The Crux of the Peace Problem

I

THE revulsion of feeling against war itself, engendered by the present war, is beyond question the most powerful stimulus to the cause of universal peace the world has yet known. It has created in many minds the conviction that war must end, and it has stirred in some minds the determination to strive without ceasing to bring about this result. The feeling is manifestly acquiring a strength and consistency of purpose sufficient to carry it beyond the generation in which it has been developed, and to give it the cumulative power of time.

And yet it cannot be claimed that the progress of the peace movement is proportionate to the stimulus which is constantly acting upon it. The current of feeling which sets so strongly away from war does not run with equal force toward peace. It seems to be increasingly difficult to organize the anti-war sentiment into the peace movement. The reason commonly given is the confirmed unbelief of men in the practicability of universal peace. I question the sufficiency of the explanation. When men are stirred by tremendous convictions they are not daunted by the fear of impracticability. I believe that we are as clearly justified in committing the cause of universal peace to ‘the opinion of mankind’ as were our forefathers in committing their new doctrine of universal liberty and equality to the same accessible and sufficient authority. True, we thereby ask for nothing less than a reversal of the habit of thought of the world. They in their time asked for nothing less. The great generations have always asked in one way or another for the same thing. Though in itself something new and strange, it is not without historic warrant, that men who have inherited the habit of thinking in terms of war should be expected to acquire the habit of thinking in terms of peace.

We must go much deeper for the explanation of the increasing hesitancy in the acceptance of the doctrine of universal peace. The problem of peace, for such the peace movement has now become, does not lie in the conviction of its impracticability, unless it be deemed morally impracticable. The suggestion of the moral impracticability of peace seems like a contradiction of terms. Nevertheless, if we follow it but a little way, it will lead to the disquieting discovery of a very strong suspicion in the popular mind of a latent selfishness in peace; and further, after due observation and reflection, we shall be brought, I think, to see that the very crux of the problem of peace lies in the difficulty of eradicating this suspicion. The awful immoralities of war, so terribly obvious, are offset in part by the counteracting effect of the impressive displays of unselfishness.

We are all conscious of a grievous inconsistency in our feelings about war. As the horrors of the present war press steadily upon us, and the menace of militarism becomes more threatening, there are times when the argument against war seems to be complete and final. But when the moral aspects of our own Civil War are brought before us in vivid retrospect, as in the recent gathering of so many survivors of the conflict in their enfeebled but exultant comradeship; and when the moral result of that war is set forth in the words of a peace-loving President as ‘a miracle of the spirit, in that, instead of destroying, it has healed’ ; and when, after the lapse of the half-century, we can see no other way than that then taken through which we could have reached our present state of unity and peace, we are not so sure that the present war has closed the case against war.

War, in itself essentially evil, may acquire moral character as the instrumentality for serving a righteous cause. Peace, in itself essentially good, may lose moral character from the failure to identify itself with a righteous cause in the time of its extremity. I trace the popular suspicion of a latent selfishness in peace to its undefined and indeterminate attitude in so many cases toward ends outside and beyond itself. The constant insistence upon peace as an end in itself is to be deprecated. If we are to create confidence in the trustworthiness of peace to render that sacrificial service which is at times rendered so effectively through war, it must be made to wear a different aspect from that which it now presents to the world. We cannot afford to overlook the very marked distrust of its moral reliability for the more serious business of the nations. We cannot afford to ignore the hesitancy of men in the lower ranks of rights and privileges, powerless except for numbers, to employ a new and uncertain agency to secure broader rights and higher privileges. Neither can we afford to make light of the questionings in our own hearts as to our ability, under such conditions of peace as we have known, to awaken and satisfy those nobler instincts of human nature which have at times found stimulating if not satisfying employment in war. Certainly the ordinary routine of peace would not be satisfying. Its luxuries would be debasing. Human nature would send up its continual challenge for some moral equivalent of war. I note with careful attention this sentence, quoted by the reviewer of a recent book, The Unmaking of Europe: ‘Europe will never cease from war till she finds some better thing to do; that better business is neither trade nor philosophy, nor even art: it is — in one word — sacrifice.’

