THE GOOD AND EVIL OF PEACE AND OF WAR
"All states are in perpetual war with all. For that which we call peace is no more than merely a name, whilst in reality Nature has set all communities in an unproclaimed but everlasting war against each other."
Plato.
So much has been said based on ignorance and false premise about the good and evil of war, and the good and evil of peace, that a few cold, relevant facts will not be out of place here.
In stating these facts, the writer is standing neither as sponsor for war nor as sponsor for peace. He is not posing as a judge qualified to pass sentence on peace or on war, but merely as one who understands the subject sufficiently to throw some new light upon it. In bearing witness to the cruelty and mercilessness of Nature, the writer assumes no responsibility for what Nature has done; he was not consulted. In bearing witness to the evils and benefits of war, and the evils and benefits of peace, the writer does not thereby either palliate the evils, or stand responsible for them; neither does he assume credit for their benefits and blessings. He realizes, however, that the bearer of bad tidings is associated with the ill-feeling they inspire, although he may be wholly innocent of the ill.
While too much stress cannot be laid upon the horrors of war and the individual suffering incurred thereby, still it is not just to lay to the account of war or militarism every ill that flesh is heir to, as is done by many of the pacifi-maniacs. As a matter of fact, it would be as justifiable to attack peace because of the evils that develop in times of peace. We do not, however, on that account conceive peace to be a misfortune, but a blessing.
While our pacifists promote war by their teachings, they declaim against war and picture its horrors and calamitous results. One would naturally suppose that, appreciating what a terrible thing war is, they would take the most scientific and dependable means of safeguarding this country against such a calamity; but, as a matter of fact, they are doing everything in their power to abolish the one means that can safeguard us against war. With consistent inconsistency, they place the blame for war on the advocates of adequate armaments—the true peace-advocates and peace-makers and enemies of war, who are forefending us against war. The advocacy of armaments is construed by them as the advocacy of war; measures for peace are confounded with measures for breaching the peace.
A curious phase of the matter is that many friends of armaments themselves make a similar mistake, and think that in defending armaments they are called upon to defend war also. As a matter of fact, war has no defense, except as a last resort. But when there is no other way, and when the maintenance of peace would be a greater calamity than war, then war is to be recommended as the lesser evil. It is, nevertheless, undeniably an evil, though a necessary one, just as a surgical operation is a necessary evil—but one which, if successful, results in such good as far to outweigh the evil.
The peace sophists tell us that there has never been a good war or a bad peace; that always in war the best specimens of manhood have been slain, leaving the weak and unfit for breeding purposes. They tell us that the Napoleonic wars lowered the stature of the entire French nation by two inches. They tell us also that during all past ages war for plunder has been the principal business of mankind.
The following arraignment of war by General Hiram M. Chittenden is a very fair sample of this method of reasoning:
"Both in its restriction upon marriage and in its destruction of life war thus destroys the most precious seed and leaves the inferior from which to propagate. In proportion as wars are long continued, and draw heavily upon the population, these deleterious effects are apparent. The campaigns of Napoleon were a mighty drain upon the vigor of the French people. It has been held that the average stature of the French was thereby diminished by more than an inch. How much their intellectual and moral stature was shrunken by that debauchery of crime, who can say? The decadence of the Roman people was due more to the waste of its best blood in war than to the causes commonly accepted. War reverses the process of natural selection and, instead of producing the survival of the fittest, produces the survival of the most unfit."
According to statistics of the pacifists, from the year 1496 b.c. to the year 1861 a.d.—a period of 3,357 years—there were 227 years of peace and 3,130 years of war—thirteen years of war for every year of peace. Now, if what we are told about the degenerative effects of war is true, since we know that war has been prevalent in all ages, the natural conclusion is, what a lot of rapscallions we must be! If war, instead of tending to secure the survival of the fit, secures the survival of the unfit, then after a thousand centuries of strife we must be signally unfit.
The trouble with such statistics is that, instead of leading us toward the truth, they lead us into error. It may be perfectly true that for every year of general peace there have been thirteen years when there was a war somewhere on the earth; but this does not imply in the least that peace was not more general than was war, even during those thirteen years when there was a war. We must remember that the history of nations does not tell us much about the affairs of the people in times of peace; it is their wars that have made history.
As we look back through time at the large number of wars, we clump them together in perspective. We place the wars, as it were, all on the map at once, instead of placing them years and centuries apart.
Just as there is always in human life more joy than sorrow, more pleasure than pain, more good than ill; so, in the history of the world, there has been more of peace and prosperity than there has been of war and calamity.
John Ruskin possessed the rare ability to perceive truth that pointed one way, while his feelings pointed in the opposite direction. Although he had an emotional nature and a highly artistic temperament, he was still a man of so broad views, with so comprehensive a mind at the other end of the optic nerve, that he could ratiocinate in spite of his emotions. The following is what he had to say on war:
"All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war; no great art ever rose on earth but among a nation of soldiers. There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is based on battle. When I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It was very strange for me to discover this, and very dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together I found to be utterly untenable. Peace and the vices of civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning, of peace and plenty, of peace and civilization; but I found that these are not the words that the Muse of History coupled together: that on her lips the words were peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and death. I found in brief that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted in peace; taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace."
