I am a peace advocate—that is to say, I am one who advocates an active campaign in the cause of peace, employing the best means and instruments for the accomplishment of practical results.

Unfortunately, a wide difference of opinion exists in the ranks of those who style themselves peace advocates as to how the war against war can best be fought. That difference of opinion is as to whether we should arm for the fray, or disarm for it. Shall we go into the fight with sword and buckler, and with armor on, prepared to return blow with stronger blow; or shall we go into the fight with bared breasts, and, when we receive a blow upon one cheek turn the other cheek also, and let both our eyes be blackened and our nose be skinned in order to shame our antagonist, by giving him an object lesson of the horrors of war?

Ernst Haeckel has said there is nothing constant but change. He might have said also that there is a no more consistent thing in its constancy than human inconsistency.

That other great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, declared that, as he grew older, the more and more he realized the extent to which mankind is governed by irrationality.

Josh Billings said, "It is not so much the ignorance of men that makes them ridiculous as what they know that is not so."

The complex problems of ethics, eugenics, economics, and human dynamics, which enter into all questions and problems of peace and war, are like so many Chinese puzzles to the ordinary mind.

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of minds—the ratiocinative and the irrational; in other words, the logical and the illogical. The logical mind proceeds scientifically from sure premises to just conclusions, taking no direction and traveling no faster and no farther in any direction than warranted and justified by ascertained fact. The irrational or illogical mind, on the contrary, is unable to discriminate between belief and knowledge, between facts and fancies. Consequently, this type of mind proceeds from guess to conclusion, with the result that final judgment is necessarily distorted, warped, and swerved from truth just in proportion as the basic guess is incorrect or false.

There is a no more momentous problem before the world today than that of international jurisprudence, especially with respect to the maintenance of peace where practicable, and the control of wars, when wars are inevitable or necessary; and there is no subject of such moment more fruitful of irrationalism.

In the light of practical common-sense, there is nothing funnier in the writings of Mark Twain than the inconsistent prating of our peace sophists. It is as though they let not their right-hand brain know what their left-hand brain is doing. They are usually brimmed and primed with sacrificial sentimentality and over-soul. Their delicatessen natures shrink from contact with the stern, man-making realities of life. They are the disciples of soft stuff. The mush and moonshine of maudlin sentimentalism are their element. They possess no powers of discrimination between the actual and the erroneous. The guise of fact is no recommendation to them unless it fits into their scheme. An error is far more welcome if it comes in a garmenture that conforms with their ideals. They put their union label on what we receive by the grace of God, but they fail to recognize and appreciate that they cannot comprehend the infinite; that what to them seems disorder and confusion in the world may be the most perfect order in the eye of God. They cannot understand how infinite wisdom, infinite justice, and infinite mercy should have created a warring world; consequently, they have set themselves the task of repairing the faults of creation and of recreating the world to suit their own ideas as to what infinite wisdom and mercy ought to be.

When one of these peace sophists gets into a fight, however, he promptly prays to God to help him whip the other fellow. The pacific sentimentalist is usually a most arrant coward. In time of war, the cowardly sentimental pacifists are the loudest in appeals to Almighty God to fight on their side and to lead their army to victory—that same army which in time of peace they have done everything in their power to disarm and disband.

Recently, when speaking at a church, I was asked the question, "How long is it going to take to make might right?" I asked my interrogator this question: "If, at the creation, you had been consulted and your advice asked as to whether or not a world should be made in which all life should feed on other life, and half of the animal creation should be made prey for the other half; whether everything should be made tooth and nail, claw and scale, hunter and hunted, terror and blood, strife and war; whether or not the cat should train for the hunt by torturing the little bird—how would you have replied to God?" My querist did not answer me, but went home to think it over.

I do not purpose to make any apology for Infinite Wisdom. My pacifist friends are doing that constantly. It is my humble opinion that the Creator did the best He could for us, and that we ought to be thankful and grateful.

I believe with Pope, that:

"Spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear—whatever is, is right."

I realize that the most perfect order is confusion to the mind that is not constituted to comprehend it.

I know that the macrocosmic mechanism moves with mathematical exactitude, and that we, in comparison, are mighty only in our arrogance; that, in fact, we are but microscopic specks in the drift of worlds.

Nature seems to care little for individuals, but very much for races and species; little indeed for a person, very much for a people.