I am convinced that it will be to the ultimate advancement of the cause of universal peace if we inquire with sufficient concern into the moral effect of our present insistence upon peace as an end in itself, rather than as an instrumentality for effecting greater ends outside and beyond itself. The maintenance of the so-called arts of peace is not a sufficient justification for peace under all conditions. To the degree in which we fail to clothe peace with moral power, to identify it with objects of moral concern, to make it the incentive and opportunity for sacrifice and heroism, we leave it under the popular imputation of selfishness. I follow out the danger from this defect in our advocacy of peace into sufficient detail to indicate the extent of the popular distrust, and to show the grounds of it.

II

The most evident, and in some respects the most justifiable, ground of popular distrust of the peace movement is the fear that it may effect a change in the relative moral value of things which have thus far held the first place in the estimation of men. These first things are justice, liberty, and, more recently, equality. Of these there is probably the greatest sensitiveness in regard to liberty. But loyalty to some one of these moral constants, as the given circumstance may direct, has been regarded as the primary duty. Will this distinction be maintained under peace, or will there be a tendency to raise the relative value of those secondary duties which are incident to some supreme struggle in behalf of liberty or justice?

We are gaining an understanding of the relative significance of the primary duty of defending liberty as we are called upon to meet one of the secondary duties thrust upon us by the war. We have accepted neutrality as our national duty in the present crisis. We have accepted it as prescribed by our position, rendering physical participation in the war relatively impracticable; as most consistent with our traditions warning us against foreign alliances; and as necessitated apparently by the composite character of the nation, made up as it is out of the nations at war. It has been accepted, under the high leadership of the President, as a duty which carries with it the distinction of making us the ‘mediating nation of the world.’ ‘We are,’ to use his words, ‘compounded of the nations of the world; we mediate their blood; we mediate their traditions; we mediate their sentiments, their tastes, their passions; we are ourselves compounded of those things. Therefore we are able to understand all nations. In that sense America is a mediating nation.’

This is a noble and commanding conception of the duty attending the increase and expansion of the nation, but it inevitably suggests Mr. Lincoln’s conception of the duty attending its origin and the cause of its existence, in the familiar words of the Gettysburg speech. It was the conception there set forth, realized in the sight of the world, which brought hither the peoples out of all nations who have made this a composite nation. It is this conception, not. the increase of numbers which it has effected, which is the reason of our continuance as a nation. It is this conception which is entitled to undisputed precedence as the generations pass and as still newer peoples and races enter our gates.

These two conceptions, that of a composite and mediating nation, and that of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the maintenance of it, are in no sense incompatible if they are held in true proportion the one to the other. If in the final settlement of the issues of the present war this nation shall be able, because of its neutrality, to cast the vote which shall reinstate Belgium in its sovereignty and restore to France its ravished provinces, we shall have achieved a great victory for the new policy of making neutrality tributary to liberty. If we fail in our endeavor, the endeavor will stand to our credit in the account with peace, but not to our credit in the account with liberty. The liberty-loving and sacrificing nations, though they may in that event have suffered defeat, will necessarily assume the moral leadership among kindred nations, leaving to us the place of leadership in the cause of neutrality. Just what this may signify in the long future will depend upon the part which neutrality is to play in international affairs. But at present there are those among us who cannot persuade themselves that the cause of neutrality in its widest reach is comparable with the cause of liberty. While we follow with approval the course of the Administration in the vindication of our rights as a neutral nation, our hearts are in the contest across the sea. We are conscious that the great issues are being settled there. Our unofficial neutrality is charged with sympathies which find their only relief and satisfaction in the fact that our official neutrality can be legitimately used to the advantage of those with whom we sympathize.