We must not conclude, from the above quotation from Ruskin, that he was an advocate of brutality versus humanity, for he was not. The thought he meant to convey was simply this—that only a supreme trial, a supreme responsibility, where country, life itself, and that which is dearer than life—home—are staked on the issue, can bring out the highest virtues. The struggle for inalienable human rights, whose observance is freedom, has been the greatest influence to stimulate the genius and the virtues of men, and these things have been accomplished, and could only have been accomplished, by war.
The humanity of Ruskin is well brought out in the following quotation:
"... Depend upon it, all work must be done at last, not in a disorderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered, soldierly, human way—a lawful or 'loyal' way. Men are enlisted for the labor that kills—the labor of war: they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Teach the plough exercise as carefully as you do the sword exercise, and let the officers of troops of life be held as much gentlemen as the officers of troops of death; and all is done: but neither this, nor any other right thing, can be accomplished—you can't even see your way to it—unless, first of all, both servant and master are resolved that, come what will of it, they will do each other justice."
Ralph Waldo Emerson held the same opinion about war as that held by John Ruskin. He quoted and approved the old Greek, Heraclitus, who said, "War is the father of all things." After quoting this expression, Emerson said, "We of this day can repeat it as a political and social truth." Also, he said, "War passes the power of all chemical solvents, breaking up the old cohesions, and allowing the atoms of society to take a new order."
As a matter of fact, social order, in time of peace, like a cultivated field, settles and solidifies, and it must be broken down into subsoil, to support a new and vigorous growth. The breaking by plough and dynamite, uprooting and submerging all undesirable growth, is rewarded by healthy and vigorous crops of a desirable growth.
The very privations that have to be endured by large numbers of persons during a great war, stimulate economy, invention, and extraordinary endeavor, and serve to teach many useful lessons and to impart valuable experiential knowledge, which is applied both during the war, and, with greater advantage, when the war is over. When a country is at war, all its industries are not rendered stagnant or idle, but many of them are stimulated to extraordinary effort when cut off from import by blockade.
The legend about the stature of the French nation being lowered two inches as a result of killing off so many of the best men of France during the Napoleonic wars, is a very plausible one, and one that has been made great use of by the pacifists. But no one has thought to inquire whether or not, during the past century, the average stature of the Spaniards and the Italians also has been lowered. Perhaps, if we should inquire, we might learn that the color of the hair and eyes and skin of the French had somewhat darkened during that period. We might learn the truth that the effect upon the stature and the color of the eyes and skin and hair was mainly due to another kind of warfare—that of the southern blood of the Latin against the blood of the blond Norseman. We might learn that in Italy, Spain, and France, the posterity of the Norse giants, who long ago overran and conquered those countries, did not thrive well there, but slowly died down. We might learn that in those lands the blood of the blond is gradually overcome by the blood of the brunette; and that, as the blond races are larger in stature, the stature of the mixed Latin races is lowered in proportion to the disappearance of the blond type. The ancient Roman was much shorter in stature than even the present Italian or Frenchman.
Warfare has always subjected the weak, the puny, the poor, the ill, the indigent, and the incompetent to privations, trials, and strains of such severity that they have died in large numbers. They have not been so able as normal persons to escape the sword and to resist famine and disease; consequently, fewer of them have survived than of the more fit.
It is, however, argued by the peace sophists, that in modern warfare only the most able-bodied men are selected for military duty, and also that the weak and unfit who remain at home are not subjected to the same exterminating influences as formerly.
As a matter of fact, comparing the results of war today with those in former years, we find the percentage of deaths among the incompetent stay-at-homes far larger than among the soldiers at the front.
It is true that medical science secures the survival of a much larger percentage of stay-at-home incompetents than in former years, but medical science saves also a much larger proportion of those injured in battle than formerly, so that the ratio of survival between the fit and the incompetent is today in favor of the fit. The conditions that tend to secure the survival of the fittest are even more effective today than they were in old-time wars.
The unpleasant truth should be realized that invading armies must, with other luxuries, have women. As a result, they leave a large progeny—wrens in the nests of the doves of peace. Hence, inasmuch as soldiers are the pick of the manhood of their country, they are likely to do about as much toward securing the survival of the fit in an enemy's country as they would have in their own country.
There is another very important consideration, which is that war is a great mixer of races, and that usually mixed types benefit enormously from their compound blood.
Furthermore, the mingling of races and peoples has in all times served greatly to spread knowledge of one another, and they have always profited largely from the mingled knowledge. Soldiers visiting distant lands have brought home acquaintance with new arts and sciences and broader ideas of international usefulness. The soldiers of the North, who marched with Sherman through Georgia to the sea, returned years afterward and built cotton mills, iron foundries, and machine-shops all over the South, and stimulated the South with Northern energy and Northern capital.