The terms right and wrong, good and bad, are entirely relative. Right for an individual may not be so for a large aggregation of individuals. The welfare of a nation or a people may not be the welfare of the world, and God has His eye on the world.

The wrong are weak, the right are strong.
This mean the two terms right and wrong;
And truth sought out to any length,
Finds all wrong weakness, all right strength.

Formative Strife

Primeval man found himself thrust into an environment where all animal life fed on other life, and half the animal creation was prey for the other half. He was one of the hunted. Yet, with less strength but greater cunning, he was destined to master all. Man's supremacy has been developed by warfare of wit, craft, and cunning, versus brute force.

Primitive man found himself "up a tree" in both the actual and the metaphoric sense. His teeth and claws were no match for those of the leopard and the sabre-toothed tiger. He had no recourse but flight until stern necessity taught him to wield a club.

Then he climbed down from his abode in trees, and began the conquest of the earth. The club made man a traveler. His forays with that weapon taught him to walk and fight upon his hind legs, and gave him his erect carriage. But he had to travel a long and thorny pathway indeed, armed only with a club, before he invented the stone hatchet and spear of sharpened flint or bone. It was a far-flung span across the gulf of time from the tree-home to the cave in the hill, his new abiding-place.

The bow and arrow, which enabled him to kill at long range, were his next weapon, and were the greatest invention of all time.

The protection of the heart with the left arm and shield, with the right arm free to wield the sword or hurl the javelin, made man right-handed.

Armed with the bow and arrow, spear and shield, man was equipped still better for travel; and ever since travel has been widening out the sky and broadening man's mental horizon.

The fighting spirit widened the acquaintance of different peoples, and the terrible menace of some savage common enemy forced different tribes to unite and build up nations. Union against danger is the best instructor of self-government, and the best guarantee of internal good behavior.

It is generally recognized that man is a product of his environment; that he is in body and mind the sum of his own and ancestral experiences; that he is omnivorous; that he drinks water and breathes air; and yet, many persons fail to recognize the inevitable concomitant conclusion that he is also of necessity a warring animal, and that the formative influences of the fierce struggle for existence have made him what he is. His life is a series of reactions to environing stimuli; and he is actuated and shaped by those stimuli, and just as those stimuli have been necessary to his growth, so they are still necessary to his continued growth, and even to his very existence. In other words, the formative influences that have made and sustained man are still necessary to his maintenance. The character of the strife may be changed, and is already largely changed, from war to business. But the intensity of the struggle cannot be alleviated one whit, because it is impossible, in the nature of things, to maintain man's strength of character in any other way. He could live a little longer without strife than without food or air or water, but the absence of strife would be as fatal to him in the end as would be the absence of food, air, or water.

The struggle for existence has always been a business proposition with man, and business today is a struggle for existence as intense and merciless as the struggle in war.

In olden times, piracy and war for plunder were the principal business of mankind. Today, business is a warfare, and though it may be law-abiding, still the weak go down under it and suffer and die under it as surely as they did in old-time wars. The relation of strength to weakness remains unchanged, and the reward for strength and the penalty for weakness are as great as they ever were.

There now exists, as always, the same intensity of incentive of all classes to strive for something more and something better than they have. Though the condition of all classes has improved, the struggle of individual with individual is as great, the strife of class with class is as intense as ever.

The ownership of one's earnings, with freedom to apply and enjoy them, was the greatest prize ever offered to stimulate the working genius of this world, and the results during the past hundred and fifty years have been phenomenal.

The world has progressed more within that time in those things which tend to complete living than it had previously progressed in all the ages that had dragged their slow length along since the world thawed out of the ancient ice.

But human agencies, like all agencies in nature, are essentially rhythmical. In order to accumulate the necessary energy and enthusiasm to go far enough in the right direction, we inevitably go too far, and, when the pendulum returns, it swings to the other extreme.

It is important to realize the great truth that freedom ends when it aims beyond the spirit which strives for the greatest good to the greatest number.

According to Herbert Spencer, the criminal classes are composed of those who have been pushed out of the race in the struggle for existence under modern conditions. They were normal components of society in the past, when all men were soldiers and all soldiers were bandits, and the principal business of mankind was piracy and war for plunder.

There being no longer the ever-present opportunity to join in an inter-tribal or an international war for robbery, the soldier-bandit now makes war upon society.

