But in reckoning up our perils, it is the fanatic, not the hypocrite, who must be taken into account. Sincerity is a terrible weapon in the hands of the ill-advised. There can be no contagion of folly, unless that folly be sincere. And what gives the uncompromising, because uncomprehending, pacifist his dangerous force is the fact that he is psychologically as inevitable as were the Iconoclasts, or the Thebaid anchorites, or any other historic instance of recoil. He is the abnormal product of abnormal conditions. The fury of war has bred this child of peace. The fumes of battle have stupefied him. Aggression and defence, brutality and heroism, the might of conquest and the right of resistance, have for him no separate significance. He is one who cannot master—as every sane man must learn to master—the deadly sickness of his soul.
To call the pacifist a coward is simple, but not enlightening. Cowardice is a natural and pervasive attribute of humanity. Few of us can flatly disavow it. There are women opposed to all war because their sons might be shot. A popular song—now employed to raise the spirits of school-children—expresses this sentiment. There are men opposed to all war because they might themselves be shot. So far, no music-hall ditty has exalted them. But this normal human cowardice is not infectious, save in the heat of battle, where, happily, it is seldom displayed. Infectious pacificism is a revolt from war, irrespective of abstract considerations like justice or injustice, and of personal considerations like loss or gain.
History is full of similar revolts, and they have always overstepped the limits of sanity. Because the pagan sensualist tended his body with loathsome solicitude, the Christian ascetic subjected his to loathsome indignities. The excesses of the Roman baths sanctified the uncleanliness of the early monasteries. Just as inevitable is the reaction from a ravenous war to non-resistance. Because Germany’s armaments are powerful enough to terrorize Europe, we are bidden to weaken our defences. Because France and Belgium have been attacked and devastated, we are implored to take no steps for self-protection. The appeal sent out by Quaker citizens of Philadelphia—good men, ready, no doubt, to die as honourably as they have lived—was at once a confession of faith and a denial of duty. They asked that the money of the taxpayer should be spent in making “more homes happy,” and they were content to leave the security of these happy homes to the unassisted care of Providence. To keep our powder dry implied mistrust of God.
That the authorities of Iowa should strip the American flag of a white border, neatly stitched around it by the pacifists of Fort Dodge, was perhaps to be expected. The action seems peremptory; but if every society were permitted to trim and patch our national emblem, we should soon have as many flags as we have disputants in the field. For months the patient post-office officials passed on without a murmur envelopes ornamented with huge stamps, bearing pictures of a cannon partly metamorphosed into a ploughshare, a bloated child, and a pouncing dove; and inscribed with these soul-subduing lines:—
“I am in favour of world-wide peace,
Spread this idea, and war will cease.”
The decoration of envelopes with strange devices has long afforded a vent for pent-up feelings. The peace-stamp was nobly seconded by the “peace-pin,” a white enamelled dove, carrying the motto, “World-Peace,” and destined—so its wearers assured us—to prove itself “one of the greatest factors in eliminating prejudices and division lines.”
Are these puerilities unworthy of consideration and comment? They are not so preposterous as was Mr. Wanamaker’s suggestion that we should recompense Germany for the trouble and expense she had incurred in seizing Belgium by paying her $100,000,000,000 for her spoils. They are not so demoralizing as the teaching of American school-children to calculate how many bicycles they could buy for the money spent on the battleship Oregon, or how many tickets for a ball-game could be provided at the price of the American navy. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is to be congratulated on having devised a scheme by which boys and girls can be taught arithmetically to place pleasure above patriotism. If Germans teach their children to deny themselves some portion of their mid-day meal for the needs of Germany, and Americans teach their children to hold ball-games and bicycles more sacred than the needs of America, what chance have the men we rear against men reared to discipline and self-sacrifice!
When an anti-enlistment league can be formed in a country which may possibly be called to war, and anti-enlistment pledges can be signed by young men who promise never to enroll themselves for their nation’s defence, we have cause for apprehension. When college students can be found petitioning for peace at any price, we have cause for wonder. When women who have suffered nothing fling scorn at men who have suffered all things, we have cause in plenty for resentment.
Cause, too, for sorrow that such evil words should be so lightly spoken. It was but a dreary laugh that was provoked by Miss Addams’s picture of intoxicated regiments bayoneting one another under the stimulating influence of drink. Laughter is hard to come by in these dark days; but Heaven knows we should gladly have foregone the mirth to have been spared a slander so unworthy. The snatching of honour from the soldier in the hour of his utmost trial is possible only to the pacifist, who, sick with pity for pain, has lost all understanding of the things which ennoble pain: of fidelity, and courage, and the love of one’s country, which, next to the love of God, is the purest of all emotions which winnow the souls of men.