WAR AGAINST WAR
TACTICS THAT THE FRIENDS OF PEACE MAY LEARN FROM THE MILITARISTS
THROUGH Matthew Arnold we have been made familiar with one of the figures clearly limned by Clarendon. It is that of Falkland, whose humane spirit and love of peace made the casting of his lot in the time of the civil war in England seem peculiarly tragic. Often in the course of that bitter and bloody conflict he was heard to “ingeminate” the word “peace.”
A similar feeling of grief and frustration in the presence of war is one of the distinguishing marks of our own day. The best and wisest in the world hold peace congresses and conferences on arbitration (as they are to do soon in St. Louis), and seem to gain painful inches only to have all their efforts made apparently vain by some inrush of the war spirit. The Hague Tribunal is founded and The Hague agreement solemnly entered into, but that does not prevent one of the covenanting nations from seizing another’s land by the sword. Projects for universal arbitration are mooted, amid the applause of Christendom, and plans for the judicial settlement of international disputes are ripening, at the very time when tens of thousands of men are about to be killed in battle.
So it is that peace seems to be to the civilized world only an unattainable longing. We think of war to-day, in the Scripture phrase, with groanings that cannot be uttered. Never so hated, it sometimes appears as if it were never so fated.
It is well for peace-lovers now and then to put the case thus strongly, in order that they may face the difficulty at its darkest. The fact that the evil they struggle against is persistent is but one argument more for their own persistence. Pacifists must be as ready and resourceful as the militarists. If ever it is right to learn from an enemy, it surely is in this instance. Something has been gained in this way. The late William James, for example, contended that we must admit that there are some good, human weapons in the hands of the war party, and that the peace men must study, not only how to appreciate them, but how to use them. Professor James would have sought in peaceful pursuits the equivalents of the appeal which war makes to certain manly qualities. Heroism in private life, in scientific pursuits, in exploration, in reform—this is what he urged. The patriotic impulse transmuted into great engineering works, vast plans for sanitation, campaigns against disease and misery—that is what peace can offer to ardent youth. All this is sound, and good as far as it goes; but the question arises to-day whether there is not need of something more positive and aggressive, whether the spirit of militarism cannot be turned against itself; whether, in a word, there should not be war against war.
The conduct of a military campaign calls for an enormous amount of preparation and organization. Let the advocates of peace take this to heart. They cannot win simply by wishing to win. It is for them, too, to be far-sighted, to lay careful plans, to enlist every modern method of working in unison to a definite end. War mobilizes men. Peace must muster ideas, sentiments, influences. In the Kriegspiel the strategist seeks to mass his troops upon the enemy’s weakest point. The tactics of peace should be similar. Argument and persuasion and appeal should be made to converge upon the exposed flank of the militarists. This may be found, at one moment, in the pressure of taxation, which needlessly swollen armaments would make unbearable. At another time, it may appear that the thing to hammer upon is the pressing need of social reforms, even attention to which will be endangered if all the available money and time are squandered upon preparing for a war that may never come. Let peace, too, acquire a General Staff, whose duty it shall be to survey the whole field, to work out fruitful campaigns, to tell us where to strike and how, to lay down the principles of the grand strategy to be followed.
Nor need individual effort be ruled out. Despite the large and coördinated movements of soldiers in a modern battle, there yet remains room for personal initiative and daring. The shining moment comes when some one in the ranks or in command is called upon to risk all with the possibility of gaining all. And there are still “forlorn hopes” to be led. Why should not these methods and appeals of war be imitated by those who are fighting for peace? They can point to many services calling for volunteers. There is ridicule to be faced, unpopular opinion to be stood up for calmly in the teeth of opposition and even scorn, testimony to be borne, questions to be asked, protests to be made. There is, in short, every opportunity to import from war the heroic element and give it scope and effect in the propaganda of peace. The very wrath of man can be made to praise the growth of civilization.
War against war can be made very concrete and practical. Committees can be formed to watch the military authorities and Congress, and to elicit an expression of opinion when it will be most useful. It is a matter of frequent lamenting on the part of peace men in the House of Representatives that their hands are so feebly held up by the opponents of war. The other side is alert and active. When big-navy or big-army bills are pending, the mail of congressmen is loaded with requests—usually, of course, interested requests—to vote for them. The lovers of peace, on the other hand, appear to be smitten with writer’s cramp. They act as if they were indifferent. This state of things should not be permitted to go on. There should be minute-men of the cause all over the land ready to spring into action. That a sound opinion of the country exists, only needing concerted effort to call it forth, has been shown again and again. It was proved at the time when President Taft’s treaties of universal arbitration were pending in the Senate. In those days the desire of the best people of the United States came to Washington like the sound of the voice of many waters. Schools and colleges, chambers of commerce and churches, sent in petition piled on petition, and remonstrance heaped on protest. One of the senators who opposed ratification admitted to the President that he had never had so formidable a pressure from his own State as on this question.
That lesson should not be lost. By organization, by watchfulness, by determination, the peace spirit of the land can be given much more effective expression than it has yet had. The situation is not at all one that justifies discouragement; it simply calls for fresh and more intelligent action, with heightened resolution. If only the genius of a Von Moltke could be devoted to organizing and directing the forces that make against war, we might reasonably hope for a realization of the poet’s vision of peace lying like level shafts of light across the land.