the Hope of Peace. The nation's critics may continue their indictment, and, pointing out the crises of the hour, paint in dismal hues a picture of the problems never to be solved except by shot and sh.e.l.l. Her skeptics, blinded by thought of the errors of the past, may prophesy the desecration of her honor and the disappointing failure of her hopes. The press may pen a graphic story of the military spirit of the age, and frowning patriarchs relate the deeds of golden days gone by. But underneath this cloud that overhangs, and almost hidden in the gloom of history's disparagement, the new world-citizen discerns the birth-light of a brighter and more steadfast star,--perceives the coming triumph of good will and peace,--and the awakened eyes of expectant America look forward with promise to the dawn of that new day when a nation shall be judged by the weight of its cross and not by the wealth of its crown.
THE ROOSEVELT THEORY OF WAR
By PERCIVAL V. BLANSHARD, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
First Prize Oration in the Western Group Contest, 1912, and in the National Contest held at Mohonk Lake, May 16, 1912
THE ROOSEVELT THEORY OF WAR
Ex-President Roosevelt has made this astounding statement, ”By war alone can we acquire those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.” These words, coming from the lips of a nation's idol, have fallen like a bomb sh.e.l.l in the camp of the pacifists. Not that Mr. Roosevelt's opinion was of overwhelming weight, but that he was voicing the opinion of some of the most influential thinkers of the modern world. Not long before the German philosopher Nietzsche had taken a like position, and he was indorsed by Von Moltke, the statesman; Ernest Renan, the historian; Hegel, the philosopher; Charles Kingsley and Canon Farrar, the divines. We must have a care, we peace advocates, how we treat such men's opinions. If they are right; if, as they maintain, war develops a nation, then we are fighting against the instrument of our own salvation and smothering the only hope of the nation itself.
But are they right? Does war make for national greatness? Before we can give a rational verdict we must answer certain other questions.
What is our nation, anyway? What are the factors that make for its greatness? And how does war affect these factors?
Plainly our nation is not some abstraction that haunts the marble halls at Was.h.i.+ngton. Nor is it our vast dominion on which, like England's, the sun never sets. You will find it rather in workshop and store and factory; it is no more nor less than our men. If the capital at Was.h.i.+ngton is founded on pygmy manhood, it will be blown away like thistledown before some pa.s.sing wind of revolution. Russia, Turkey, Spain, will tell you that. If our men are giants, the nation will be lasting as adamant. England and Germany and America are monumental testimonies.
Now what are the qualities in our men that make the nation great?
Here a problem in a.n.a.lysis confronts us. Let us go about it as does the student in the laboratory. He dissects a plant or mineral to find the mysteries of its nature. We are to dissect a civilization to find the factors of its strength. One little specimen will reveal the secrets of the whole species. So one sample of civilization will show the hidden springs of all. Go with me to the public square of any modern city and there you will behold the qualities that build all civilization. From the hum and rattle and roar that rises from the sea of humanity come a thousand various voices, but all speak of one theme--industry. There in the center of the throng and press a slender monument rises, crowned perhaps with a figure of Liberty or Justice.
It tells you a simple story of Idealism. Yonder stands a silent, vine-clad church, crowned by a mighty finger pointing heavenward and beckoning always to the higher life. What need of going farther?
Industry, Idealism, Morality--already we have found the secret of human success, the triple key to all advance, of man or group or nation. Here is Carlyle, with his gospel of labor, the labor that conquers all things; here is Ruskin, with his exalting idealism, that gives an aim and purpose to all human toil; here is the great apostle Paul himself, who transfigures that toil and exalts that purpose with his everlasting gospel of moral sublimity. Here is our threefold criterion, by which every nation must stand or fall. The Anglo-Saxon is what he is through unceasing industry, perpetual aspiration, and moral strength. The Central African is what he is through inbred sluggishness, total lack of purpose, and almost total absence of morality.
These are the basic elements of national greatness. But the great question still remains, How does war affect them?