Our present position, however, as related to the supreme issue of the war, is calculated to awaken, and has awakened in many minds, serious forebodings. In the event of the final victory of Germany we have the definite prospect of the consolidation of the Teutonic nations, with the inclusion of the tributary races of Southeastern Europe, and with the incorporation of the Turk, giving a combination for the support of militarism such as the world has not seen since the days of the Roman Empire. No one can fail to understand the part which this combination would play in the continued struggle between absolutism and democracy, a struggle in which there will be lessening room for the operation of neutrality, and a straitening of place for the neutral nations. The forecast gives significance to the words of Lord Cromer: ‘If Germany should be vanquished in the present contest, all will fortunately be well for nations which have been able to preserve their neutrality. The triumph of the Allies will incidentally involve their triumph. But if the contrary should prove to be the case, and if Germany should emerge victorious from the struggle, neutrals will eventually have to ask themselves whether a more timely and active interference on their part might not have obviated the disastrous results which must inevitably ensue both to themselves and to the world in general.’

In this view of the situation national preparedness assumes a new meaning. It means self-defense in all contingencies, but it means in certain contingencies the wider defense of liberty. I doubt if the more extreme pacifists have ever contemplated the defeat of the Allies, at least their disastrous defeat. It is one thing to hold the more absolute views of peace unvexed by any thought of the actual danger to liberty, and another thing to entertain the same views in quietness of mind if the securities of liberty are evidently endangered. But the advocacy of peace may be carried to the point of ‘moral temerity’ through a fatal lack of perspective, as in the present untimely effort to arrest the war at the very moment when militarism is in the ascendant, and when the party of aggression has the most to gain and the least to lose. The whole circumstance of the war as it proceeds makes the problem of peace terribly urgent, but it makes the problem also terribly searching in its questionings. What kind of peace are we willing to accept as the outcome of the war? What unexpiated crimes against liberty are we willing to forget? What securities of liberty are we willing to forego?

The German Chancellor has announced that it is Germany’s aim ‘to be the shield of freedom and peace for the small and the big nations of Europe.’ When we think of universal peace, do we or do we not tolerate the thought of a peace established in militarism and guaranteed by militarism?

III

The problem of universal peace cannot be restricted to wars induced by national ambitions or by national antagonisms: it must take due account of the social strife. The social strife represents a possible transition, not only in the incitements to war but also in the means of war, from the nation to the class as the unit of organized power. On the ethical side it represents that widespread struggle for equality which may supersede the struggle for liberty as the chief cause of revolution.

The comparative unconcern regarding this phase of warfare has produced in not a few minds a distrust of what may be termed the democracy of peace. The movement for universal peace did not enter upon the crusade against war with that popular sympathy which might have been gained by some earnest endeavor to compose the social strife. The opportunity had been for a long time present, and it had become increasingly urgent. The war, it must be remembered, did not come upon us simply as an interruption of peaceful pursuits. It caused rather an instant and complete diversion from contentions which had filled the minds of peoples and of rulers with anxieties and forebodings. With the exception of Germany — the reasons for this exception have since become evident — every nation was profoundly agitated by the threatenings of the social strife. But this state of affairs received little attention from the advocates of peace. Doubtless the danger was underestimated, but the impression often produced was that of indifference to the issues involved. It was noted that the sympathies of men could be enlisted for the crusade against war who were themselves interested parties in the social strife.

In what form, and with what energy, the social strife may be renewed at the close of the war by the nations more immediately involved in it, no one may predict. We can, however, foresee the possibility that in some nations, perhaps in England, the war may avert a social revolution by having virtually effected a social revolution. Such a reduction of economic inequality may have been brought about, and such a redistribution of political power may have been made, that the tension of the social strife may prove to have been greatly relieved. In this country the conditions will certainly be different, creating the tendency to increase rather than to diminish the social strife. Very much of the spirit of sacrifice which has supported the nations at war may be expected to go over into the economic struggle to recover the markets of the world. This willingness to endure economic sacrifice must cause a cheapening of the market, which in turn must affect the wages of the American workman. Dr. David Jayne Hill goes so far as to predict that America will be made the dumping-ground for the cheaply made goods of Germany, owing to the continued hostility of the opposing nations as expressed in restrictions upon trade. It is doubtful if a like protective restriction in this country would maintain wages at the present standard. Incidentally, and yet very seriously, the disturbance of the labor market caused by the manufacture of war munitions may affect the whole labor situation when the collapse of that stimulated industry shall occur. No one who believes in the legitimacy of this industry, or sympathizes with the intent of it, can blind his eyes to the economic danger which lurks in its development. In fact, at the time when the rupture of diplomatic relations between this country and Germany seemed imminent, it was a partial relief of the strain to reflect that, in that event, this industry might come under the control of the government for the regulation of its profits, as well as for the direction of its uses.