We know that the inhabitants of the earth are constantly growing more fit; consequently, we know that they cannot be growing constantly more unfit, due to the degenerative influence of war. The history of nations is a history of wars; consequently we know as untrue the contention of the peace sophists that war secures the survival of the unfit. We know that exactly the opposite must be true; that war secures the survival of the fit.
There is yet another thing of which the peace sophists have never thought, and could not be expected to think—the tremendous self-saving potentiality of the race.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, Nature seems to care little for individuals, but everything for a race or species; consequently, Nature has forefended herself by very ample measures to insure the survival of the fit.
If every able-bodied man in the world today were to be slain, and only the weak and puny left, although the injury would be incalculable and would make the whole race stagger, still the next generation of men would be almost as able-bodied and as fit as the present generation. Let us see why: It is because of that great potentiality—atavism. Children inherit not only directly from their parents, but their inheritance harks back to grandfather, great-grandfather, and even to remote ancestry.
Just as a stream of water burdened with impurities is self-purifying when it suns itself on the bright pebbles and on grass and moss that web and tangle it, so life is self-purifying and self-regenerative. Nature is constantly reaching higher and higher. The acquired characteristics of parents tend to become instinctive in their children. Instinct is largely inherited experience.
Nature strives to protect herself against degeneracy. Though bad conduct on the part of parents harmfully affects the child, yet such influences are less potent than those that are regenerative. If this were not true, Nature's ends would not be so well secured.
There is in all animal organisms a certain innate power of resistance to germs of disease, and there is likewise in man a similar power of resistance to degeneracy.
The forces that operate to protect the individual operate also to shield the species by affording protection against evil inheritance.
Abnormal types are not always representative of diseased or degenerate conditions; other considerations must be weighed. Even some criminals may be atavic examples of a class of individuals who were better suited to live under the savage conditions that existed many generations ago.
Nature has resources for her protection far beyond our ken. Some of them have, by our inquiry, been discovered. We have discovered that not only do we immunize ourselves to withstand repeated attacks from the same disease, but also our children to some extent inherit that immunity.
When syphilis, the most abominable disease that ever afflicted mankind, was brought to Europe by the sailors of Columbus, the Europeans, possessing no immunity against it, died by hundreds of thousands. It afflicted equally all classes, from peasant to king. This disease among the West Indian tribes was slow-moving, and comparatively mild; but it became exceedingly virulent, rapid, and almost always fatal, in the blood of the unimmunized people of the Old World. This disease alone has been more harmful to the human race than all the wars of the world since the dawn of human history.
Although today the Old-World races have acquired considerable immunity to that affliction and although science has discovered a rational and comparatively successful treatment, it is still the greatest single degenerative influence with which the race has to contend. Its evil potency is greatly enhanced by the facility with which it weds alcoholism, and breeds tuberculosis, cancer, and paranoia.
The old pioneers sowed the western continent and the islands of the sea with the germs of smallpox and measles. Smallpox, terrible anywhere, was tenfold more so with the newly discovered peoples. Measles was more fatal with the Indians than smallpox with the Europeans. Only recently, in Alaska, whole communities have been wiped out by the measles. Even chicken-pox, harmless with us, was nearly always fatal to the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands.
The races, however, gradually but surely, developed immunity, and the great world-scourges are now largely robbed of their terrors. Similarly has mankind developed powers of recuperation that largely tend to immunization against such degenerative effects as are of war.
When a large limb is lopped from a tree, the mother-stem puts out a new shoot, and grows another strong limb in its place; similarly, when limbs are lopped from the human family tree, new limbs are stimulated to growth. This peculiarity of living things is strangely manifested in certain species, particularly among the lower orders of animals. Certain animals have no way of seeking self-preservation except by breeding in such large numbers as to supply the appetites of all enemies, and glut the demand. A big salmon sometimes lays a gallon of small eggs, often numbering as high as 27,000,000. Certain species of polyp are provided no means whatever, either by speed or powers of resistance, to defend themselves, but they breed so rapidly that they cannot all be eaten.
Now that we have defended war against the charge of securing the survival of the unfit, and have proved that, on the contrary, war has, during all the ages, been instrumental in securing the survival of the fit, let us, without presuming against peace, see whether or not peace has a blameless record.
The long periods of peace during the past century have allowed the peoples time and opportunity to acquire wealth and luxury, and to develop peculiar tastes, especially along emotional lines.... Modern fiction is a universal love story. Art is largely a portrayal of sentimentality.
In olden times, when human suffering in every guise, born of war, was very common, the appeals of the poor, the weak, and the infirm were not much heeded, for there were ever present such severe and exacting concerns as to command the attention and to absorb the resources of the people.
