“I ask only to tell you,” he said, “that I have been for twenty-five years in the service—a part of the time in active service. I have believed in armies and in armament. I still believe them to have been an obvious necessity—while our world was being whipped into shape. Now I am in the last years of my service—I do not take very readily to new ideas—even when I know that these point to the next step on the way. I tell you frankly, that if there were a call to arms, I should be there in my old place—I should serve as I have always served, I should kill whom they told me to kill, as long as they would have me there. But—” he hesitated, and lifted his face, and in it was a light that has shone on a face in no battlefield, “if that time comes, I shall thank God for every woman who protests against it, as you here are protesting. And, if that time comes, from my soul I shall honor the men who will have the courage to be shot, rather than to go out to shoot their fellows. These men will not be lacking: I have read the signs and I have heard men talk. Your new way of warfare is not in vain. You will win. You are the voice of To-morrow. I have wanted you to know that I feel this—and that to you and to your effort I say God bless you, and prosper what you do.”
For the first time that night the silence of the audience was broken. A thunder of hands and voices spoke to him. And, as he turned to leave the platform, they did that by which they paid the highest honor that they knew—and rose and remained standing until he had reached his seat.
“Jove,” said the man near the Inger. “Old Battle-axe! Now watch the men catch up. It only needed one full-blooded man to say it....”
“Rot,” said the man beyond him. “No matter what they say, you know and I know that trade will never get out of the way of peace. There’ll be no peace while we have trade—and that’ll be for some time to come!”
At this the first man laughed.
“Trade,” he said, “was a thought before it was trade. Peace is a thought—yet.”
On the stage some one was quoting Washington: “My first wish is—to see the whole world in peace and the inhabitants of it as one band of brothers, striving who should contribute most to the happiness of mankind.”
And Victor Hugo: “A day will come when a cannon ball will be exhibited in public museums, just as an instrument of torture is now; and people will be amazed that such a thing could ever have been.”
Methodically, and as if it had become their business, the women fell to discussing what they must do. In each country more groups must be organized—for School, Home, States, Municipalities—“for the lifting of the programme of pacifism into the realm of serious commercial and educational and home and political consideration.” The psychology of war must give place to the psychology of peace.
From unfair trade legislation by one country against another, down to the sale of toy weapons and soldiers; and from competing expenditures for national defence down to military drill in schools and colleges, the temptations to militarism must pass from the earth.