The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

We live in a land governed by public opinion. The seat of authority is not at Washington; the seat of authority is to be found in those prevailing sentiments and convictions which determine the real attitude of the people themselves. As college-trained men and women you are to be leaders in the work of forming that body of public opinion. Where it is wise, honest, resolute, it becomes the final source of safety for the republic. It is of vital importance, then, that your contribution to that section of public opinion which bears upon the problem I have in mind be grounded in reason and conscience.

Let me remind you of two sentences taken from Holy Writ, one from the greatest book in the Old Testament, “His name shall be called the Prince of Peace”; the other from the last book in the New Testament, “And he shall reign forever and ever.” His name shall be called the Prince of Peace and he shall reign forever and ever! We have here a miniature picture of one of the sublime processes of the ages! The highest anticipation of the Hebrew looked toward the coming of One who should establish a new line of succession. He saw a new quality of life winning its way to empire. The heir to the throne of Israel would be no more a man of war, he would be the Prince of Peace. And the highest anticipation of the Christian looked toward the complete success of that finer method of sovereignty—that coming One would reign forever!

It is a splendid picture of that righteous and enduring conquest to be accomplished not by force but by principle; not by compulsion through slaughter but by moral instruction, persuasion, and reasonable agreement. It is a picture which will furnish any man a worthy ideal to hang in his sky and it will help him, as he takes part in shaping the public opinion of his country, to place the crown of his ultimate allegiance where it rightly belongs.

His name shall be called the Prince of Peace! But what terrible mockery has been offered to that name by his avowed followers! It is one of the ironies of history that the most costly and deadly armaments for the killing of men in war are being wrought out in cold steel, not by the nations which owe their allegiance to Mahomet, the prophet of the sword, but by those nations which profess allegiance to the Prince of Peace. “Put up thy sword,” he said twenty centuries ago! The command has never been withdrawn nor revoked. Yet look out across the face of what we call Christendom and see the wicked and costly refusal!

Christian Germany, where the Protestant Reformation was ushered in by the preaching of Martin Luther, has increased her national debt in a single generation from eighteen millions of dollars to over one thousand millions, chiefly by expenditures upon her army and navy. Christian England, known to the ends of the earth as a center of missionary impulse, is almost beside herself in her mad desire to increase the number of Dreadnoughts. She is spending three hundred millions of dollars a year on her army and navy as against eighty-two millions all told on education, science and art. Christian Russia, professing in her orthodox Greek Church to have the only true faith to be found upon the globe, is planning a billion dollar navy and is actually spending two hundred millions a year upon armament as against twenty-two millions a year upon education. And our own Christian country has been making a strange departure from that policy which has made us prosperous and happy, honored and useful, among the nations of the earth for more than one hundred years. The United States in the last ten years has increased in population ten per cent, and it has increased its military expenditures during that period by three hundred per cent. And this is Christendom! These are the nations which look up to the One whose name is called “The Prince of Peace” and crown him Lord of all! Alas, for the bitter irony of such a course!

And all this at a time when the bare problem of bread is becoming more and more serious! England, spending her three hundred millions of dollars a year on military outlay, has little children in the streets of London and Glasgow eating refuse out of the garbage barrels because they are hungry. The problem of poverty and unemployment there is so grave that the British Parliament sets aside whole days for its consideration. In Germany a government expert said recently that, according to carefully prepared estimates based upon detailed investigation, there were two men applying for almost every job which promised a living wage; one-half of the skilled labor of the empire was out of employment. In Russia, people by the thousand die, like flies, from malnutrition at the very hour when her military experts are talking about that billion dollar navy. It is criminal to take thus the children’s bread and fling it to the dogs of war! How terrible all this is for nations which profess to honor and follow the One who came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them!

In our own country, while the situation is less serious, there are men enough out of work and unable to find bread to put into the mouths of their families. Never a week passes when men do not come asking me to use my influence with the employers in my congregation to find them work. Our national leaders are looking in every direction to discover how the revenue may be increased. The present revenue is sadly inadequate for the things which ought to be done. There are millions of acres of arid land to be irrigated by national enterprise and offered for settlement to industrious families. There are great areas of swamp land to be drained which would support a busy, happy population. There are forests to be conserved and renewed in a way that would change the whole face of the situation for the farmer and the fruit-grower in great sections of our country. There are inland waterways to be improved and developed, bringing producer and consumer nearer together by better means of transportation, thus reducing the cost of living. There is a merchant marine sadly needing assistance, for our flag should fly on all seas and in every port, in what could be a useful and profitable trade. All these things ought to be done, if only there was money available to do them. All these interests suffer for lack of money in the very period when within ten years we are increasing our military expenditure by three hundred per cent. His name shall be called “The Prince of Peace,” and it is under his banner that we profess to march!

What is it all for? I know the scare-heads which sometimes fill the sillier type of newspaper. I know how frightened some people are when some “military expert,” as he calls himself, has the nightmare. “Men who spend the best years of their lives looking at the world through the bore of a gun get their vision distorted.” They cannot see straight; they become sorry and unreliable leaders, as Europe, staggering under her grievous burden, knows to her sorrow. Sir Edward Grey, foreign secretary in the present Cabinet, said recently in the British Parliament, “The vastness of the expenditure on armament is a satire on modern civilization and if continued it must lead Europe into bankruptcy.” The real security of any nation depends upon its schools and its churches, its useful industries and its happy homes a thousand times more than upon its army and navy. And the conceit of these militarists who are throwing dust in the eyes of the people would be funny, if it were not so costly and so perilous to our national well-being.

It is the duty of the church and of the university, where men do not live in that state of chronic hysteria which possesses many a newspaper office, to arraign this evil of militarism as the most cruel and inexcusable burden, as the most gigantic crime against the toiling people, as the nearest approach to the unpardonable sin known to our twentieth century. The men who watch the world from that narrow station “behind the gun” are not competent leaders of public sentiment. The merchant and the mechanic, the wise lawyer and the skilled physician, the farmer, the miner, and the trained teacher, engaged in peaceful, useful industry, are vastly more competent to see things as they are and to aid in shaping a wholesome public sentiment. International relationships are being formed today as never before in the history of the race through community of interest in trade and by those associations which come through labor organizations and through literature, through the work of education and by religious affiliation. It is for these men and women whose main interest lies in those productive vocations to insist upon being heard.

What are the reasons urged for this cruel and costly outlay? “In time of peace prepare for war!” This stupid sentiment is trotted out as if it were a fragment from the wisdom of the ages. History as well as common sense laughs it to scorn. In time of peace prepare for peace! We did just that with England along our northern border where for four thousand miles only an imaginary line divides us from one of the mightiest nations on earth. We agreed with her that not a solitary fort should mar that border, that not a single war-ship should trouble the friendly waters of the Great Lakes. If these two nations can make that treaty of disarmament for a frontier of four thousand miles and observe it faithfully for a century, what is there in the nature of the case to prevent the extension of that noble line of friendly agreement indefinitely?