Intercollegiate Peace Association

“ Glorious patriotism!
The passing of this savage patriotism is inevitable. The whole course of nature is against it. The very history of development will tell you that. Loyalty has never been an immutable thing. It has been a ceaseless and irresistible growth from the individual to the family, to the tribe, to the nation. The time for a world-patriotism has come. Why should men limit their loyalty by a row of stones and trees that we call a boundary? Why are men patriots, anyway, except to save their privileges and their government? The primitive patriot had no choice but to fight. ”

“ In his life we see the vital element of patriotism, love. His little savage family is more precious to him than all the world. He will fight and die, not only for self-preservation but for those who to him are "brother and sister and mother." This is the stamp of the human. This is the potentially divine.
But as the storms of war beat about these little savage families, the sense of common danger welded them into one. Out of grim necessity friendship came, and friendship gave birth to patriotism. Loyalty and sacrifice were not limited to the family; men fought and died for their tribe. ”

“ The fixed gulf between what man is and what he knows he might be is the decisive factor in his advance. Ideals are the pulleys of the unseen, round which man throws his hopes and aims, by which he pulls himself across the chasm and into the larger life. To advance at all, man must have ideals—for himself, for his family, for his nation. But mark the effect of war on these ideals. In place of the ideal of peace—to serve men and uplift them—one is taught the ideal of war—to make himself the most widely feared of professional murderers. ”

“ In the face of such splendid examples, how meaningless is the doctrine of the enemies of peace, "We will not arbitrate questions of national honor. We will decide for ourselves what is right and for that right we will stand, even if this course plunges us into the maelstrom of war. We will not allow our country to be dishonored by any other." Well has Andrew Carnegie expressed the modern view: "Our country cannot be dishonored by any other country, or by all the powers combined. It is impossible. All honor wounds are self-inflicted. We alone can dishonor ourselves or our country. ”

“ Stripped of all sentiment, war is organized and wholesale murder, a savage and awful paradox which proclaims the shallowness of civilization. Said General Sherman: "Only those who have never heard a shot, only those who have never heard the shrieks of the wounded nor the groans of the dying, can cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation." God grant the world may soon heed the Voice, sounding down from the solemnity of Sinai, laying the divine command upon each man and each nation: "Thou shalt not kill!"
There yet remains the ethical argument for peace. ”

“ Where now we are erecting battleships and forts, it is for us to build libraries and schools. Where now we drain our treasuries in equipping men to fight their fellow men, it is for us to arm against the common enemy, disease. Where now we pour out our wealth before the pagan Mars, it is for us to devote our treasure to supporting the works of the Prince of Peace.
Such a victory for peace would make America not simply a world power: it would make her the world leader. Will we stop tagging at the heels of Great Britain and Germany and travel this broadening road in which we can be first? ”

“ The press may pen a graphic story of the military spirit of the age, and frowning patriarchs relate the deeds of golden days gone by. But underneath this cloud that overhangs, and almost hidden in the gloom of history's disparagement, the new world-citizen discerns the birth-light of a brighter and more steadfast star,—perceives the coming triumph of good will and peace,—and the awakened eyes of expectant America look forward with promise to the dawn of that new day when a nation shall be judged by the weight of its cross and not by the wealth of its crown. ”

“ THE WASTE OF WAR—THE WEALTH OF PEACE
In the worship of Mars, Herodotus tells us, the ancient Scythian erected an old scimitar at the summit of a huge brush heap. To this, as a symbol of the great god of war, he offered not only the produce of the land but also human life in sacrifice. We shudder as we picture the priest standing over his victim, his hands wet with the blood of his fellow man. We cry out in horror as we think of the lives these peoples sacrificed. We call it an inhuman glorification of a pagan deity. We call it a ruthless waste of wealth and human life. ”

“ But fortunately for America this drama of the youth's ideal has one more act. The lure of fife and drum has become a thing of the past. The glamour of military life has become a dream of yesterday. The young man is learning that the prize of battle is never equal to the price. And with the growing conviction of the folly and futility of international strife must disappear the last apology for war. Nations will cease to struggle, not when they have learned that war is a tragedy but when they have discovered that it is a farce. ”

“ We are to dissect a civilization to find the factors of its strength. One little specimen will reveal the secrets of the whole species. So one sample of civilization will show the hidden springs of all. Go with me to the public square of any modern city and there you will behold the qualities that build all civilization. From the hum and rattle and roar that rises from the sea of humanity come a thousand various voices, but all speak of one theme—industry. There in the center of the throng and press a slender monument rises, crowned perhaps with a figure of Liberty or Justice. ”

