THE TASK OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Age by age, civilization advances. Each successive era has contributed that invention or accomplished that achievement which has placed another round in the great ladder of civilization. The development of many small states into powerful nations, and many wonderful improvements in other fields, such as steam navigation, the railroad, the telegraph, and wireless communication, crown the last as the greatest of centuries in the history of the human family. It is difficult to understand why the human mind, whence these mighty inspirations originated, has been incapable of realizing that there still remains the most degrading, the most deteriorating, the foulest blot that ever disgraced this world—the killing of civilized men, by men, as a permissible mode of settling international disputes. This world can never attain its highest standard of civilization until this one disgraceful blemish, called war, is obliterated. It is the collective task of the people living in this twentieth century to bring into reality the millennium of Tennyson,
Till the war drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furl'd
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.
The beginning of this social task, then, is the enlightenment of the peoples as to the immorality, waste, and ineffectiveness of war. God commanded, "Thou shalt not kill." Who shall presume to declare that this precept was directed not to nations but to individuals only? that one man shall not kill, but nations may? We are horrified at the report of a single murder, yet, if viewed from the light of truth, what is war but wholesale murder? What tongue, what pen, can describe the bloody havoc of the battle of Gettysburg, where, between the rise and set of a single sun, fifty thousand of our fellow men sank to earth, dead or wounded?
What sentiment in human hearts which needs to be perpetuated sent rank after rank, column after column, of blue soldiers against the impregnable stone wall of Fredericksburg? And who will place the blame for the carnage of Cold Harbor elsewhere than upon the folly of misguided patriotism and cruel, selfish interests that made the bloody battle possible?
Every soldier is connected, as all of us, by dear ties of kindred, love, and friendship. Perhaps there is an aged mother, who fondly hoped to lean her bending form on his more youthful arm; perhaps a young wife, whose life is entwined inseparably with his; perchance a sister, a brother. But as he falls on the field of battle, must not all these suffer? His aged mother surely falls with him. His young wife is suddenly widowed, his children orphaned. That husband's helping hand is forever stayed. A parent's voice is stilled, and the children's plaintive cries for their loving father fall on unheeding ears. Tell me, friends, you who know the bitterness of parting with dear ones whom you watched tenderly through the last hopeful moments, can you measure your anguish? Yet, what a contrast! Your dear ones departed soothed by kindness and love, while the dying soldier gasped out his life on the battlefield alone.
And what a waste is war! We are just beginning to realize the tremendous cost, the incalculable wastefulness, not only of actual war but of the preparation for future possible wars. For the current fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, the United States has appropriated in round numbers $535,000,000, in preparation for future wars and because of wars fought in the past. Sixty-seven cents out of every dollar expended by our national government goes to feed the present-day mania for war, present and past, leaving only thirty-three cents out of each dollar for the combined expense of the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of our national government. When we realize that the cost of a single battleship exceeds the total value of all the grounds and buildings of all the colleges and universities in the state of Kansas, the figures indicating this expense have more meaning to us. And when we reflect that the cost of a single shot from one of the great guns of that battleship is $1700, enough to send a young man through college, the common man realizes that the United States cannot afford to go to war or even prepare for war.
And all this suffering and cost are to no purpose. War is utterly ineffectual to secure or advance its professed object. The wretchedness it involves contributes to no beneficial result, helps to establish no right, and, therefore, in no respect promotes harmony between the contending nations.
When the Saviour was born, angels from heaven sang to the children of the human family this benediction:
Glory to God in the highest,
Peace on earth, good will toward men.
And at last, in the beginning of this twentieth century, nations seem to be visibly approaching that unity so long hoped and prayed for; and that nation which shall precede all others in the abolition of war will be crowned by history with everlasting honor. The risk will be very little, the gain incalculable.
We are coming to believe that the most significant fact about man and his civilization is their improvability. Individual inventive genius has added improvement after improvement until it would seem that man's mastery over nature is to be well-nigh complete as these ideas and inventions are socialized and extended to benefit all. We are now entering the era of social achievement when mankind unitedly undertakes by organization and coöperation mightier tasks than ever accomplished before. Many dreadful diseases are disappearing before preventive medicine, and sanitary science is eliminating many plagues; pestilence is coming to be a thing of the past. Human welfare is now the concern of coöperative mankind, and social science will condemn and banish war or fail to establish itself as an applied science. It can be done! It ought to be done! It will be done!
And although this consummation seems to many far away, it may be accomplished by very simple methods. It only waits the time of concerted action on the part of the leading nations when the principles of arbitration can be invoked more fully, and a world-court established with plenary powers for settling all disputes between the nations.
