Peacemakers—Blessed and Otherwise / Observations, Reflections and Irritations at an International Conference

by Ida M. Tarbell

“Get them to plowing again, to popping corn by their own firesides, and you can’t get them to shoulder a musket again for fifty years,” Lincoln said of the soldiers that the approaching end of the Civil War would release. As a matter of fact—suppression of the Indians aside—it was only thirty-three years when they were at it again, but there was no great heart in the enterprise; they still preferred their “plows and popcorn,” and the experience of the Great War had only intensified that feeling.

Cut down armament now merely for sake of reducing taxation and you would give the world’s love of peace a chance to grow—and that was something. But it was something which must be qualified.

The history of man’s conduct shows that however much he desires his peaceful life, the moment what he conceives to be his country’s interest—which he looks at as his interest—is threatened, he will throw his tools of peace into the corner and seize those of war. It does not matter whether he is prepared or not. Men always have and, unless we can find something beside force to appeal to in a pinch, always will do just as they did at Lexington, as the peasants of Belgium did at the rumor of the advance of the Germans—seize any antiquated kicking musket or blunderbuss they can lay their hands on and attack.

There was another significant possibility to limitation, on which the lovers of peace rightfully counted—certainly believers in war do not overlook it—and that was the chance that the enforced breathing spell would give for improving and developing peace machinery. It would give a fresh chance to preach the new methods, arouse faith in them, stir governments to greater interest in them and less in arms.

It was a possibility—but to offset it experience shows that with the passing of the threat of war, interest in pacific schemes is generally left to a few tireless and little considered groups of non-official people. Active interest inside governments dies out. The great peace suggestions and ventures of the world have been born of wars fought rather than of wars that might be fought. The breathing spell long continued might end in a general rusting and neglect of the very methods for preventing wars which peace lovers are now pushing.

What it all amounted to was that the most drastic limitation was no sure guarantee against future war. Take away a man’s gun and it is no guarantee that he will not strike if aroused. You must get at the man—enlarge his respect for order, his contempt for violence, change his notion of procedure in disputes, establish his control. It takes more than “gun toting” to make a dangerous citizen, more than relieving him of his gun to make a safe one.

If the Conference only cut down the number of guns the nations were carrying, it would have done little to insure permanent peace. The President’s conference on unemployment which held its sessions just before the Conference on the Limitation of Armament spent considerable time in considering what the industry of the country might do to prevent industrial crises. Among the principles it laid down was one quite as applicable to international as to business affairs.

“The time to act is before a crisis has become inevitable.”

That was the real reason for the existence of the coming Conference—to act before the jealousies and misunderstandings around the Pacific had gone so far that there was no solution but war. Let us suppose that in 1913 say, England, France, Germany, Austria and Russia had held a conference over an agenda parallel to the one now laid down for the Washington Conference—one that not only considered limiting their armies and navies but boldly and openly attacked the fears, the jealousies, the needs, and the ambitions of them all—might it not have been possible that they would have found a way other than war? Are governments incapable in the last analysis of settling difficulties save by force and exhaustion, or are they made impotent by the idea that no machinery and methods for handling international affairs are possible save the ones which have so often landed their peoples in the ditch?

In his farewell words to this country at the end of his recent visit, the late Viscount Bryce remarked that anybody could frighten himself with a possibility but the course of prudence was to watch it and estimate the likelihood that it would ever enter into the sphere of probability.