The outlook for arbitration as a means of settlement is altogether hopeful. The convention creating a joint high commission to determine finally our Canadian boundary; the self-restraint shown by the nations at large in not using force against the late Castro government in Venezuela; the three great conventions among European powers neutralizing Norway and agreeing to respect each other’s territory on the Baltic; the exchange of notes between Japan and the United States relating to the Far East; the fact that the Central American states have thus far kept their agreement of 1907 to refer all differences to a court of their own creation; the fact that the Balkan crisis in 1908, at one time fraught with possibilities frightful to contemplate, occasioned no European war as would have been the result of such a tangle twenty years ago—all these signs of the times are full of promise.
We must confess that the churches of him whose name should be called the Prince of Peace have oftentimes been inefficient in their performance of an essential duty. The feeling between England and Germany, for example, at the present time is almost insanely acute. Germany has been jealous of the growing friendship between England and France, now happily replacing the ugly antagonism which harks back to the time of Napoleon. England is jealous of Germany’s growing supremacy in the world of manufacture. Technical schools, improved machinery, and the rapid increase of skilled labor has enabled the German to carry his wares into the markets of the world and to undersell the Briton. All this with certain other causes which make for ill feeling has aroused a measure of hostility on both sides of the North Sea.
I spent four months in England a year ago. I attended church twice or three times each Sunday and never once in all that time from a Christian pulpit did I hear a minister of Christ speak in deprecation of that feeling of hostility or seek to allay that sentiment of international jealousy. Aside from the “International Peace Congress,” which met in England that summer, the only public effort of that kind I witnessed or heard of was made at a socialist meeting in St. James Hall, London. The International Socialist Party brought over from Berlin two well-known men, Kautsky, the editor of a socialist organ there, and Ledebour, the leader of the socialist party in the Reichstag, to address this meeting side by side with Hyndman, a long-time leader of the English socialists, and Keir Hardie, labor member of the British Parliament. These men, German and Briton, stood together and uttered their ringing words that night against the further increase of armament, and in the interests of brotherhood. Has it come to this, that titled bishop and archbishop of the Church of Christ, that learned scholars and teachers in Oxford and Cambridge shall hold their peace in the presence of threatened war, while out of the workshops of the poor and the weary ranks of organized labor shall come the prophets of better things, calling upon Christendom in the name of the Carpenter of Nazareth to put up its sword!
Our own nation has been guilty of its full share of this gigantic folly. Our Congress faced a deficit last year of something like one hundred and thirty five millions of dollars, mainly because of the enormous outlays upon the navy in building those ten million dollar warships. If the present rate of expenditure is maintained for the next ten years, with no increase whatever, it means that we shall spend upon our navy the vast sum of one billion, three hundred and fifty millions of dollars. The reports show that for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1909, seventy-one per cent of our national revenue was spent upon the result of war and the preparation for war, upon pensions and upon the army and navy. What would you think of the housekeeping of a family where seventy-one per cent of their income was spent on guns! And because the government, with these huge outlays upon armament, cannot live upon its income, Congress insists upon increased taxation through these ingeniously devised tariffs, which fall most heavily upon the great consuming public. The cost of living has increased until it has become cruel to all people in modest circumstances and actually destructive to the struggling poor.
Has not the time come for the plain people to call a halt! Has not the time come for the indignant toilers in peaceful occupations to restrain the unwise leaders who are responsible for this craze of militarism! Has not the solemn farce of seeing Christian nations build ten million dollar bulldogs in the remote possibility of being called upon to match them against the costly bulldogs of their neighbors, unless, perchance, these expensive creations should, before that, have been relegated to the scrap-heap by some new device—has not that solemn, ugly farce played itself out! “The welfare of the people is the supreme law of the land.” It is the supreme law of all lands and any one who has visited Europe, where every third peasant carries a useless and burdensome soldier on his back as he goes forth to his toil, knows that this modern evil of militarism is a mighty menace to the welfare of any people.
The Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in our Congress last winter called the attention of the House to the fact that, in pensions and in preparations for possible war, the United States was spending more money than any other nation in the world. He called attention to the fact that the appropriations for military and naval affairs for the coming year would exceed, by twenty-nine millions of dollars, all the money which the United States government has spent from the beginning of the republic up to the present hour upon public buildings. He spoke also of the fact that this nation, which we like to think of as a non-military nation, is spending at the present time more than two-thirds of the total national revenue on pensions and on preparations for war. What an abnormal condition for a republic whose splendid history has been almost entirely a history of peace!
Would that our country might take higher ground in this whole matter! Would that there might go out from us a splendid endorsement of the principle of arbitration, a strong insistence upon the method of international litigation before such tribunals as have been outlined at the Hague conferences and a stinging rebuke to the policy of increasing these deadly and burdensome armaments! Would that our land might show itself a leader and a messiah among the nations in achieving that magnificent fulfilment when the promised Messiah, the Prince of Peace, shall reign in the affairs of men.
The claim is made that risk is involved in refusing to maintain these costly armaments which are sapping the life-blood of the leading nations of Europe. Risk is involved, undoubtedly, but if we want peace, why not take that risk in showing the nations that such is our desire? It would be a magnificent form of moral venture. Risk is involved—so be it! A far greater risk to the general welfare and to the perpetuity of our institutions is involved in the opposite course. Why should not we, as a land of high principles and shining ideals, make the moral venture of staking our future upon a splendid obedience to the appeal of the great Messiah? Beat the swords into plowshares! Beat the spears into pruning-hooks! In peaceful, joyous industry let not this nation learn war any more! Let it place its reliance upon courts of arbitration for the settlement of international disputes, and the blessing of Almighty God, which maketh rich and bringeth no sorrow therewith, shall be ours!
“If drunk with sight of power we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law,
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
“The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget.”
O thou land whose Declaration of Independence was made in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love! O thou land of Washington, who prayed in his farewell address that we might be kept from the scourge of war! O thou land of General Grant, who declared, “Though I have been trained as a soldier and have participated in many battles, there never was a time, in my opinion, when some way could not have been found to prevent the drawing of the sword.” O thou land of Lincoln, who pleaded in his second inaugural, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us bind up the nation’s wounds and strive to achieve and cherish among ourselves and with all nations a just and lasting peace.” O thou land that we love, enter thou afresh into a nobler rivalry with all the nations of earth in the cultivation of good-will, in the reduction of burdensome armament and in the maintenance of those policies which make for the enduring welfare of the race!