In the end, then, we come back to the governments, and we wonder what has caused these nations to fly at each other’s throats. The question arises as to what makes up a government or why a government has the right to rule its people.
In the United States, the government officials are simply the servants of the people. Practically every man in our country, unless he is a citizen of some foreign nation, has a right to vote, and in many of the states women, too, have a voice in the government. We, the people of the United States, can choose our own lawmakers, can instruct them how to vote and, in some states, can vote out of existence any law that they the people have made which we do not like. In all states, we can show our disapproval of what our law-makers have done by voting against them at the next election. Such is the government of a republic, a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln called it. In the leading British colonies, the people rule. Australian citizens voted against forcing men to serve in the army. The result was very close and the vote of the women helped to decide it. Canada, on the contrary, voted to compel her men to go. How is it in Europe? Have the people of Germany or Austria the right to vote on war? Were they consulted before their governments called them to arms and sent them to fight each other? It is plain that in order to understand what this war is about, we must look into the story of how the different governments of Europe came to be and learn why their peoples obey them so unquestioningly.
We must remember that government by the people is a very new thing. One hundred and thirty years ago, even in the United States only about one-fourth of the men had the right to vote. These were citizens of property and wealth. They did not think a poor man was worth considering. In England, a country which allows its people more voice in the government than almost any other nation in Europe, it is only within the last thirty years that all men could vote. There are some European countries, like Turkey, where the people have practically no power at all and others, like Austria, where they have very little voice in how they shall be governed.
For over a thousand years, the men of Europe have obeyed without thinking when their lords and kings have ordered them to pick up their weapons and go to war. In many instances they have known nothing of the causes of the conflict or of what they were fighting for. A famous English writer has written a poem which illustrates how little the average citizen has ever known concerning the cause of war, and shows the difference between the way in which war was looked upon by the men of old and the way in which one should regard it. The poem runs as follows:
The Battle of Blenheim
It was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar’s work was done,
And he before his cottage door
Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.
She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round,
Which he beside the rivulet
In playing there had found,
He came to ask what he had found
That was so large and smooth and round.
Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
And, with a natural sigh—
“’Tis some poor fellow’s skull,” said he,
“Who fell in the great victory.
“I find them in the garden,
For there’s many hereabout;
And often when I go to plow,
The plowshare turns them out!
For many a thousand men,” said he,
“Were slain in the great victory.”
“Now tell us what ’twas all about,”
Young Peterkin he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes—
“Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for.”
“It was the English,” Kaspar cried,
“Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out;
But everybody said,” quoth he,
“That ’twas a famous victory.
“My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.
“They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won—
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.
“Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won,
And our good Prince Eugene.”
“Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!”
Said little Wilhelmine.
“Nay, nay, my little girl,” quoth he,
“It was a famous victory.
“And everybody praised the duke
Who this great fight did win.”
“But what good came of it at last?”
Quoth little Peterkin.
“Why, that I cannot tell,” said he;
“But ’twas a famous victory.”
—Robert Southey.
Old Kaspar, who has been used to such things all his life, cannot feel the wickedness and horror Of the battle. The children, on the other hand, have a different idea of war. They are not satisfied until they know what it was all about and what good came of it, and they feel that “it was a very wicked thing.” If the men in the armies had stopped to ask the reason why they were killing each other and had refused to fight until they knew the truth, the history of the world would have been very different.
One reason why we still have wars is that men refuse to think for themselves, because it is so much easier to let their dead ancestors think for them and to keep up customs which should have been changed ages ago. People in Europe have lived in the midst of wars or preparation for wars all their lives. There never has been a time when Europe was not either a battlefield or a great drill-ground for armies.
There was a time, long ago, when any man might kill another in Europe and not be punished for his deed. It was not thought wrong to take human life. Today it is not considered wrong to kill, provided a man is ordered to do so by his general or his king. When two kings go to war, each claiming his quarrel to be a just one, wholesale murder is done, and each side is made by its government to think itself very virtuous and wholly justified in its killing. It should be the great aim of everyone today to help to bring about lasting peace among all the nations.