It has long been evident, though the fact has not yet made its due impression, that industrialism is the modern training-school for war or peace. It is there that men are actually thinking of one another in terms of war or peace. It is there that they learn to organize for or against one another. The lockout and the strike are distinctly warlike measures. Arbitration is a term of war, the most advanced term looking toward peace, but still presupposing a state of warfare. Coöperation, in some one of its manifold forms, is the only distinctive term of peace. It is such, not simply because it implies sympathetic action, but because it educates all concerned in ‘those sobrieties on which democracy must at last rest.’ As we recall how many persons are in the training school of industrialism, how early they enter it and how long they remain in it, and how various and how influential are the experiences through which they pass, we can see how far back the peace movement must reach in its educative work. What can we hope to accomplish in the training of our diplomats for carrying out the policy of universal peace, if we cannot train our captains of industry, in the ranks both of capital and of labor, to think and to act in the terms of peace? The inconsistency is greater than a nation can maintain, and at the same time aspire to the place of leadership in the cause of universal peace. Peace is not a contrivance for the settlement of disputes between nations. Peace is a state of mind in peoples themselves, developed, if at all, out of the ordinary experiences of associated life. The social strife creates a state of mind which makes peace in any large sense seem impracticable. If we cannot do business according to the principles and methods of peace, how can we expect that such a course of action will be successful in the conduct of the government? Nothing would refute so quickly or so effectively the charge that peacemakers are theorists as the application of the principles and methods of peace to industrialism. So long as it is necessary to employ the Federal army to keep the peace in Colorado, or for like emergencies in other states, it is very difficult to persuade the average man of the moral consistency of efforts for general disarmament.

IV

In accounting for the lack of popular response to the present claims of peace, we must recall the pessimistic views which pervaded society, during the years of peace immediately preceding the war, regarding the spiritual outcome of our modern material civilization. Now that war has come and wakened men to the larger issues of life, they do not care simply to revert to former conditions.

I think that the pessimism which preceded the war was overwrought; but no one can deny its existence, or doubt that we are now feeling the effect of it in our endeavor to justify the demands of peace. In view of this past experience, which is still fresh in the minds of men, it is manifestly harder for them to believe in the satisfaction, within the restrictions of peace, of some of those higher instincts which have free play in the tumult of war. Certainly it gives an added pertinency to the questions, where is the moral stimulus of peace, and what is its moral equipment for the tasks, the conflicts, and the adventures of life?

When we turn from our past unsatisfying experiences to observe more carefully the range of ordinary moral incentives and opportunities, we are impressed by two conditions. On the one hand we see the lessening of what may be termed the heroic opportunity for the average man. The outer world seems to be closing in upon him. Once, and in days not far remote, this outer world gave him freedom, incitement, adventure. It created heroic types out of common men. The seafaring man made England. The pioneer made America, as one may see in reading, for example, Winston Churchill’s The Crossing, worthy of a permanent place in American literature as an epic of early American life. To-day it is the task, the ‘job,’ which confronts the average man, not the adventure. When we think of the splendid possibilities in industrialism to arouse the energies, to quicken the imagination, to multiply the power of each man by that of his fellows, we might assume an increase rather than a lessening of the opportunity for the strenuous life. But the fact is otherwise. Industrialism has not yet realized its possibilities of incentive and opportunity. For the present the raw immigrant is more in the line of succession to the pioneer than any man amongst us. He may be disappointed, disillusioned, but not before he has bequeathed to his children desires and ambitions which he may have failed to realize.

