INTRODUCTION
Professor Hamlin's book seems to me not merely interesting but extremely important. No man who cares for the story of his country can afford to neglect it.
The plan of the work is suggested by the title;—the time has come to ask soberly regarding every war in which the United States has been engaged from the beginning, whether it had to be, and if it had to be, why? We want to know frankly if our wars have brought us glory. It is already easy to see that the wars of other nations, and especially of those who have fought against us, have entailed upon them shame, cruel measures, oppression of the poor, suppression of liberties, violation of law, destruction of wealth and immeasurable futility. But we were told that our wars had been different; our wars had been sacred; our sovereignty "could do no wrong." Had we not solemnly thanked God for his help in winning every one of our wars?
The great World War has brought mankind to a new and surprising conclusion such as probably never before prevailed at the end of a war. Leading people in all nations are at one in the conclusion, that no thoughtful person in any country which entered the war knew of any adequate reason why his government should spend the blood of its people. As Mr. Lloyd George has said: "No one intended the war, but we all 'staggered and stumbled' into it." It came upon the world like an epidemic of mania. It is evident also that its coming was directly related to the prevailing fashion of "preparedness" for war and to the fears and suspiciousness that everywhere attended this preparedness. It had been the barbarous expectation for ages that war must come every once in so often, as a plague comes. Was not the world full of barbarous people, and therefore of barbarous nations?
Professor Hamlin boldly carries over all the wars of our own United States into the broad generalization which includes the wars of other nations. They all belong together among the old world evils, like slavery or witchcraft, which it is our business to clear away from the earth. We apologize for them no longer. We propose not to expect them nor prepare at tremendous expense to suffer and die when they come; we propose rather through simple, humane and rational measures to provide never to endure them again.
Professor Hamlin accordingly takes up in a rapid survey and analysis each one of the six major wars through which the larger part of our total national expenditures have been devoured. He proceeds, like a skilful surgeon, without passion or partisanship, with a trace of sympathy for all groups and parties, in so far as all were alike victims of misunderstanding, ignorance of the facts, and hereditary prejudices and delusions. Save for the great common human characteristics which gleam out among all peoples and on both sides in times of calamity—the patience, the heroism, the self-sacrifice, the exceptional acts of magnanimity—he finds nothing whatever holy in a single one of our national wars, but rather the manifestation of every mean, cruel and cowardly trait which has ever debased human nature.
He can discover in the case of no one of these wars any evidence that the body of the people or an intelligently informed majority in it, or even the government, had taken pains to assure themselves either of the justice or the necessity of going to war, or that their leaders were ever able to assign a just and sufficient reason and purpose compelling them to resort to war. Thus he brings to light, what every one ought by this time to know, that the Revolutionary War, far from being undertaken by the will of a free citizenry, was actually forced upon the American people by a small minority in the teeth of the earnest opposition of a highly respectable percentage of thoughtful citizens, while another large part of the colonists was quite indifferent to the issue. Professor Hamlin also makes clear that in all our wars, exactly as in those we usually reprobate, our people were presently found practising the same injustices, indignities, lying defamations, detestable acts of revenge, outrages on innocent women and children, upon the fears of which we had hastily assumed excuse for ourselves in rushing into war.
In all our wars we have boasted of our American ardor for liberty. Professor Hamlin's book shows how every great war requires the most terrible form of slavery, namely conscription, in which the individual is stripped of the normal use of his conscience and judgment. In order to drive men to submit to this degradation the government itself, even in the hands of its "best" men, must resort to the employment of unscrupulous lying, reckless propaganda in abuse of the enemy, and the suppression of truth, of free speech and open-mindedness—in short, to a debauch of miseducation, and a general corruption of the whole population. Once in war, it never will do to let good be known of the enemy! War counts upon the plentiful outpouring of passion and hatred.
The churches also are pressed in war-time to undertake the defense of doing evil that good may come, and to strain their arguments over the verge of hypocrisy in making the worse appear the better reason. So altogether, "hell is let loose." The worst of it is that the lower passions, once let loose, do not willingly return under control, but remain to haunt the earth.
Once more, Professor Hamlin shows how in each case after a war the whole horrible storm flattens out into waste, corruption and futility. The World War is the most colossal demonstration of this condition. If a people thought they knew what they were fighting for, they failed to get it; the victor proves often at last to be the vanquished. It is curious now in looking back to the Civil War to note that the reason which chiefly persuaded "good" and chivalrous souls to engage in it was to put an end to slavery. This at best was dealing in the wrong way with evil, that is, overcoming it with evil, as was abundantly proved after the war. But Mr. Lincoln would not admit that we were at war against slavery! We were at war, as the government held, to put down secession, whereas we had begun the national union by a war of secession; our government would have liked at the time of the war of 1812 to get Canada by secession or capture; we fought with Mexico to secure the results of the secession of Texas; we refused in 1898 to accept a peaceful method to separate Cuba from Spain but insisted upon fighting to effect the separation; and we still keep armed forces in the Philippine Islands against the protest of the inhabitants. Mr. Roosevelt was quick to postulate the right of secession in the case of Panama. As to the Great War, our President Wilson's proclamation in favor of the natural right of small nations to secede has become one of the slogans of mankind! As has been often remarked: "This is a queer world." Professor Hamlin's little book is at least an easy reductio ad absurdum for war.