The Golden Rule is a wonderful developer in human life, a wonderful harmoniser in community life—with great profit it could be extended as the law of conduct in international relations. It must be so extended. Its very foundation is sympathy, good will, mutuality, love.
The very essence of Jesus' entire revelation and teaching was love. It was not the teaching of weakness or supineness in the face of wrong, however. There was no failure on his part to smite wrong when he saw it—wrong taking the form of injustice or oppression. He had, as we have seen, infinite sympathy for and forbearance with the weak, the sinful; but he had always a righteous indignation and a scathing denunciation for oppression—for that spirit of hell that prompts men or organisations to seek, to study, to dominate the minds and thereby the lives of others. It was, moreover, that he would not keep silent regarding the deadly ecclesiasticism that bore so heavily upon his people and that had well-nigh crushed all their religious life whence are the very springs of life, that he aroused the deadly antagonism of the ruling hierarchy. And as he, witnessing for truth and freedom, steadfastly and defiantly opposed oppression, so those who catch his spirit today will do as he did and will realise as duty—"While wrong is wrong let no man prate of peace!"
Peace? Peace? Peace?
While wrong is wrong let no man prate of peace!
He did not prate, the Master. Nay, he smote!
. . . . . . .
Hate wrong! Slay wrong! Else mercy, justice, truth,
Freedom and faith, shall die for humankind.[F]
Nor did the code and teachings of Jesus prevent him driving the money-changers from out the temple court. It was not for the purpose of doing them harm. It was rather to do them good by driving home to them in some tangible and concrete form, through the skin and flesh of their bodies, what the thick skins of their moral natures were unable to comprehend. The resistance of wrongdoing is not opposed to the law of love. As in community life there is the occasional bully who has sometimes to be knocked down in order that he may have a due appreciation of individual rights and community amenities, so among nations a similar lesson is sometimes necessary in order that it or its leaders may learn that there are certain things that do not pay, and, moreover, will not be allowed by the community of nations.
Making might alone the basis of national policy and action, or making it the basis of settlement in international settlements, but arouses and intensifies hatred and the spirit of revenge. So in connection with this great world crisis—after it all then comes the great problem of reorganisation and rehabilitation, and unless there comes about an international concord strong and definite enough to prevent a recurrence of what has been, it would almost seem that restoration were futile; for things will be restored only in time to be destroyed again.
No amount of armament we know now will prevent war. It can be prevented only by a definite concord of the nations brought finally to realise the futility of war. To deny the possibility of a World League and a World Court is to deny the ability of men to govern themselves. The history of the American Republic in its demonstration of the power and the genius of federation should disprove the truth of this. Here we have a nation composed of forty-eight sovereign states and with the most heterogeneous accumulation of people that ever came together in one country, let alone one nation, and great numbers of them from those nations that for upwards of a thousand years have been periodically springing at one another's throats. Enlightened self-government has done it. The real spirit and temper of democracy has done it. But it must be the preservation of the real spirit of democracy and constant vigilance that must preserve it.
Prejudice, suspicion, hatred on the part of individuals or on the part of the people of one nation against the people of another nation, have never yet advanced the welfare of any individual or any nation and never can. The world war is but the direct result of the type of peace that preceded it. The militarist argument reduced to its lowest terms amounts merely to this: "For two nations to keep peace each must be stronger than the other."
Representative men of other countries do not resent our part in pressing this matter and in taking the leadership in it. But even if they did they would have no just right to. There is, however, a very general feeling that the American Republic, as the world's greatest example of successful federation, should take the lead in the World Federation.