Rights and Wrongs of Pacifism

I

MUCH of the bitterness between pacifists and militarists would be allayed if each side would fairly consider the other’s point of view. Pacifists in general accord more respect to the motives of their opponents than is shown to their motives, and they have some ground for their complaints that they are being persecuted. That is not to say that all of their complaints are well founded. Their contention that the right of free speech has been violated by the action of university authorities in debarring meetings on university premises will not bear examination. The proper function of a university is to foster learning, and in the discharge of that function it ordinarily allows facilities for the expression of respectable opinion on any important subject. Because this is customary, the idea has been advanced that it is the duty of a university to provide facilities for the expression of opinion; and that, if it. refuses to do so, it is unfaithful to its ideals and is violating freedom of speech. That duty exists, but it is not unqualified. The ordinary practice rests upon considerations that may be superseded by more weighty considerations such as are now present; and the pacifists do not thereby lose a right, but only a privilege which it is within the proper discretion of universities to withdraw. Freedom of speech implies simply the right to speak on one’s own premises at one’s own charge; and no matter what custom may have allowed, the right cannot involve any claim upon the property of others.

But while the claim that freedom of speech is being violated is unfounded, and is indeed contradicted by notorious facts showing that the pacifists are able to obtain ample facilities of their own providing, yet there does appear to be ground for complaints that they are being subjected to persecution. There seem to have been cases in which persons have been disturbed in their ordinary employments, — their qualifications for which are conceded, — simply on the ground of their opinions. This does constitute persecution, and it should be condemned and opposed in the interest of social justice. Moreover, the claim must be conceded that the pacifists are displaying heroic virtues in maintaining unpopular opinions, exposing themselves to serious risks. It will be admitted by most publicists that freedom of speech itself may rightfully be suppressed at a time when all individual privilege must be stringently subordinated to the primary law of national self-preservation. But whatever the needs of the hour may be, and whatever may be the measures sanctioned by public necessity, it is always the duty of reasonable people to keep their heads, to know what they are doing and why they are doing it. Pacifism is an element that may have to be put under forcible restraint, but none the less it is entitled to more consideration than it has been receiving.

Pacifism produces an irritation in opponents that is peculiar and seems to call for special explanation. The cause probably lies in the fact that pacifism rests wholly upon deduction from a dogmatic principle. It does not pretend to be derived from existing views of national duty. What militarists regard as the plain and obvious teachings of experience do not move pacifists, because their ideals are independent of such considerations and stand upon a higher plane. It is this that gives their contention its peculiarly irritating quality, and that tends to substitute passion for argument in dealing with them. Nevertheless the case is not really withdrawn from reasonable consideration, and such treatment of it will promote fair dealing.

The original source of modern pacifism was the doctrine of non-resistance urged on scriptural grounds. This is a matter I do not feel competent to discuss, so I shall not notice it further than to mention that by most moralists and theologians the texts relied upon are held to apply to the relations of the individual members of society, and do not determine the rights and duties of communities. A concise but complete discussion of this branch of the subject may be found in a little work entitled A Primer of Peace and War, edited by Charles Plater, S.J. It is a Catholic manual, issued with an official imprimatur, but the views are those held also by most Protestant theologians, and a bibliography is appended that covers the ramifications of the subject.

This particular source, although strong in the respect felt for its maintained, is not the main fountain-head of modern pacifism. A very powerful impetus was given the movement by Herbert Spencer’s individualistic philosophy. Although he admitted that militarism had played a great part in the past in developing human faculty, he contended that all the service it could render to human progress had already been performed, and that now the most urgent need was the suppression of militarism, so that hereafter the survival of the fittest should be the result of competition and struggle under purely intellectual conditions. He held that the desire for individual advancement, or, as he once put it, the tendency of people to climb upon one another’s shoulders, could thus be made a factor of evolutionary value; but the essential condition was the elimination of physical force. The contest must become one of wits, not of violence.