In time of peace less rigid economy is practised than in time of war. Dangers and hardships, which are the concomitants of war, have been found in all ages better formative influences for making hardy, successful men than a life of ease, comfort, and luxury. Consequently, in time of peace there is a far more preponderant tendency toward degeneracy and national decay than there is in time of war, in spite of the large numbers of fine specimens of manhood that are killed in war.
When Cyrus the Great, with his hardy mountaineers, had conquered the peace-loving, comfort-loving people of the lowlands, he told his soldiers that they must not make their homes in the lowlands, but must return to their mountain fastnesses, because if they settled to a life of ease and luxury, they would become unwarlike, effeminate, and degenerate, like the lowlanders they had conquered and enslaved, and later would themselves be conquered and enslaved by other mountaineers inured to privations and hardships, who would descend upon them.
Witness the wisdom of Herodotus, who said:
"It is the settled appointment of Nature that soft soils should breed soft men, and that the same land should never be famous for the excellence of its fruit and for the vigor of its inhabitants."
Montesquieu said:
"The barrenness of the soil makes men industrious, sober, hard-working, courageous, and warlike, for they must obtain by their own exertion that which the earth denies them, whilst the fertility of a country produces in them love of ease, indolence, and a sense of cautious self-preservation."
The ancient Spartans in time of peace voluntarily subjected themselves to every privation and hardship necessary to keep them in prime condition for instant war.
Nature is never moved by pity. Nature is not a sentimentalist. The earthquake shock is no respecter of persons. When a ship founders, the angry waves of the sea show no mercy to the drowning, and have no pity for those struggling to survive in the life-boats. The arctic airs of winter are as savage to those exposed to them as are the teeth of wolves. All animal life on the earth must constantly contend with both the devouring elements of Nature and the devouring greed of other animal life.
Pity is a child of the imagination, and is, for that reason, a peculiarly human attribute. It is a very noble trait, and is of material aid in greatening mutual human usefulness. Nevertheless, no one thinks for a moment of blaming any of the lower animals for their appetites and passions; they are understood to be normal and necessary. Similarly, all our normal appetites and passions are necessary. Considered in the broad, as natural attributes, there are no such things as bad normal emotions and passions; it is only when they become perverted by degeneracy or abuse that they are evil.
The passion of pity may be perverted and abused just as the sex appetite or the appetite for food and drink.
If human pity had dominated the council at the creation of the world, the result would have been infinite injury, because none of the higher orders of animals, even man himself, could have been developed. In short, there would have been no intelligent beings on earth.
During periods of peace, a large number of persons, moved by pity for the indigent, the halt, the lame, the blind, extend to them the alleviating hand of charity. Philanthropy finds favor in the public eye, and charity becomes a cheap and easy means of courting public opinion. The philanthropist with means for gratifying his passion of pity, or the ambitious aspirant for public favor with cash to invest in public opinion, finds himself soon surrounded with a multitude of itchy-palmy hands to help him spend his money to buy what he is after, and at the same time obtain profit for themselves. Consequently, objects of charity become opportunities to be prized and made the most of. Charity organizations are supported both by well-meaning sympathetic persons and by publicity-purchasing persons and their press-agents.
Many an ambitious politician or social climber finds it profitable to become a patron of some supposedly deserving charity. Recently, some one inquired into the methods of a New York charity organization, and found that the sum paid in salaries to the various officers of the society was more than twice the amount actually expended in charity. But those who donated the money got what they paid for; the hangers-on of the society got what they wanted, and thereby lessened the actual harm that the money would have done had it all reached its supposed objects.
While a limited amount of well-directed charitable effort may be for the general good, still by far the larger part of promiscuous charity does harm. Broadly speaking, charity of all kinds is wrong in principle, because the misfortunes of the unfit are a part of natural processes for their elimination, and anything done by charity to defeat the decrees of Nature is wrong.
These are some of the responsibilities for which we friends of peace must stand, if we succeed in preventing war by preparedness against war.
Those who are advocating the abolition of armaments, and are thereby fostering war, have not this responsibility; for, if they are successful in what they are teaching and doing, the pretty constant warfare that will prevail among the great nations during the next century will cure much of the hypersentimentalism that finds expression in large degenerative charities; and these charities will be swept away under the tread of marching armies. Whereas, if we succeed, by our advocacy, in securing adequate armaments, and thereby maintain enduring peace, then nothing can prevent our great promiscuous charities from continuing to secure the survival of the unfit with the continuous pollution of the blood-stream of the race from their degenerate blood through intermarriage with normal persons.
The arrestation of the self-purifying processes of Nature which are intended to clarify the blood of the race, by breeding the unfit and turning them back upon the race, is like turning the sewage of a city into its water supply.
If all incompetents—the hopelessly diseased and degenerate—were to be exterminated, it would be a very good thing for the race. Such methods have actually been practised in the past. At one time, when ancient Babylon was besieged, all the aged and diseased were murdered; and in ancient Greece, deformed or diseased children were killed at birth. But the trouble with this method is that no men possessing the human qualities rendering them worthy of survival could be found among us to do the wholesale executions. The mere possession of the inhuman qualities necessary to carry out the wholesale slaughter would elect the executioners themselves for slaughter. Man cannot be pitiless, like Nature, without himself becoming unworthy of pity, and, consequently, unworthy of survival.
