Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association

by Intercollegiate Peace Association

The birth and rapid rise of the present movement for international peace are events of recent years. The nineteenth century found its welcome in the smoking cannon and crimsoned fields of Hohenlinden. At its close the first great peace conference of The Hague was in session. One hundred years ago Napoleon was sweeping across Europe in his terrible attempt to create an empire. To-day France, England, and America have agreed on treaties that declare for unbroken peace. Touched by the wand of progress, the Utopian ideal of yesterday has become the dominant political issue of to-day. It is pertinent, then, that we seek the true nature of this revolution. Is it borne on the crest of a popular impulse that will recede as rapidly as it has risen, or is it a permanent movement, the product of natural forces working through ordinary channels?

The nineteenth century represents a break with the past. Swept into the mighty current of transition, the habits and customs of a thousand years have disappeared. With the development of natural resources, the establishment and growth of the factory system, the use of means of rapid communication, nations have entered upon a new era. Commerce and industry have come to dominate thought and action and are transforming the very life of the world. Defying the rigorous climate of both the poles, trade has penetrated the frozen recesses of Hudson Bay and made of the Falkland Islands a relay station in the progress of victorious industry. Nor is the equatorial heat more discouraging. The thick jungles of Africa have yielded their secrets, and the muddy waters of the Amazon are churned by propellers a thousand miles from the sea. International trade routes traverse the seas, connecting continent with continent. In forty years this commerce has increased from two billions to thirty billions. Giant corporations have ignored political boundaries, carried trade wherever profitable, and are supplying the varied demands of entire communities. Tariff walls, but lately effective barriers, are crumbling before the onslaught of trade. Nations are no longer independent. The wheat from Canada and the Dakotas feeds the mill workers of Sheffield and the nobility of Berlin. The failure of the Georgia cotton crop halts the looms of England and raises the cost of living throughout Europe. Nations can no longer exist as self-sufficient economic units. Never before were they so mutually interdependent. Never before has the welfare and security of one state depended upon the enterprise and diligence of another. And the movement for international peace is the chance offspring of these new social forces, at once a protest and a warning against the wrecking of modern economic structures by the ruthless hand of war.

Commerce, the most important of these new forces, flourishes unprejudiced by armaments and military prestige. In the open competition of the world's markets stronger powers meet and suffer from the rivalry of states that have no military standing. Relative to population, Norway has a carrying trade three times as great as England's. With her million trained warriors Germany is beaten by the merchants of Holland. The flag of little Denmark flies at more mastheads than does the Stars and Stripes. Where then is the commercial advantage supposed to attend superior military strength?

But it is to prevent the seizure of its commerce by others that nations must empty their treasuries to keep ironclads afloat. Yet what could be gained by attempted confiscation? If Germany annihilated England's navy to-morrow, how would she profit? Commerce is a process of exchange, the continuance and promotion of which is dependent upon the degree of mutual profit. Commercial gain is not a consequent of military success. It is since England seized the gold fields, diamond mines, and fertile plateaus of lower Africa that British securities have dropped twenty points. In 1871 Germany humbled and humiliated France almost beyond toleration, yet her share of the world's commerce has not been augmented thereby. So would it be with England. True, Germany might commit some depredations and hinder the passage of trade, but what would be her motive? How could she gain? Even if the British Isles were depopulated, it is doubtful whether Germany would benefit. For by what miracle would Germany be able to develop the facilities, the shipyards, mills, factories, foundries, mines and machinery, to supply the trade which the foremost of commercial nations has been generations in building up? Germany's banner might wave over the Bank of England, her excise boats police the Thames and the Clyde, yet she would behold the trade of a conquered province going to foreign nations. Trade does not follow the flag. Undisturbed by political changes or military reverses, it flows in constantly widening channels wherever productive fields are found.

And in the waging of war, do we reckon the direct cost to commerce? The commercial relations of the entire world are disturbed. Prolonged conflict is accompanied by the closing of the bank and the factory, the dismantling of the shop and mill, and the lengthening of the bread line in every city and town. In what state of prosperity and happiness might not France have been had Napoleon never lived? With half a century gone, our own country is still suffering from the devastation of the Civil War. Our commerce with South America is scarcely beyond the point it had reached before our week-end tiff with Spain. Yet there are those who prate of national honor and of war as insuring prosperity. From the leader of a newborn national party we hear that without a periodic war America would become effeminate and weak, her aggressive commercial life timid and corrupt, and within a few brief years the great Republic would sink to a fourth-rate power. Up, brave Americans, and man the guns! Awake, sons of freedom, and sweep the seas! Fourteen years without a war; our beloved land is ruined. You men of the factory and mill, you men of property and business, you producers of the nation's wealth, forward into the carnage; burn the homes of thrift and industry, for commerce will be enriched thereby; ravage the fields and despoil the cities, for this will insure vigorous national life; impoverish happy peoples, spread famine and pestilence through fertile valleys, mark the sites of contented villages with smoldering ruins, defy your Christian God, and kindle the fires of hell in human breasts; commit violence, treachery, rapine, ay, murder,—for the eternal glory of the Stars and Stripes. Yet commerce and industry—the glittering prizes which every nation covets when it builds a dreadnought or enlarges its army—demand that the creative forces of peace supplant the destructive wastes of war.

