The contrast between war and culture is more definitely set forth than could be done in volumes of essays and of peace literature in the addresses and newspaper articles which accompany the sending forth of the “Army of Humanity.” The emphasis placed upon the help of God, upon the religion of love and of tenderness, and the synchronous emphasis placed upon revenge and threats of horrors, have never been in so glaring a contrast. A clinging to old ideals of force, reference to the thought that, a thousand years hence, one member of the human family shall tremble before another, as men did a thousand years ago under the lash of Attila; the recommendation on the part of various journals of methods of retaliation savoring of the wildest of savagery, the slaughter of masses of men, desecration of sanctuaries and graves, etc., and all these proposed as a means of spreading civilization; all this must needs be recognized by the world at large as strident dissonance.
And what has brought the world to this recognition? The principles of the peace movement. Denied as they are, they have sunk deep into the conscience of the age. The community of interests in the world has also had its share in effecting this result. This has reached such a degree that a change from conditions of might to conditions of right has become a positive necessity, an essential of life. What stands revealed in the peace movement is not the dream of supramundane fancy, but a manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation in civilization.
Bertha von Süttner.
“IN TERRA PAX.”
BY G. LEVESON GOWER.
War in men’s mouths, peace through the spring-clad land;
Hate in men’s hearts, and love in God’s high heaven;
Yet in the mass already works the leaven,
And in the nations some cry, “Hold your hand,
Ye Peoples! Turn not Earth into a hell!”