On the other hand, passing from the average to the exceptional man, the man with the full opportunities of the intellectual life before him, we see how easy it is for him to detach himself from the incentives of the spiritual life. It would not be charitable or true to say that the expansion of the intellectual life has produced merely intellectualism. It has produced great moral results, as notably through many of the sacrifices attending the progress of science. But it has also produced a class, corresponding to that of the newly rich in social life, which has not found its place in the intellectual world. With many of this class the mark of intellectual superiority is a certain disdain of any of the recognized sources of the spiritual incentive. As a result of this intellectual contempt, the inner world of spiritual motive is closed to the man of this type as effectually as is the outer world of adventure to the average man.

War brings the heroic, opportunity to the door of the average man, and the heroic incentive to the mind of the exceptional man. We deplore this kind of opportunity and this kind of incentive. The cost is fearful, to be reckoned largely in the price which others must pay; but men recognize the opportunity and feel the incentive. It would be worse than idle for us to ignore the quick transition which war may effect in responsive natures from the commonplace or the cynical to the sacrificial and the sublime. No one of us can deny, nor can we read unmoved, the testimony of those who have passed or are now passing through this experience. A poet, of the quality of Rupert Brooke, reborn out of the experience of the present war and at the cost of his life, has the right to be heard.

The demoralization attending the present war is as appalling as the physical ruin that it has wrought, but we are none the less awed and abashed in the presence of the spiritual transformations which it is effecting in the lives of individual men, and even of nations. Probably no phenomenon connected with the war has been so impressive as the spiritualization of France.

V

Whenever a moral movement has reached the stage at which it becomes a problem the fact may be accepted as evidence of its vitality. Problems do not vex declining causes. It is the function of a problem to deepen and strengthen the movement which it arrests, provided it is understood and treated as a problem. It is not well to try to force the issue which it raises by the stress of moral passion, or to attempt to smother it by sentiment. A problem is not solved in that way. The problem of peace cannot be solved by intensifying the crusade against war. What very many wish to know before enlisting in the cause of universal peace is the full moral purport of the peace movement: what is its attitude toward the supreme issues of the present war; what its relation to the causes of the social strife; what its provision for the satisfaction of things fundamental in human nature. The popular distrust of the peace movement, growing out of the present uncertainty, constitutes, as it seems to me, the immediate problem of peace; and my contention is that the only practical way of solving this problem is by removing, so far as possible, the causes which have created it. My further contention is that the attempt to solve the problem of peace in this practical way will deepen and strengthen the peace movement at the point where it most needs depth and strength. The peace movement cannot be said to be lacking in respect of means for the accomplishment of its purpose, many of which bear the marks of constructive statesmanship. What it most lacks is motive power, due to its failure to reach down into those deep undercurrents of popular conviction, which, when once reached, carry a movement on to its conclusion.

Evidently the most effective step that can be taken toward removing the causes of distrust is to define peace: to put forward, to begin with, a definition which shall declare unmistakably its full moral bearing upon present conditions. Such a definition should attempt to show, not simply how peace may be achieved, but what kind of peace is to be striven for, what to be accepted, what to be rejected. It is confessedly difficult to define peace apart from its relations at any given time to existing conditions. The sentiment of peace lends itself to vague generalizations, or to aphorisms which crumble before specific moral tests. The familiar aphorism of Franklin, ‘There never was a good war or a bad peace,’ has been passed along the peaceful generations on the strength of Franklin’s reputation for political sagacity. It was quickly forgotten, if indeed it was ever generally known, how vehemently the saying was repudiated by its author when he was confronted by the possible application of it to a treaty of peace between the Colonies and Great Britain which might impugn their loyalty to their allies. Writing to his English friend, David Hartley, under date of February 2,1780, he said,‘If the Congress have entrusted to others, rather than to me, the negotiations for peace, when such shall be set on foot, as has been reported, it is perhaps because they may have heard of a very singular opinion of mine, that there hardly ever existed such a thing as a bad peace, or a good war, and that I might therefore be easily induced to make improper concessions. But at the same time they and you may be assured, that I should think the destruction of our whole country, and the extirpation of our whole people, preferable to the infamy of abandoning our allies.’¹