Human survival must be co-operative. Human reproduction depends somewhat on lovability. According to the law of natural selection, a lovable person is selected rather than an unlovable person. Neither sex is so apt to fall in love and mate with a person of the other sex who is pitiless, as with one possessing pity and sympathy. Pity and sympathy, just like the love of parenthood, are bonds of the family. A community—a nation—is only a larger family.
Charity and sympathy make men gregarious. A world without charity or sympathy would be most unattractive. Human companionship in its higher values would not exist.
Nevertheless, when charity and sympathy build and support large almshouses, until, as in London, one-third of all the property tax goes to the poor fund, then charity becomes an institution for breeding paupers and imbeciles. Such charity is the misuse of a virtue. Nine-tenths of all the paupers of one generation in England are children of the paupers of a preceding generation.
The following is what an eminent Englishman has to say of the condition of things in his country:
"We have a standing army of 1,200,000 paupers, and our permanent and occasional paupers number together at least 3,000,000. Our paupers are maintained at a yearly cost of about £30,000,000 to the community, and were it not for the Draconic administration of our poor-laws all our work-houses would be overcrowded by workers who would gladly exchange freedom and starvation wages for the confinement of the workhouse. No other nation has an army of paupers similar to that of Great Britain."—J. Ellis Barker, in "Great and Greater Britain."
A Cat Story
Once upon a time there was an excellent Queen who ruled over a beautiful and fruitful island. The island was not large; it had an area of only a few square miles, and the inhabitants numbered but a thousand. They lived mainly by fishing and agriculture.
The Queen loved both her people and her cats. As she would not allow a kitten killed, cats soon overran the palace. Some of these cats, dominated by the mousing instinct, took up their habitation in the fields and woods; for mice, small birds, squirrels, and all manner of cat-game were plentiful on the island.
The cats continued to multiply, until they became a great pest to the farmers, killing their chickens, ducklings, and song-birds. Then the good Queen divided the island between her people and her cats. She gave a tenth of the island to the cats. A fence was built between the cats and the people.
The cats soon multiplied to the number of 20,000, but there was not forage enough to feed them through the next winter; consequently, half of them died during the cold weather. In the autumn of the following year there were again 20,000 cats on the island, half of which were doomed to die by starvation during the winter; but the kind-hearted Queen taxed the people for food sufficient to feed the cats, and to save as many lives as possible.
The succeeding summer being long and fruitful, the cats thrived well, and the next autumn there were 50,000 cats on the island, and as there was but forage enough to winter 10,000 cats, 40,000 must starve during the coming winter, unless fed. Again the Queen taxed her people, and the cats were saved; but, to the amazement of the Queen and her little people, the next autumn brought 100,000 hungry cats to be fed, and it had come to a point where either the people or the cats must starve.
With grief, the Queen decided in favor of the people, for it was evident that, if the people were allowed to starve to save the cats, the cats also would starve without the people. That year, 90,000 cats starved to death on the island.
Thus, the good Queen's well-meant charity, intended to save 10,000 cats from starving to death, finally resulted in 90,000 cats starving to death. Actually, her attempt to lessen cat misery multiplied that misery nine-fold.
Now, what was true of those cats applies with exactly equal truth to the rearing of paupers and incompetents in times of peace.
In all the countries of the civilized world today, there are institutions for rearing and educating idiots. Sometimes, a section of an idiot's skull is cut out, and the skull trepanned in order to give his little brain room to expand. In this way, an idiot, incapable of feeding himself, may develop intelligence enough to vote, under the instruction of the ward-heeler, or he may even develop into a public expounder of the beauties of defenselessness as a safeguard against war.
The most common of all errors of conviction is the belief that knowledge of right-doing necessarily leads us to do right. But the truth is, that we are mainly guided by sentiment, even when it is diametrically opposed to our knowledge of right. No branch of our learning is more strongly fortified by facts of experience than that thoroughbred animals cannot be bred from scrub stock; that superior types of dogs cannot be bred from mongrels; that a fast trotting-horse is never sired by a Mexican burro or foaled by a heavy draughtmare.
We know absolutely that identically the same laws govern the breeding both of human beings and of the lower animals, and that exactly according to the seed sown will the fruit be. If sentiment leads us to sow tares among the wheat, we inevitably injure the wheat. No breeder of the lower animals would, from sentimental considerations, employ inferior types for his purposes.
With human growth, just as with the growth of vegetation in forest and field, there is only a certain limited amount of room in the sun, and a certain limited amount of nourishment and moisture in the soil. When charity aids an inferior type to secure a plot of earth and a plot of sky, it can do so only at the expense of some better type, which would otherwise have conquered the spaces for itself, had not the inferior specimen had charity as an ally.