All of the Huns and Vandals in our midst are today armed with the short-sword of the ballot. How important it is then that they should be taught to know and to understand that in the use of this weapon their work should be formative and not deformative; that it should be constructive and not destructive!

Substitution of Law for War

The poet's words, "The parliament of man, the federation of the world," have become a very familiar quotation in recent years. Anciently all wisdom was taught in poesy, and we have never yet quite freed ourselves from the age-long habitude of receiving as unimpeachable wisdom whatever may be said in verse.

To the common mind, a statement in didactic verse has the proselyting power of Holy Writ. Now, this line of Tennyson, "The parliament of man, the federation of the world," points us toward a Utopia, without hope of actual attainment.

There is at the present time a growing good intention to put an end to wars by international conciliation and arbitration; in short, to substitute law for war. We must, however, keep strongly in mind the interdependence of law and force, and the consequent interdependence of international law and armaments. Conciliation must not be confounded with arbitration, and persuasion must not be confounded with law.

Law has been aptly designated "codified custom." Actually, law is an attempt to construct experience into prophecy. We are able to judge of the sufficiency of new laws only by the sufficiency of laws in past practice.

The error is very common, to confound as having the same meaning terms of quite opposite meanings—for example, it is a very common error to confound society with government, and civilization with enlightenment. Society is an order of things by virtue of which we are able to co-operate with one another and to enjoy mutuality of possessions which gives them their only value; while government is an order of things for the purpose of protecting society.

The world has arrived at great enlightenment, and has attained some degree of civilization. Self-interest is becoming more and more altruistic, and altruism is becoming more and more profitable. We are not so barbarous as we used to be, but we still slaughter one another to adjust international differences. This cannot be esteemed civil procedure. Enlightenment may be very uncivil, and civility may not be enlightenment.

The great problem yet remains of uniting under practical laws the nations of the earth into a family of nations.

This is not a work for dreamers or sentimentalists; but is purely a business proposition, which can be effected only to the extent that the best interests of all the contracting parties are thereby secured.

When will arbitration be able to realize the Utopian dreams of the pacifists? General Homer Lea answers the question once for all in the following expressive terms:

"Only when arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations. Thence will International Arbitration come of its own accord as the natural outgrowth of national evolution through the individual. As nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the basis of individual impulse, so long will they control the acts of nations.

"When, therefore, the merchant arbitrates with the customer he is about to cheat; when trusts arbitrate with the people they are about to fleece; when the bulls and bears arbitrate with the lambs they are about to shear; when the thief arbitrates with the man he is about to rob, or the murderer with his victim, and so on throughout the category of crime, then will communities be able to dispense with laws, and international thievery and deception, shearing and murder, resort to arbitration."

The men who control our city and state politics and make and enforce our city and state laws all over the country are not always honest, but, on the contrary, they are often notoriously corrupt, notwithstanding the fact that they have much stronger incentives to be honest here than they would have in dealing with foreign nations and strange peoples. What, therefore, are we to expect of their integrity and their honesty in the settlement of international disputes and in the enactment and execution of international laws?

What an enormous field for graft it will be when some weaker nation tries to get its rights at the coming international tribunal!

Our laws are now notoriously inadequate with respect to theft, burglary, highway robbery, and municipal-government graft. The amount of money loss to the people of this country through the failure of our laws to suppress these iniquities is enough to support a standing army of half a million men, build four battleships a year, and place us on such a defensive footing as absolutely to preclude all danger of war with any foreign power.

Has human nature improved so much lately that special privilege will no longer result from special power? Has the human race progressed so much lately that privilege and oppression will not follow power; wealth and luxury follow privilege; and degeneracy and disorganization follow wealth and luxury?

The race has certainly not so altered that men do not grow old and die; and nations, like men, have their youth, their middle age, their decrepitude and death.

Periodically, some religio-pathological sect will announce the conclusion of an understanding with the Great Reaper, whereby, through certain incantations or breathing exercises, death may be indefinitely postponed; but they, like other mortals, keep on dying.

Those good men who are the leaders in the present peace movement must realize the fact that the carrying out of their project will devolve, not upon them—not upon the philanthropist, the sentimentalist, and the humanitarian—but upon the politician.