It is a striking instance of the way in which thought may swerve the world in its orbit, that these views of a neurasthenic invalid, leading a retired life in a London boarding-house, had great international consequences. They had effects both in Japan and in India, producing a type such as Kipling portrayed in the character of the Babu in Kim. They inspired the great endowment of the peace cause made by Mr. Carnegie, as his writings and speeches testify. At the same time, it appears from Nietzsche’s own admissions that they provoked the reaction formulated in his philosophy of violence. He adopted Spencer’s major premise of progress through survival of the fittest individuals, but differed with him on the minor premise of the argument. Where Spencer advocated suppression of physical force as a factor, Nietzsche advocated its enlargement, on the ground that elimination of force would give the world to the cunning rather than to the strong, whereas strength in all its forms was the true standard of biological value. Hence, by a minor correction in the philosophy of individualism, he arrived at his famous aphorism that ‘a good war hallows any cause.’

The Spencerian philosophy as a source of pacifist sentiment has had its day, and is now on the decline. Mr. Carnegie is now probably lonesome in his adherence to it, but his munificence has made it a permanent factor which in its practical operation has become detached from its original source, and now pursues methods that are opportunist rather than strictly pacifist. Spencerian pacifists of the original type are a dwindling group of agitators. Far more influential in these times is a source of pacifist sentiment to which he was opposed with as much bitterness as can enter the mind of a philosopher. That source is Socialism, seeking to reconstruct the family and the state, on strictly secular principles, in the interest of economic independence and individual freedom. From this point of view no waste of life, no exploitation of the masses, is so complete a loss, so lacking in rational purpose, as the carrying on of war, which is akin to cannibalism in that it makes humanity prey upon humanity. Hence it is argued that the first and most important thing to do for human salvation is to stop war — at any cost, by any means.

One must be grossly prejudiced not to be willing to admit that these ideals are appealing with great force to men and women of courage, intelligence, refinement, and devotion; that they are already having a distinct effect in modifying social standards; and that they are being pursued with heroic constancy. Whether or not the movement shall turn out to be regenerative, or whether it is a sloughing process that is the natural outcome of secular principles and will eventually eradicate them from philosophy and religion, is a matter that need not now be considered. What is now to the point in this discussion is that pacifism owes most of its present vigor and activity to this source.

This leaves the case somewhat open for argument. It means that effective pacifism does not take its stand upon a traditional dogma, but upon rational grounds which admit of analysis. Events have had and are still having a marked effect upon this class of pacifists. It is notorious that most of them have concluded that after all there is something in patriotism, and in every belligerent country they are fighting for ideals that as Socialists they had officially repudiated. A split between the opportunist and the inexorable elements has taken place and is progressing with such effect that out-and-out pacifists are being reduced to a comparatively small group; but they are staunch and earnest. They cannot be put down by decrying their patriotism. They contend that they are exhibiting what is better than patriotism — devotion to the cause of humanity; and that the display of true heroism is really on their side and not on the side of those who fall in with the prevailing current of opinion. They claim to be animated by ideals which, if adhered to, will accomplish more for peace and justice in all circumstances than by war in any circumstances; and they hold that this is not generally recognized solely because those ideals have never been actually tried.

The militarists generally allow that the ideals of pacifism have not been tried, but they contend that this is simply because pacifism is wholly absurd and impracticable. Here both sides are in error. It happens that pacifism has been thoroughly tried, not once, but often; not for a limited period, but for ages. And if we examine the case, keeping in mind the maxim of Thucydides that history is philosophy teaching by example, fallacies and misconceptions may be removed that are now indulged both by pacifists and militarists. It will then appear that the antithesis between militarism and industrialism which Herbert Spencer described was affected by an error of statement that vitiated his conclusions, and that this will account for the failure of actual political tendencies to conform to his theoretical anticipations which perplexed him a great deal, as is admitted in his Autobiography. It will account for the mistaken advice he gave to Japan to be a hermit nation — advice which, had it been adopted, would have caused Japan to be now a Russian dependency along with Korea. It will also account for the errors of calculation that caused international Socialism to assume its pacifist attitude, and will show that militarism has been an instrument of good to human society, while pacifism has been and is a deep source of evil. And, finally, it will account for the difficulties that have so far defeated all efforts to substitute international arbitration for war, and will show that, they are removable, because the truth will then become manifest that when pacifism has been suppressed war can be suppressed.