To-day the financial relationships of nations are inextricably entangled. The big banks in the capitals of the world are in communication with each other every second of the day. During the American crisis in 1907 the bank rate in England went up to seven per cent, forcing many British concerns to suspend operations. Because of the Balkan War the bank rate in Berlin, Paris, and Vienna is the highest in twenty years, and European securities have depreciated over six billion dollars. Foreign investments are raising insuperable barriers to war. Should the French bombard Hamburg to-day they would destroy the property of Frenchmen. Let Emperor William capture London, loot the Bank of England, and he will return to find German industry paralyzed, the banks closed, and a panic sweeping the land. Let English regiments again move to invade the United States, English warships draw up in battle line to attack our seaports, and four billions of the earnings of the English people would bar the way. To the victor of the present the spoils of war are valueless. Japan, victor over the great Russian Empire, staggers under a colossal debt. The Italian government hears rumbles of discontent, because the cost of winning a victory has been too great. What better proof do we need that war is profitless, that it means financial suicide? It has been transformed from a gainful occupation into economic folly, and war will cease because the price is becoming prohibitive.

In this movement for peace, capital's strongest ally is her most active enemy. Raised to a position of independence and power by the Industrial Revolution, labor is wielding an effective influence. The complexity of modern business has aroused workingmen in every country to a common interest and sympathy. The International Congress of Trade Unions, representing twenty countries and over ten million men, has declared for universal disarmament. Just last month eighty-five thousand coal miners in Illinois resolved that if the United States declared war on a foreign power, they would call a general strike.

And why not? Why should the workingmen of one country offer themselves as targets for those of another? Why should the workers of Germany be taxed to support a war against England, Germany's best market? Can the rice growers of Japan profit by killing Americans to whom they sell their produce? War means suffering and want, and the laborer has come to know it. He is cold to the sight of its flaunting flags and the sound of its grand, wild music, for he sees the larder bare, funds exhausted, and hunger at the door. He refuses to sacrifice his body and the welfare of his family upon the altar of Mars. No longer can kings and emperors satisfy their grasping ambitions. Armed by the ballot, the masses are to-day supreme. Never again will the cruel hand of tyranny press to their lips the poisoned cup of death. Their sway is absolute. The destinies of nations are in their keeping. The decree has gone forth that war must cease.

Born of these greater movements, a host of influences bring nearer the dawn of peace. The express and the wireless have supplanted the oxcart and the courier. Chicago and Boston are closer to-day than New York and Albany a century ago. Within the hour of their occurrence events that happen in Paris are published in Chicago and St. Louis. Political boundaries are fading before larger interests. Every railroad train crossing the frontier, every ship plying the seas, every article of commerce, every exchange of business, every cable conveying news from distant lands—all these are potent factors in the cause of international peace. Add to these the conciliating influence of foreign investments, the telephone and telegraph, travel, education, democracy, religion, and you have marshaled a host for peace whose clarion trumpets shall never sound retreat. Casting aside the prejudice of ages, modern industrialism flings around the world the economic bonds against which the forces of militarism are powerless.

Here, then, in the world-wide operations of commerce and industry is the assurance of peace. The skeptic may scoff and the cynic point to Mexico and the Balkans, but the Industrial Revolution has produced a multitude of influences that are knitting the nations into an indissoluble unity. Men are beginning to realize the integrity of mankind, and a world-consciousness is arising. Kindness and justice—yesterday but community ideals—are extending their sway throughout the earth. Even while bayonets are bared in conflict and cannon thunder against hostile camps, the magic of our civilization is weaving bonds of union that cannot be broken. Peace, not war, is the true grandeur of nations; love, not hate, is the immutable law of God; and so surely as governments and kings are powerless to divide when home and factory would bind, some not too distant day will find the battle flags all furled, the sword's arbitrament abandoned, and the world at peace.