Apropos of this philosophy, I quote the following from an article in Science by G. H. Parker, Professor of Zoölogy, of Harvard:—
"Thus asylums, retreats, hospitals, and so forth, have been established by private munificence or public grants. More or less under the protection of these institutions has grown up a body of semi-dependents and defectives whose increase it is that excites the apprehension of the eugenists. That in the past such individuals have always formed a part of our race cannot be doubted, but that they ever showed a tendency to increase comparable with what seems to be occurring at present is highly improbable. The occasion of this increase is not, in my opinion, merely the exigencies of modern civilization; it is at least in part due to the immense spread of humanitarian activities which have characterized the last century of our civilization."
If Andrew Carnegie were to give $100,000,000 for the support of paupers in the United States and Great Britain, and another $100,000,000 for the saving and kindly treatment and support of imbeciles and incompetents, more continuous harm to the race would result, by securing the survival of the unfit, than would result from a perpetual war between any two of the nations now engaged in the great European conflict.
As all charities thrive like a green bay tree in times of peace, and are neglected in times of war, it will be seen that charity alone in times of peace is more potent in securing the survival of the unfit than war could possibly be.
About here, the reader may conclude that I am just as inconsistent in advocating armaments to preserve peace, which, I hold, tends to foster degeneracy and decay, as are the pacifists who, by advocating disarmament, promote war, which, they hold, is most potential in fostering the same thing.
But this is not so striking an inconsistency as may first appear, because, as I have shown, nation-wide military training, such as that practised in Switzerland, would make for regeneracy and efficiency far more than all our charities, vices, and profligacy make for degeneracy and decay. No branch of education—not even all the prevalent preachments on the subjects of hygiene, moral reform, cleanliness, temperance, and right living—would be so influential for betterment as would the introduction of the Swiss system of military training.
In order to be a good soldier, a man must be fit, just as a college athlete must be fit; and military training, like the training of the college athlete, compels him to observe the hygienic laws of right living.
We grow upon what we do and what we eat. If we live on an unbalanced food, which supplies too much of one kind of nourishment and too little of another, we become unbalanced in body and mind. Similarly, if our occupation exercises some of our organs and faculties too much and others not enough, we become unbalanced in body and mind.
The saying is trite that a sound mind requires a sound body. Likewise, a balanced mind must have a balanced body.
The occupations of civil life, if not constantly accompanied by systematic, scientific mental and physical training throw us out of balance. The success of Muldoon's famous human repair-shop depends entirely upon building up by proper food and strenuous exercise long-neglected organs and faculties.
The lower branches of a tree, which do not receive the necessary exercise from the wind, and the necessary vitalizing stimulus of the sun, gradually atrophy, and wither, die, and drop off; likewise do unused and unstimulated organs and faculties of the body shrink toward atrophy and pale toward death. The only part of a tree that is alive is where the sap runs. All the rest of the tree is dead. Organs and faculties of the human body not adequately exercised to circulate through them the required amount of sap, gradually begin to die.
Lord Kitchener is the Muldoon of the new English army. The raw recruits are trained for their coming fight in much the same manner that a pugilist is trained. They are made to take the long walk out and the sharp run home, carrying weights; they wrestle and spar; perform all manner of calisthenics and gymnastics; are fed proper food, and are made properly to bathe. To the great majority of them, this man-making training is a revelation, but they find themselves so improved in health and so strengthened in body and mind that, when they return to civil life, they will still utilize much of the useful knowledge of how to get fit and keep fit; and just as the hard work imposed upon the soldiers is made easier by their military training, so, when they return to civil life, they will find all their tasks much easier of accomplishment.
The following is quoted from a letter just received by me from a prominent English clergyman:
"The war is making the Britisher a new man, and he is blissfully unconscious of the conversion in himself. Every class is feeling the uplift. He will be stronger in his religion, his politics, and his commerce. Half the men in Kitchener's Army hate fighting and taking life. They have enlisted for conscience' sake. Naturally they will make the finest soldiers."
Soldierly fitness includes not only those sterling qualities of higher manhood—cleanliness, temperance, efficiency, and moral stamina, raised from a semi-subconscious latency into conscious action by a military training—but also it includes that very important attribute—devotion. A military training develops a vague sense of patriotism whose height is a hurrah for country, to that height of devotion where one will gladly die for his country.
In South America, there is a very potential little republic where military training produces just such beneficial results in a very high degree. Chili, perhaps, comes nearer to Germany in economic efficiency than any other country in the world.
Nothing could be more absurd than the fear of the American people that a good-sized standing army of trained soldiers would menace their liberty. The very preparation, by education and training, necessary to make a good soldier, being the very best training in the world to make him a good citizen, would constitute one of the strongest fortifications possible to defend us against ourselves. It would act as a gyroscopic stabilizer for our democratic institutions, and an equilibrator for our vacillating hot-air ship of state.