II

These may appear to be paradoxical and indeed fantastic statements. No attempt has been made to tone them down, because it is not the intention of this article to slip into the minds of readers opinions whose character and purport are not fully disclosed. The intention is to secure attention for a very serious case, to bring into view tremendous realities, to exhibit the significance of the present situation, which is graver than can be imagined by those whose thoughts grind such grist as is supplied by current controversies between militarists and pacifists. Exhibition of the case does not call for the use of any recondite matter. The material for sound judgment is easily accessible to educated minds. All that is required is to get the right point of view and then to use one’s reason.

One may readily obtain the logical structure of the case by turning to the famous chapters seventeen and eighteen of Spencer’s Political Institutions, which inspired Mr. Carnegie to give twelve million dollars in five per cent bonds to endow peace movements. No one can now read those chapters without perceiving that the antithesis of militarism and industrialism they present is not in accord with notorious facts showing beyond dispute that high industrial efficiency is an essential concomitant of high military efficiency. The premises of Spencer’s argument need to be corrected by substituting predaciousness for militarism. Then the argument becomes square with the facts which he himself lays down in his Principles of Biology as to the relation between the organism and its environment — the dependence of the parasite on the existence of its host, of the plant on soil in which to grow, of the ruminant on the presence of pasture, of the carnivora on the supply of animals on which to prey. Considered from this standpoint, pacifism stands forth in its proper character as the essential concomitant of predaciousness, which could not live without it. But when Spencer’s argument is corrected in its terms according to his own data, the conclusions will then be correspondingly rectified, and it will then appear that the acknowledgments he felt constrained to make of the salutary influence of militarism in the past must be extended to the present and continued to the future.

The service of pacifism to predaciousness, inferable from biological principles, is confirmed by the direct evidence of history. Archaeological research has shown that agriculture as an art owed its origin to pacifist peoples. Our own Pueblo Indians — peaceful, settled communities, avoiding contact with rapacious neighbors and secreting themselves from attack by the natural embargoes of inaccessible refuges — preserve the characteristics of the primitive type. But the most favored seats of primitive agriculture were the alluvial soils deposited by great rivers and periodically renewed by their flow. Hence the bottom courses of human culture were laid in great river valleys such as the Nile in Egypt, the Tigris and the Euphrates in Asia Minor, the Ganges in India, and the Yellow River in China. But such localities lie so open to attack that they can be protected only through organization and discipline, and these characteristics appear to have been imparted by conquests which arranged the population in layers of exploited masses and classes of functionaries on the principle ‘Spend me and defend me.’ The rule of the Manchu dynasty in China preserved down to our own times a pattern of social organization such as our Egyptologists and Assyriologists observe in their studies, and in which they find the origin of some fundamental apparatus of western civilization.

These most ancient forms of empire were eventually confronted by forces beyond the capacity of their type. Huge as they were, they were in the plight of the dinosauria when the predatory mammalia appeared on the scene. When the predatory type of the state made its full appearance in history its native habitat was the plains of central Asia. A great theologian, Cardinal Newman, has clearly explained the source of the efficiency that gave the mastery of the world to this type until its supremacy was overthrown by the development of militarism. He observed, —

‘The discipline of a pastoral station, from the nature of the case, is not very different from that of a camp. There can be no community without order. and a community in motion demands a special kind of organization. Provision must be made for the separation, the protection, and the sustenance of men, women, and children, horses, flocks, and cattle. To march without straggling, to halt without confusion, to make good their ground, to reconnoitre neighborhoods, to ascertain the character and capabilities of places in the distance, and to determine their future route, is to be versed in some of the most important duties of the military art. Such pastoral tribes are already an army in the field.’

