A CHRISTMAS THOUGHT ON WAR AND ARBITRATION
THE year 1912, by its manifestations of internal violence, its external wars, and by its hardly less disquieting rumors of wars, has afforded from time to time the pretext for much cynical satire at the expense of the advocates of peace and arbitration. A strange sort of beginning of the millennium this, it is said, which has witnessed Italy’s year-long war with Turkey; the old Balkan wounds reopened, with the religious issue involved; China aflame with bloody revolt against her Manchu dynasty; Mexico in the throes of a rebellion little less than civil war; turbulent Cuba barely escaping American intervention, actually exercised in Nicaragua; Morocco the bone of contention of two snarling powers; and withal Great Britain and Germany like open powder-magazines exposed to the peril of a careless smoker—a year, moreover, that has seen strikes of unusual acerbity in England and in Massachusetts, and the unearthing of such vast conspiracies against life and property as the one executed by the McNamaras and their associates and the other avowed by the Industrial Workers of the World. The threat of the latter to raze the Salem jail is matched by the intention of McNamara, recently revealed, to blow up the Panama Canal. As a climax of horror comes the attempt of a disordered mind to assassinate Colonel Roosevelt. Surely, at first glance one might think that the wild beast in man has lately come to the surface to a surprising and disheartening extent.
It would be futile to claim that this sinister impression is entirely offset by the fact that some of these events have aspects of self-restraint and progress; that China, through her overturn, is making the way toward freedom and self-government; that Cuba has again shown that she is learning the same lessons; that the responsible conservative forces of England, France, and Germany have refused to follow the hotheads who talk lightly of war. There remain in human nature, modern or barbarian, primal impulses of hatred, violence, and lawlessness.
It is one of the most important functions of education, government, and religion to subdue these impulses, and this can be done, in part, by turning their force into new channels. Through Tesla’s discovery and invention the natural turbulence of the mountain stream, even that of Niagara itself, is electrically utilized to do the work of the world at a great distance. It is the aim of the inventive resources of philanthropy to do something similar with the wild and waste forces of humanity itself. Wise benevolence is increasingly occupied with imposing not only upon others, but upon ourselves, restraints without which we should revert to the brute. Sometimes this is done by solemn formalities like the Constitution of the United States; sometimes the compact is the tacit one of civilization involved in the establishment and observance of law. This it is now sought to extend to nations, by the agreement to enlarge the limits of judicial arbitration which already exist in every modern country, and thus through men and peoples of advanced ideas of justice to affect those more backward. Because of this great opportunity to uplift the world, those in authority are under obligation—a sort of noblesse oblige—to hold their own country to its highest standards of conduct, internal or international.
Whatever the croakers may say, there is no relapse from the sentiment in favor of arbitration and peace. There have been righteous rebellions, and probably there will be others, but there are many wars based on territorial aggression or trivial or fancied wrongs which may be prevented by an appeal to an international court. Compulsory this appeal must be, by our consent in the cool air of wisdom: but along with humanity at large we shall be the gainer. Arbitration is a shorter cut to justice than war has ever been.
At this time of the recurrence of the festival of the Prince of Peace, it is becoming to the Christian world to renew its faith in the power of love to cast out hatred, of good-will to accomplish the uplifting of humanity through sympathy and opportunity. Such a vast work demands the ultimate release of the forces now held in readiness for international wars. Prevent by arbitration the causes of such wars, and you divert colossal waste forces—including the constant anxieties of the people—to the real and crying need of the times.