One of the very best books that I have yet seen upon the subject of peace and war is "Peace Insurance," by Richard Stockton, Jr., published in January, 1915, by A. C. McClurg and Company. It is a book that cannot fail at this time to do a large amount of good, and I heartily recommend it to the reader. I quote the following from its pages:
"To avoid exaggeration we shall quote first Mr. Kirkpatrick, who attempts to show the horrors of war in his book, 'War—What For?' by extracts from the New York Independent of March 14, 1907:
"'It is the common consensus of opinion among investigators that industrial casualties in this nation number more than 500,000 yearly. Dr. Josiah Strong estimates the number at 564,000. As there are 525,600 minutes in a year, it may readily be seen that every minute (day and night) our industrial system sends to the graveyard or to the hospital a human being, the victim of some accident inseparable from his toil. We cry out against the horrors of war.... But the ravages ... of industrial warfare are far greater than those of armed conflict. The number of killed or mortally wounded (including deaths from accidents, suicides, and murders, but excluding deaths from disease) in the Philippine War from February 4, 1899, to April 30, 1902, was 1,573. These fatal casualties were spread over a period of three years and three months. But one coal mine alone in one year furnishes a mortality more than 38 per cent. in excess of this.
"'The Japanese War is commonly looked upon as the bloodiest of modern wars. According to the official statement of the Japanese Government, 46,180 Japanese were killed, and 10,970 died of wounds. Our industrial war shows a greater mortality year by year.
"'But we are all of us more familiar with the Civil War, and we know what frightful devastation it caused in households North and South. It was, however, but a tame conflict compared with that which rages today, and which we call peace. The slaughter of its greatest battles are thrown in the shade by the slaughter which particular industries inflict today. Ask any schoolboy to name three of the bloodiest battles of that war, and he will probably name Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, and Chickamauga. The loss on both sides was:
Killed Wounded
Gettysburg 5,662 7,203
Chancellorsville 3,271 18,843
Chickamauga 3,924 23,362
——— ———
Total 12,857 69,408
"'But our railroads, state and interstate, and our trolleys in one year equal this record in the number of killings and double it in the number of woundings.'
Casualties of Peace and War Compared
"Said Dr. Josiah Strong in the North American Review for November, 1906:
"'We might carry on a half-dozen Philippine wars for three-quarters of a century with no larger number of total casualties than take place yearly in our peaceful industries.
"'Taking the lowest of our three estimates of industrial accidents, the total number of casualties suffered by our industrial army in one year is equal to the average annual casualties of our Civil War, plus those of the Philippine War, plus those of the Russian-Japanese War.
"'Think of carrying on three wars at the same time, world without end.'
"Said President Roosevelt in his Annual Message for 1907:
"'Industry in the United States now exacts ... a far heavier toll of death than all of our wars put together.... The number of deaths in battle in all the foreign wars put together for the last century and a quarter, aggregate considerably less than one year's death record for our industries.'...
"Glancing over these comparisons between war and peace, we find that much of the horror of war dwindles away. Comparing those actually killed in industry and accident with those killed or dying from wounds in various wars, we find that the annual peace rate is approximately two and a half times that of the average annual Japanese loss, three times that of the Union loss in the Civil War, five times the Russian loss in the Japanese War, six times the Confederate loss in the Civil War, twenty-eight times the English loss in the Anglo-Boer War, and ninety times the American loss in the Spanish War. In other words, it would take the average annual deaths of the English and French in the Crimea, the Americans in the Mexican War, the North in the Civil War, the Americans in the Spanish War, the English in the Boer War, and the Japanese in the Russian War to approach the annual United States peace rate. Assuming the burden of all these wars, at once, and without ceasing, would be no more a drain than our peace death rate! Need we say more as to the cost in lives, as to the sorrowing mother, sweetheart, and wife? Think of these things. Where now is the bestiality and horror? Does it belong more to war where comparatively few die for their country willingly and nobly, or to peace where the multitudes die for sordid gain—for dollars and cents? Would it not be meet for the pacifists, assuming that they have the best interest of the country at heart, to turn first to the horrors of peace, and lastly to the horrors of war?"
It is well to observe that a very large percentage of the injuries and deaths in the United States in times of peace, noted by Dr. Strong, are due to preventable causes, and one of the best remedies is a military training. In Germany, the number of persons per capita of population killed and injured by accidents in time of peace is not half as great as it is in the United States.
These losses are part of the high price that this country pays for inefficiency. They could be very largely remedied by military training, which quickens awareness and alertness. Many an accident resulting in severe wounding or death is due to undeveloped and untrained powers of mind, and to lack of physical co-ordination. In the works of the National Cash Register Company, at Dayton, Ohio, where all employees are given the equivalent of military training in care and efficiency, personal injury through accidents is almost entirely eliminated.