Concerning the effect of war on labor, we declare unhesitatingly that the two are everlasting foes, and that whenever War lays hands on Labor's throat, it strangles her. This is part of the inevitable program of war, for note that it is on the laboring men that the dreadful claims of war must fall. Mark its course. A bugle sounds the call to arms. From workshop, mill, and factory the laborers pour forth; out go the men into a trade where plunder and robbery are a means of livelihood; when pillage and slaughter wane, indolence becomes the order of the day; commerce degenerates into blockade-running by sea and marauding by land. How tame the life of peace to this wild life of war! And all the time the love of toil is fading from men's minds; at home the factory wheels are turning more and more feebly, and when at last the sword is laid aside, there is only ”confusion worse confounded,” for the channels of labor are choked with men reared in habits of indolence or trained in the school of vice. Before the scar on that nation's industry can finally be healed, decades and perhaps centuries of peace must pa.s.s away.
But if war is a scar on the nation's industry, it is likewise a blot on her ideals. Though this element of idealism at first seems visionary and impractical, it is one of the foundation stones of progress. The fixed gulf between what man is and what he knows he might be is the decisive factor in his advance. Ideals are the pulleys of the unseen, round which man throws his hopes and aims, by which he pulls himself across the chasm and into the larger life. To advance at all, man must have ideals--for himself, for his family, for his nation. But mark the effect of war on these ideals. In place of the ideal of peace--to serve men and uplift them--one is taught the ideal of war--to make himself the most widely feared of professional murderers. Instead of the ideal of peace--to make his family comfortable, happy, and prosperous--comes in the war ideal, by whose terms the family head deserts his own flock to kill other family heads for the eternal glory of the Stars and Stripes. As for his ideal of the nation's greatness, we have ample testimony that when bullets and cannon b.a.l.l.s cone cras.h.i.+ng through the splendid structure of his purpose, it speedily crumbles into an ignominious desire to hide himself behind the nearest tree. No; do not say that war builds up ideals; it tears them down and tramples them in the dust; aye more, it sets back crime itself where they should rightly stand.
But if war so dethrones a nation's ideals, what may it not do to a nation's morality? Imagine if you can a million men, the core of the national power, turning themselves into machines to carry out blindly the schemes of leaders who may be right or wrong; schooled in the belief that manslaughter is manliness, that the rash courage of the brute is above the moral courage of a man; forgetful of the meaning of human life; thoughtless of a thing so common as death; heedless of its eternal consequences. No wonder Channing cried so bitterly: ”War is the concentration of all human crimes. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, rapacity, and l.u.s.t. If it only slew men, it would do little. But it turns man into a beast of prey. Here is the evil of war, that man, made to be the brother, becomes the deadly foe of his kind; that man, whose duty is to mitigate suffering, makes the infliction of suffering his study and end.”
No, Mr. Roosevelt, for once at least you are wrong! We cannot believe that war builds up a nation. Rather will we believe those words of Herbert Spencer, more sweeping but far more true, ”Advance to the highest forms of man and society depends on the decline of militancy and the growth of industrialism.”
”But wait,” you say; ”all this is theory and abstraction. We want matters of fact. Your case may be true as philosophy, but you have failed to ground it in example.” So it is to history that our last appeal must be made, for, says Bolingbroke, ”History is philosophy, teaching by example.” Every decree of her stern tribunal is impartial and irrevocable. War the tonic or war the poison? She is the final judge. She will take you back, if you will, to her childhood days and point you out vast empires, owning the known world, Babylonians, a.s.syrians, Egyptians, Medes, and Persians, fearful fighters all of them. But no, not quite all either. On a sandy stretch of seash.o.r.e, half hidden by the unwieldy empires around it, we see a timid, peaceful little people called the Hebrews; they alone, from all that mighty company, have stood the ”wreckful siege” of thirty centuries.
Watch its sinister movement down the ages and you will see the war cloud hover over Greece, and her republics melt to nothing in disunion and decay. It hovers over the Huns, and they suddenly sink from sight; over Islam, and its civilization crumbles faster than it grew; over Spain, and all the New World treasures cannot save her from decay.