Such was the basis of a predaciousness that periodically overran the world from China to France, and from time to time established vast but transient empires. Gibbon gives an impressive account of its conquests east and west. A still more complete and systematic account is given in Cardinal Newman’s Lectures on the History of the Turks. No war between the peoples of Western Europe — not even the horrible war going on now — approaches in bloodshed and devastation the attacks of nomad predaciousness upon agricultural pacifism. There are regions of the world to-day, once populous and wealthy, that have never recovered from the pillage and massacre which accompanied invasion. Pacifism nourished this predaciousness over a thousand years. Attila in the fifth century, Genghis Khan in the thirteenth, and Timur in the fourteenth, pillaged and massacred the pacifist peoples from the Pacific almost to the Atlantic, here and there erecting pyramids of heads as trophies of valor, now and then celebrating gorgeous festivities in testimony of their grandeur. Amazing accounts are given of the profusion of gold, silver, and precious stones that embellished their rude magnificence. This predaciousness lasted until pressure of necessity developed militarism as a counteracting force. Even the latest battle of the Marne was not so important in its consequences to Western Europe as that battle at Châlons on the Marne in which Attila received such a severe repulse that he retreated from France.

The concise explanation of the supremacy in the world which Europe has obtained in the last five centuries is that it is a terminal region in which militarism had to be developed as the condition of existence. The Celtic and Teutonic tribes, pressed to the west by waves of ethnic invasion from the inexhaustible Asiatic sources, could go no farther and had to stand their ground. The church, in converting the barbarians, at the same time traced the cultural lines on which the civilized state has developed, and gave sanction to the militarism of which the modern state is distinctly the product. The spread of that militarism has subjugated predaciousness in its original seats, and now Bokhara, formerly a centre of nomadic empire, is a cotton-raising province of Russia. Not until militarism became too strong for predaciousness did the nomadic tribes settle down and accept industrialism as the economic basis of their state. A similar conversion through the agency of militarism has taken place among the Algerines, who once used to prey upon American commerce; and the same process is now going on among the Moros of the southern Philippines under American rule.

III

If pacifists contend that such facts are too remote to be pertinent to modern conditions, let it be considered that our own national history gives an instance of a test of pacifism under singularly favorable circumstances. The Indian tribes in colonial Pennsylvania had been so broken and humbled by wars with other tribes that they were ready for peace on any terms. In submitting to their conquerors, the Iroquois tribes of Western New York, they even accepted the humiliation of declaring themselves to be, not warriors, but squaws, and putting on the dress of squaws. The pacifists controlled the provincial government and treated the Indians on pacifist principles. That the effect was not really to promote industrialism but to foster predaciousness appears from the admissions of historians who defend the pacifist policy. Thomas F. Gordon, whose history appeared in 1829, praised that policy, but he had to admit that it acted as an incentive to aggressions by the Indians. He observed that ‘their hostility has been rewarded rather than chastised by Pennsylvania; every treaty of peace was accompanied by rich presents, and their detention of prisoners was overlooked upon slight apologies, though obviously done to afford opportunities for new treaties and additional gifts.’

The detention referred to might, in the case of women, imply facts that do not bear mention. A Moravian missionary carried off in one of these raids had a fate that was infinitely worse than if she had been killed and scalped like her male colleagues at the raided station. The pacifists who controlled the provincial assembly were so devoted to their principles that they could not be moved by any appeal. Their mild composure was not seriously disturbed, even when a load of scalped and mangled bodies was brought to the State-House door as an exhibit in aid of the popular demand for protection. Rather than abandon pacifism, they finally surrendered control of the government, when it was made clear that their authority would be abolished by the British government if it was not properly employed.

A comparison of the policy of the United States toward the Indians with Canadian policy points the same lesson. In the one case pacifism was practiced until the consequences became intolerable, and there followed a vindictive campaign to terrorize the Indians. In the other case the situation was dealt with by militarism, which, operating steadily and continuously, has exerted a preventive influence. The Indians have been protected against fraud and injustice; they have been restrained from rapine. Hence Canada has been almost exempt from the Indian wars that have afflicted the United States. Sitting Bull’s tribe, in fighting which General Custer lost his life, lived quietly and peaceably after they had taken refuge in Canada.