The actual procedure of the Hague congresses enables us to forecast exactly this result. The judicial bench of that court was a bargain-counter, over which political advantage was bartered for political advantage. It was no real love of peace that dominated those tribunals: only the powerful nations spoke or were heard. No protection was suggested for the weaker nations, who, presumably, would be most benefited by international arbitration. They were quite out of the running.

International arbitration will ultimately become a political machine. Nothing can prevent it, and there is no reason to believe that those politicians who will have control of the international arbitration machine will be any more honest than other machine politicians.

All Law Must Be Backed by Force

It is a popular belief that when the paradoxical conciliatory legal persuasion in the form of arbitration goes into effect, we shall no longer require any armaments, but may forge our swords into plow-shares and spears into pruning-hooks, disband our armies, and return the soldiers to the shops and farms.

We are prone to forget that law is as much a representative of the requisite power behind it for its enforcement as a paper dollar is a representative of the requisite gold available for its redemption. A well-known orator came very near becoming President through a popular misconception as to the interdependence of gold and paper money, and he failed to get the Presidency because of a public awakening to the error.

We are prone to forget, furthermore, that it is the respect for power behind law that makes possible its enforcement. Any law to adjust international differences by arbitration will simply be an embodiment of the collective wisdom of allied Powers in the exercise of force, and a force that is representative of their banded armies and navies.

International law is static military force. War is the dynamic form of the same force. I believe in international arbitration for all it is worth. It is a good thing to push along. It will unquestionably lessen the frequency of wars, but many wars are sure to come in spite of it, and because of it.

Non-Justiciable Differences

There are ills of national bodies politic that can be cured only by the sword. Insurmountable differences between various nations and races of men are always sure to arise, as impossible to arbitrate as the differences between the herbivora and the carnivora.

The existence of the carnivora depends upon the sacrifice of the herbivora. Their interests are, from their very nature, antagonistic, and their differences are, by consequence, insurmountable, and not justiciable. The harmony of nature depends upon inharmony between the meat-eaters and the vegetable-eaters, and the harmony of modern progress has likewise depended in large measure upon formative inharmony between peoples.

Such radical differences and such concomitant radical diversity of interests exist among the various races of men that the task of harmonizing their interests, aims, and activities will be about as great as would be that of bleaching their skins to a uniform color.

It is a practical impossibility to enact international laws that will make the welfare of each nation the concern of all, with no subordination of any one to the welfare of another. Will arbitration be able to place all peoples upon a plane of equality? Will it be able to secure to all, even the meanest, equal rights to enjoyment of property, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Will arbitration be able to make the Anglo-Saxon, the Teuton, the African, and the Oriental meet one another on common ground, and share and share alike, live and let live, when their interests come into collision?

If arbitration cannot do this—if arbitration does not do this—if it does not treat all with strict impartiality, then those who are ill-treated are going to rebel, and wars will still come.

Between nations no sentimental consideration exists or is possible, sufficiently effectual to exert more than the merest microscopic influence as a deterrent of war. Self-interest always has been, and always will be, the deciding factor in the settlement of international disputes. War uncloaks international hypocrisy, and the people are seen in their true character.

The attitude of the warlike and powerful nations in the past toward the weaker nations has been very similar to that of the carnivora toward the herbivora.

International arbitration may somewhat lessen the burden of armaments, but the time will be long before it can lift the burden. The orators who plead at the International Tribunal will speak in the voice of the deep-throated guns behind them; their persuasion will be that of cold steel, and neither brotherly love nor international sympathy will be their guide, but self-interest, and no demands will be relinquished except from policy in their observance of such rights of others as are warded by the frowning ramparts of opposing force.

Unless all the nations of the world join in the pact, then arbitration will simply be an alliance for the benefit of the allies themselves as against all others. There will be nothing new in such an arrangement. The Six Nations of New York did the same thing; they formed a federation and settled their differences by arbitration, and it was a good thing for the Six Nations; but it was not a good thing for the neighboring Indian tribes.

We Americans expect to get all we want any way, either with or without arbitration. If we expected that the Chinese would be forced upon us, or our rights and privileges curtailed in the Orient, we should not think of joining in an arbitration pact for a minute.

There will always be the warfare of commerce for the markets of the world, and it will be tempered with avarice, not mercy; and commercial warfare will become more and more severe as the nations grow, and as competition, with want and hunger behind it, gets keen as the sword-edge with the crowding of people into the narrow world.