International legislation has occurred repeatedly, though no world-court has as yet been established. In the case of the Universal Postal Union we have what is tantamount to world-legislation, in that all civilized nations have entered into a formal agreement regarding the delivery of mail. Another instance of practical world-legislation is that of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. Many other examples might be given in which several nations are parties to an agreement regarding some important measure, such as the respect paid to the flag of truce, the regulations concerning commerce on the high seas, and the etiquette of diplomacy. Paramount in world-importance has been the agreement of the leading nations of the world in the establishment of the Hague conferences for the amelioration of war.
Since a conference of nations can meet and decide on the mitigation of the horrors of war, it is certainly conceivable that a tribunal of nations can prevent war. Such a tribunal would in no respect differ from the Supreme Court of the United States in its fundamental foundations. As our Supreme Court is final in settling all disputes in this country, so the international court would be final in adjusting all controversies between the nations. And such a court is clearly the next decisive step in the promotion of this great task of securing world-peace.
If nations can agree to establish war as their arbiter of peace, why can they not establish a more peaceful substitute? It is possible, for there is nothing in the nature of strife that cannot be settled, no quarrel that cannot be judged, no difficulty that cannot be satisfactorily adjusted.
With the establishment of a true world-court, there would rise on the vision of the nations for the first time the prospect of justice for the united whole of mankind. Justice to the smaller countries would be secured; encroachments by the strong upon the weak would be prevented; the moral standard of politics would be uplifted; and though every step would be exposed to the selfishness, corruption, and love of despotism that are prevalent in all men, yet is it not reasonable to suppose that, as progress is now being made in the various nations for overcoming these evils, so it would be made in this united whole, to the unspeakable benefit of mankind?
This country has been foremost in the promotion of this great movement to organize the world. It is especially fitting that the United States should take the lead. The greatest nation having a government of the people and by the people, with the longest experience and the greatest success, is best fitted to lead others. We have the form of national government which foreshadows the form of world-government. Theoretically, our states are sovereign; all rights which are not formally surrendered by accepting the Constitution of the United States are reserved to them. In a like manner, referring to the establishment of a world-court, the nations individually will be expected to surrender to the nations collectively only such jurisdiction as pertains to the settling of their controversies.
A world-court would appeal to the strongest, the purest, and the deepest thinkers of every race. It would cover a new field, appealing to reason and altruism and justice. It would by its very effect upon individuals tend to develop the qualities it demands, and would prove a mighty influence for uplifting the intellectual and moral standards not only of men but nations. It would by its very international nature annihilate all national antipathies and promote an era of universal good will and genuine understanding.
To send a husband or father, glorious in the perfection of physical manhood, out on the field of carnage to be slain in an effort to settle international difficulty or to uphold fancied national honor, is unquestionable barbarism. It is far more humane to terminate disputed questions by arbitration than by the keen-edged sword. International peace compacts can hold mankind together by unbreakable yet unburdensome bonds and greatly promote prosperity and social progress. The wanton woe and waste that inevitably follow in the train of war will soon be things of the past. The twentieth century, already so full of radiant promise, so enlivened by a new social conscience, will devote its collective energies to the abolition of war and the substitution of its successor—a world-court, based on the facts of humane solidarity and the principles of international peace.
THE PRESENT STATUS OF INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
By Bryant Smith, Guilford College, North Carolina, a Senior in Guilford College
Prize-Winning Essay in the Pugsley Contest, 1912-1913
THE PUGSLEY PRIZE-ESSAY CONTESTS
In 1908 Mr. Chester DeWitt Pugsley, then an undergraduate student in Harvard University, gave $50 as a prize to be offered by the Lake Mohonk Conference for the best essay on "International Arbitration" by an undergraduate student of an American college. The prize was won by L. B. Bobbitt of Baltimore, a sophomore in Johns Hopkins University. The following year (1909-1910) a similar prize, of $100, was won by George Knowles Gardner of Worcester, Massachusetts, a Harvard sophomore. A like prize of $100 in 1910-1911 was won by Harry Posner of West Point, Mississippi, a senior in the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College.
The prize of 1911-1912, of which John K. Starkweather of Denver, Colorado, a junior in Brown University, was the winner, was the first offered to men students only (other similar prizes having been offered to women students) in the United States and Canada.
In the fifth Pugsley contest (1912-1913) the prize was awarded to Bryant Smith of Guilford College, North Carolina, a senior in Guilford College at the same place, whose essay follows. The judges were Chancellor Elmer Ellsworth Brown of New York University, Rollo Ogden, editor of the New York Evening Post, and Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles, U.S.A., retired.
Each winner is invited to the Lake Mohonk Conference next following, where he publicly receives the prize from its donor, Mr. Pugsley.