Practically every family has members who were more than once directly affected by the absence of peace—war, and have wished for peace, or without knowing it, had the pacifist spirit. Almost every person is likely to feel a sense of deep injury under the pressure of an unpleasant burden, and naturally thinks the issue or whatever it is must be fought out with iron and blood. An opinion of some kind is there, which is made up mostly of sentiment, based upon a somewhat erroneous knowledge of some few facts in the situation. No matter which side of the fence individuals are on, they have gained their ideas mostly from newspapers, or from chance talks here and there, with men whom they believe, in most instances to be much better informed than themselves, consequently they are using the same source of information in most instances, and conviction is simply deepened by a constant repetition of the thought.
Again, most people form their opinions and judgments without due examination; they have a leaning toward one side of the question from other considerations than those belonging to it; and many have an unreasonable predilection toward the militaristic idea thinking that the pacifist stands for weakness and possesses cowardly spirit. The minds of many are biased on account of the vigorous propaganda carried out by the militarists in the form of large armaments, and international tangles, war scares and many other things which make international peace appear as an utter impossibility.
It has been said that the first and most practical step in obtaining what one wants in this world, is wanting it. Naturally a person would think that the next step would be expressing what one wants, but usually consists in wanting it still more and more until one can well express it. This is particularly true when the thing a person wants is something which concerns the whole world, for here all these other individuals who must be asked perhaps have but a very slight interest in what one wants. Until a large number desire a thing strong enough, and wish for it hard enough to say it, and get it outside of themselves, and perhaps make it contagious so that the thought will be catching to every person exposed to it, nothing happens at all.
Every man who, in some public place, like a book, paints the picture of his heart’s desire, and who throws forth as upon a screen where all men may see them his most immediate and pressing ideals, performs a very important service to humanity. If a man’s sole interest were to find out what all men living in the world to-day, need and want most, and what is necessary for their welfare, the best and only way for him to do it, would be for him to write clearly, and quite definitely so that we could all compare notes, on exactly what he wanted himself.
The thing that the populations of the earth want and need as a whole in this darkness and din of the world is safety and security in the pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness. Too many persons, with a pugnacious tenacity, cling to the idea that world peace is an idle and futile dream. Even so, nothing is more visionary, than trying to run a world without dreams, especially an economic world such as the one we live on. It is because even bad dreams are better on this foot stool than having no dreams at all, that so called bad people are in a wholesale measure allowed to run it. The one factor in economics to be reckoned with in the final and practical sense, is the desire to do right. An ideal to be sure, but at some time or other, it was an ideal that aroused the wrong passions, and now it is only another corrective ideal that will arouse the right passion. The next step by our political economists is the statement of a shrewd, dogged, realizable ideal, and that is universal peace between nations.
The great upheavals which precede changes of civilization, such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the foundation of the Arabian Empire, seem at first sight determined more especially by political transformations, foreign invasions, or the annihilation and overthrow of dynasties. A more attentive study of these events shows that behind their apparent causes, the real cause, as a rule, is seen to be, a modification in the opinions of the populations. The true historical upheavals are not those which compel astonishment by their spectacularity, and impetuous violence, and vehemence. The only important changes whence the renewal of civilization is a resultant, affects ideas, opinions and beliefs.
The landmarks of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human opinion, and the reason these great memorable events are so rare, is, because there is nothing so stable in a race, as the inherited groundwork, and fundamental foundation of its opinions. The present epoch, without a doubt, is one of these critical times, in which the opinion of mankind, is undergoing a great transformation.
There are two fundamental factors at the bottom of this transformation. The first, caused by the wholesale destruction of life and property, which shakes to pieces the political and social beliefs in which all the elements of our civilization are rooted. The second is the creation of entirely new conditions of existence of thought as the result of multitudinous scientific, modern, and industrial discoveries. The opinions of the past, although half destroyed, being still very powerful, as the present state of militarism proves, and the opinions which are to replace them, being still in a process of transformation, the present age represents a period of transition and political confusion.
As yet, we cannot say exactly what will be evolved some day from this necessarily somewhat chaotic period. What will be the fundamental ideas on which the societies that are to succeed our own, will be built up? At present, there is no manner of knowing. It is perfectly clear, that the societies of the future will have to reckon with a new power, and that power is public opinion. On the ruins of so many ideas formerly considered beyond discussion, and now either dead or dying, of so many sources of authority that successive revolutions have destroyed, this power, which alone has arisen in their stead seems soon destined to absorb the others. While practically all of our ancient beliefs are tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way, one by one, the power of public opinion is the only force that is growing, and of which the prestige is steadily and continually on the increase. The age we are about to enter, will, in truth, be governed by public opinion.
Less than a century ago the traditional policy of European States and the rivalries of sovereigns were the principal factors that shaped events, consequently the opinion of the masses did not count, and was scarcely noticed. To-day the opposite state of affairs predominates, and it is the traditions which used to obtain in politics, and the individual tendencies and rivalries of rulers, which are counting for less and less; while, on the contrary, the voice of the people has become preponderant. It is this voice that dictates their conduct to rulers, whose endeavor it is, to take notice of its utterances.