The creed of peace should be aggressive; it should also be defensible — aggressively defensible. It should anticipate and challenge all doubts and suspicions. With this intent the creed of peace for to-day should start out of the reaffirmation of the great loyalties. If justice and liberty are to be transferred from the guardianship of war to the guardianship of peace, the acceptance of the trust should be announced in no uncertain terms. It is quite useless to evade or even to defer the announcement, for the time is at hand when the attitude of the peace movement to the issues of the war must be made evident by its attitude to the terms of settlement. The present ambiguity must soon end. Whenever it ends, the position then taken will determine the fortune of the cause of universal peace in the mind of this generation. I can conceive of no greater setback to the cause than the acceptance, in the name of peace, of a ‘peace’ which should celebrate the triumphs of militarism. I can conceive of no greater betrayal of the cause than the acceptance, in the name of peace, of a ‘peace’ which should make the violation of Belgium the tragedy of the twentieth century, as the partition of Poland became the tragedy of the eighteenth century. The time may come when the long-delayed protest in behalf of Belgium must be made to save the cause of peace, if it cannot save Belgium. How much more significant and how much more effective than a protest, the timely avowal in the creed of peace of the supreme allegiance of peace to liberty!

Next to a clear definition of peace in its relation to the moral issues of the war, as an aid in removing popular indifference to the peace movement, I put the expression of active sympathy with efforts to abate the social strife. This does not imply a diversion of purpose or a dissipation of energy. Sympathy between related moral causes is always to be expected. It is to be expected that sympathy will be active where causes are closely identified. The relation of the social strife to war is evident, No less evident is the reason for sympathetic if not mutual struggle for the suppression of each. The advocates of peace, as has been suggested, may well regard industrialism as an elementary school for the practice of the methods of peace. Insistence upon the use of this opportunity at the present time may be deemed inopportune, but it cannot be regarded as inopportune for the peace movement to come into far closer sympathy than is now apparent with what is known distinctively as the social movement.

And further still, if a radical change is to be effected in the popular attitude toward the peace movement, peace itself must be made more representative of the positive elements of human nature. War is the perversion of a very great and a very noble instinct, the desire to conquer. A great deal that is best in human endeavor takes that form. The instinct for conquest is latent in all strenuous work, in the closest investigation and research, and in the struggle for moral reform. To-day it has an unlimited range for activity in the sphere of industry, of science, and of religion. It is an instinct which must be recognized to the full if we are to continue the struggle for the conquest either of nature or of human nature. Whatever may be the apparent claims of consistency in our advocacy of peace, I believe that we must make it clear above all dispute that we hold fast to one great reservation, — the reservation of the right and of the duty of moral conflict, including the liabilities which conflict may involve. So far as we can look into the future, the permanency of peace must rest upon the courageous exercise of this reserved right and duty.

At the beginning of this article I avowed my belief in the practicability of universal peace. In full view of what has been written I renew the avowal of my faith. But the peace to which I subscribe is not merely the cessation of war. A variety of causes may operate to bring about the cessation of the present war, not one of which may be to the honor of peace. The cessation from war may be prolonged for a century through causes not one of which may be to the honor of peace. The time is past, in the interest of peace, for balances of power and concerts of nations. The peace for which the world waits will rest upon the securities which peace has to offer in its own right, under its own name, guaranteed by its loyalties to the inalienable rights of men, and enforced, if need be, by the powers under its authority. The significant and encouraging fact about peace is that the higher its aim and the broader its scope, the more practicable it seems. The one reason for its present claim to practicality lies in its claim to universality. Put this claim aside, and the question may be asked of the men of peace in this generation, ‘What do ye more than others?’ Having made this daring advance, it behooves us to see to it that we do not weaken it by those unreasonable demands for quick results which characterize the spirit of our generation. The essential part of our task in this great business of peacemaking seems to me to lie in the attempt to give peace the requisite moral standing in the eyes of the world. It is beyond our power to give those assurances that must have the sanction of time, but we may at least hope to remove those suspicions and distrusts which embarrass us in our work, and which, if not removed, must embarrass all future workers for peace.