“ It is the belief that battle and bloodshed, except for the immediate defense of hearth and home, is a blot on the 'scutcheon of any nation. It is the creed of modern men who rise in their majesty and say: "We will not stain our country's honor with the bloodshed of war. God-given life is too dear. The forces of vice, evil, and disease are challenging us to marshal our strength and give them battle. There is too much good waiting to be done, too much suffering waiting to be appeased, for us to waste the life-blood of our fathers and sons on the field of useless battle. ”

“ But if the goal is to be reached, it is for us as individual citizens to contribute our influence toward developing the attitude of peace among our fellow men. For our international welfare and for the honor of the newest of great nations, may we in this issue throw our influence, as a united people, on the side of a higher international morality! May the united peoples of the world abolish the prejudices of misconceptions and, drawn together by common interests, resolve that the priceless heritage of centuries shall not be imperiled by war! ”

“ The United States spends more on wars past and prospective than for all educational purposes, and England, France, Germany, Russia, groan under the burdens of the armed peace of Europe. Armed to the teeth, the nations of the world lie watching one another. The mind of the world is convinced that war is futile and terribly wasteful. The heart of the world is convinced that war is cruel and inexcusable. The conscience of the world has admitted that war is wrong and morally unjustifiable. And still the preparation for war goes on, and unless conditions are changed, war is inevitable. ”

“ Yesterday the man who advocated universal peace was called a dreamer; to-day throughout the world organized public opinion demands the abolition of war. Yesterday we erected statues to those who died for their country; to-day we eulogize those who live for humanity. Yesterday we bowed our heads to the god of war; to-day we lift our hands to the Prince of Peace.
I do not mean to say that we have entered the Utopian age, for the present international situation is a peculiar one, since we are at the same time blessed with peace and cursed with militarism. ”

“ Could we but enter the wasted homes and see the broken hearts that war has made; could we go to the almshouses and soldiers' orphans' homes and see widows and children by the thousand suffering the doled-out charity of state or nation because war has robbed them of their rightful protectors; could we but realize the agony of the broken home, a thousandfold worse than the agony of the battlefield,—then might we know more of the real cost of war. ”

“ How tame the life of peace to this wild life of war! And all the time the love of toil is fading from men's minds; at home the factory wheels are turning more and more feebly, and when at last the sword is laid aside, there is only "confusion worse confounded," for the channels of labor are choked with men reared in habits of indolence or trained in the school of vice. Before the scar on that nation's industry can finally be healed, decades and perhaps centuries of peace must pass away.
[Page 78] But if war is a scar on the nation's industry, it is likewise a blot on her ideals. ”

“ The two hundred and fifty disputes successfully arbitrated in the past century challenge with trumpet-tongued eloquence the support of all men for reason's peaceful rule. To-day no discussion is needed to show that if war is to be abolished, if navies are to dwindle and armies diminish, if there is to be a federation of the world, it must come through treaties of arbitration. In this way alone lies peace; yet in this way lies the present great barrier to further progress—the conception which many nations, especially the United States, hold of "national honor and vital interests." ”

“ When two nations of adjacent territory cannot agree over a boundary line, why should settlement be made in terms of physical force? When two nations fail to see eye to eye in adjusting the questions of certain fishing rights, why should they incarnadine the seas in seeking for the truth to be applied in settlement? In civil disputes, why, asks the student, should rifles be employed to discover truth and right? War is an intellectual anachronism, a breach of logic. Of course, one may reply, humanity is not logical in its reasoning any more than it is exact in its observing. ”

“ Men battling to conquer; men assuming the prerogative of a god—how foolish, yet how serious! And these artificial lines that men call boundaries, how punctiliously they are guarded! "Take but a hundred feet, and we shall war with thee." How foolish this too must seem when viewed from above—that we should carry on war over even a slight infraction on any imaginary, mathematical line.
We cherish the thought that the youth of our land are being taught self-restraint. It is ever impressed upon them that there are courts of justice for the settlement of controversies. ”

“ Peace purchased at the price of brute force is unworthy of the name. Surely the United States cannot afford to be guilty of such an injustice. If we wish to be free; if we wish to remain a true republic; if we purpose to continue our mighty work for humanity, we must limit our preparations for war. The best way to preserve peace is to think peace, to believe in peace, and to work for 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 ”

“ It is teaching to youth a new ideal; it is itself the answer to complaints of friends and calumnies of foes. It is the cloud before the dawn. It heralds the coming of the brightest epoch yet chronicled in American history. It is the realization of that glorious prophecy of John Hay that the time is coming when "the clangor of arms shall cease, and we can fancy that at last our ears, no longer stunned by the din of armies, may hear the morning stars singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy." ”