A man who has been taught to play football and to box and wrestle in his youth is not nearly so likely in after years to fall and injure himself, or to be hit by a trolley car, or automobile, as one who has not had that training. Similarly, a man who, in his youth, has had his mind developed to quick alertness, and every muscle of his body brought under the domination of the will by military training, is far less likely to be injured by accident than one who has not had a military training. Consequently, many of the ills of peace may be cured by the practice of the very medicine that is the best remedy for war.
William James, in an article entitled, "The Moral Equivalent of War," starts out with the remark, "The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party." He adds that, "There is something highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation to war."
He continues:
"Ask all our millions north and south whether they would vote now to have our war for the Union expunged from history, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time substituted for that of its marches and battles, and, probably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes.
"Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing in cold blood to stand another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not one man or woman would vote for the proposition."
Let us suppose that the same Southern states that then seceded were to secede again today, capture all the negroes there and all men and women whose skins are tinted by negro blood, enslave them, and establish anew the auction block at the slave market: then let us ask the people of the North Mr. James's second question.
What defense has the average person against being convinced by such sophistry, coming from so eminent a psychologist and philosopher as William James? The conclusion of the average person is: "A great man like him must know better than I, he having made a study of such things." This article was given wide circulation by the Association for International Conciliation. It was also published in McClure's Magazine, and again in the Popular Science Monthly.
Others have said, and are saying, similar silly things about the war against war, but they are not men of such intellectual eminence as was William James. It is true that Dr. David Starr Jordan is a very prominent person, and says things even sillier than anything that William James said, but exactly there is the saving grace of his sayings. Some of his conclusions are so utterly irrational and absurd as to enable a very large number of persons to perceive their falsity, whereas the error is not so easily perceived in such statements as the foregoing quoted from Mr. James.
Let us examine the proposition to make war on war. The only common-sense way to wage war on war is to war against the evils that produce war. To wage war on war, which comes like the visitation of a physician, to cure ills, would be like waging war on the medical profession to cure a decimating pestilence. To arrest the hand of the surgeon in order to save bloodshed is to let the patient die of cancer.
Our Civil War was merely a great surgical operation which removed a malignant cancer from the breast of Columbia. Mars, the old and experienced surgeon, made a good job of it. Columbia's ailment was one that could not be cured by physic, poultice, incantations, or other quack nostrums, which, Mr. James suggested, might have been tried. The patient had to be operated on with the sword, so that the question as to the right or wrong of the Civil War, and as to whether it should have then been fought, and whether, if it had been delayed till now, it should now be fought, depends upon a choice of evils—depends entirely upon whether or not American slavery was a greater evil than the American Civil War.
Two of my brothers were killed in the awful struggle to free the slaves and save the Union. It was worth the price to them, to me, and to the rest of my family; and I am of the opinion that every other family in the country who made a like sacrifice would agree with me that to free four millions of human beings from bondage was worth the price. Emancipation then not only freed four millions, but it saved, between that time and now, more than twenty millions from the yoke and the lash. But, what is still more important, the emancipation of the slaves emancipated their masters also—emancipated all of us, North and South—and raised the proclamation of human equality by our country's fathers from a mockery and a shame to a reality.
If there were men and women and children bought and sold in this country today, you and I, reader, would mix up in the infamous business with gun and sword, and we would not wait long to do much voting about it, either. "Great national problems," said Bismarck, "are solved not by speeches and resolutions of majorities, but by blood and iron."
It is very evident that it would have been wrong in 1860 for some powerful external force, waging war against war, to have prevented the Civil War, and thereby have prevented the emancipation of the slaves.
It is all very well at this time to prate about the possibility of a peaceful settlement of the differences between the North and South before the Civil War broke out. That is exactly what was tried. Even after the war broke out, Lincoln, one of the greatest men that America ever produced, tried with all his might to do that very thing. War was the only way.
A very large percentage of the wars of the world have been waged for freedom—have been wars for justice, and against tyranny. To war against such wars would be to war for tyranny, and against freedom and justice. Actually, those who today are recruiting for the war against war are asking you to enlist in a campaign to shackle the hands of the oppressed in future years, and tie them down with ball and chain to prevent them from striking for liberty. They are to be denied the right of war for freedom, which was our right in the Revolution.
Every man exerts a positive influence either for good or for evil. If the advocates of disarmament and non-resistance are exerting a good influence, then I am exerting a bad influence, and every advocate of armed defense is a worker of evil. You, reader, must judge between us.
If it is wrong to insure with armaments against invasion of this country, which invasion would mean the violation of our homes, the rape of our wives and daughters and sisters and sweethearts; if it is right to invite invasion by non-resistance, and wrong to oppose it with force; if, when an enemy injures us, it is the correct thing to let him add insult to the first offense; then it is wrong to be a man, it is wrong to resent dishonor of the home, and all of us who have any manhood in us should be emasculated.
If, when this country is invaded, some militant scoundrel, forcing his way into your home, should lay the hand of violent lust on trembling wife or daughter, would you observe the pacifist policy of non-resistance, or would you kill him right there, even if it cost you your life? I know your answer. The invading army would be lessened by one soldier, or there would be one less American.