It must be admitted that history is much clearer on the point that pacifism fosters predaciousness than it is on the point that militarism promotes industrialism; but the results of the present war are bringing that fact into popular knowledge. It has long been clear to specialists in economics and political science. Predaciousness and militarism both employ force, but in the one case the utilization destroys and exhausts, while in the other it fosters and develops. The beginnings of national finance, of political economy, of conservation and development of national resources, of administrative efficiency and improvement in the art of government, are all traceable to militarism. The logical connection may be and is often denied, and in many cases the connection is visible only to experts. But any one who will consider the facts given by Professor W. B. Munro of Harvard in his standard work on The Government of European Cities must be impressed with the evidence showing that the municipal systems of Continental Europe are a military product. Professor Munro is not seeking to maintain the point; it comes out incidentally in the fulfillment of his purpose of explaining the rise and growth of the institutions described; but it appears that the French municipal system, which has spread all over the world and is now found in places as remote as South America and Japan, was originally instituted by Napoleon Bonaparte in organizing the national resources on militarist principles. The German municipal system dates from the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg in their reorganization of national resources for national defense. When it is considered that every European mayor is a cog in the machinery of military equipment and mobilization, it is evident that municipal efficiency is essential to the security of the nation. Efficiency of organization created for any purpose is available for every purpose. The rich and abundant civic bloom characteristic of European municipal institutions, which every traveler notes and admires, has militarism for its stalk and its root.

That the development of any function of an organism reacts upon every particle of its structure is a well-known principle. It is now so abundantly illustrated by the systematization and regimentation of society going on from stress of military necessity that it is patent to every observer. Socialists are pointing to such results as evidence of the validity of the principles for which they are contending, and they predict, with good reason, that the world will not again return to the conditions of economic conflict, class exploitation, and selfish profiteering of the past. Hence many of them — probably the great majority — are revising their opinions and are discarding pacifism, at any rate during the present emergency. We simply pursue to their logical conclusion principles thus gaining acceptance, when we recognize that the complete suppression of pacifism and the complete institution of militarism would bring within bounds of practicability the adjudication of international disagreements by international tribunals.

This prospect, however, is not to be attributed to favorable sentiment, but to the growth of favorable conditions. If it should be supposed that this would mean simply respect for the sovereignty of every existing state and the elimination of force as a factor, the situation will be misconceived. What seems likely to happen is this: that just as in the business world competing interests that cannot be exterminated will seek reciprocal adjustment, so too in the political world the full organization and development of national militarism will promote adjustment of interests by the leading nations, the process expressing itself in juridical forms. The actual fact of the case, however it may be disguised, is that the international courts will rest upon a basis of syndicated empire. States so imperfectly organized as to be unable to fulfill respectably their international obligations will not be secluded from the consequences of their misconduct; but instead of the punitive expedition of the past there will be adjudication by international tribunals applied by processes maintained by international force. Those who have eyes to see may see that conditions of guardianship, clientage, or receivership have already been established by international allowance, and all that remains to be done is to systematize, regulate, and clothe in juridical forms the processes already introduced. Thus the complete suppression of pacifism, which present conditions are exacting, will reduce the function of militarism to judicial activities.

The argument has thus far been conducted as an interpretation of data which evolutionary and socialistic pacifists recognize as pertinent, whether or not they admit the validity of the interpretation. Most of them are now quite plainly moving in that direction. But it must be admitted that on one point the argument is defective. Even granting, as many of them are now doing, that at present militarism is acting as an agent of social reconstruction tending to the fulfillment of their secular ideals, there remains this objection: How can this compensate those whose lives are used up and spent in the process? But is this t he special problem of militarism? Where is the gain of those who fall in the class struggle whose existence is asserted by Socialism, and upon whose destruction of human life it habitually enlarges? Is it a sufficient compensation for the martyrdom of man that through it social justice will be eventually established? On secular premises no satisfactory answer is to be had unless one is found in the mere perpetuation of influence such as George Eliot described in her ‘Choir Invisible,’ —

A barren consolation this, one may think. But what if not one drop of personality, not one particle of true individuality, is really lost when it disappears from view, but retains its existence fully and completely, actually and not merely figuratively? On this point, too, the world war is bringing enlargement of thought, and it is having a profound effect upon the institutions which give expression to the religious instinct and systematize its activities.