Unchanging Human Nature

Human nature is the same today as it was in the ante-rebellion days of human slavery. It is the same as it was when Napoleon, with the will-o'-the-wisp of personal and national glory held before the eyes of emotional and impressionable Frenchmen, led them to wreck for him the monarchies of Europe. Human nature is the same today as it was in CÆsar's time, when he massacred two hundred and fifty thousand Germans—men, women, and children—in a day, in cold blood, while negotiations for peace were pending, and entered in his diary the simple statement, "CÆsar's legions killed them all." Human nature is the same today as it was in the cruel old times, when war was the chief business of mankind, and populations sold as slaves were among the most profitable plunder. Yes, human nature is the same as it has always been. Education and Christian teaching have made pity and sympathy more familiar to the human heart, but avarice and the old fighting spirit are kept in leash only by the dominance of necessity and circumstances, which the institutions of civilization impose upon the individual.

The following is quoted from "Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain," by the late Professor J. A. Cramb:

"War may change its shape, the struggle here intensifying it, there abating it; it may be uplifted by ever loftier purposes and nobler causes. But cease? How shall it cease?

"Indeed, in the light of history, universal peace appears less as a dream than as a nightmare, which shall be realized only when the ice has crept to the heart of the sun, and the stars, left black and trackless, start from their orbits."

Max MÜller has told us that the roots of some of our words are older than the Egyptian Pyramids. Far older still are the essential traits of human nature. The human nature of today will be the human nature of tomorrow, and the human nature of tomorrow will be in all essential respects the same as it was in ancient Rome, Persia, and Egypt, and even in the palmy days of sea-sunk Atlantis.

The best of us are at heart barbarians under a thin veneer of civilization, and it is as natural for us to revert to barbarous war as for the hog to return to his wallow.

If we were able to apply to the upbuilding of our Army and Navy the money that goes to political graft throughout the country, and the money that has been squandered, and is still being squandered through our notorious vote-purchasing pensions, we could place ourselves upon a war footing that would be an absolute guarantee of permanent peace. It is not, therefore, very encouraging, to enlarge this failing system of laws, in order to save an annual expenditure certainly less than what the defects of our laws now cost the country.

Even though international wars may be prevented by a court of arbitration, can rebellion and civil war be prevented, and ought they always to be prevented?

Justifiable Wars

When the unjust laws of an iniquitous government make existence intolerable for the great mass of the people of a country or of a colonial possession; "when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary" for a people to throw off the yoke of oppression, as we did in our War of the Revolution, or as the French people did in the French Revolution, or as the great Chinese people have lately done by their rebellion against the domination of an intolerable savage Manchu monarchy, then war is the only remedy, and freedom can then plead only with the sword.

I quote the following from Theodore Roosevelt's "America and the World War":

"In 1864 there were in the North some hundreds of thousands of men who praised peace as the supreme end, as a good more important than all other goods, and who denounced war as the worst of all evils. These men one and all assailed and denounced Abraham Lincoln, and all voted against him for President. Moreover, at that time there were many individuals in England and France who said it was the duty of those two nations to mediate between the North and the South, so as to stop the terrible loss of life and destruction of property which attended our Civil War; and they asserted that any Americans who in such event refused to accept their mediation and to stop the war would thereby show themselves the enemies of peace. Nevertheless, Abraham Lincoln and the men back of him by their attitude prevented all such effort at mediation, declaring that they would regard it as an unfriendly act to the United States. Looking back from a distance of fifty years, we can now see clearly that Abraham Lincoln and his supporters were right. Such mediation would have been a hostile act, not only to the United States but to humanity. The men who clamored for unrighteous peace fifty years ago this fall were the aenemies of mankind."

Those who are oppressed by the superincumbent weight of society, and labor for mere existence, with no hope of freedom from poverty, are slaves as much as were those made bondsmen in old-time wars. It matters little whether the wolf at the door be a creature of sociological conditions, or a creature of war. The evil is no less real.

James Russell Lowell, in his admirable poem on France and the French Revolution, said about the most expressive, the most potential, and altogether the best thing that has ever been said illustrative of the uncontrollable massiveness of the popular will, which, under the stimulus of patriotism or the smart or burden of accumulated wrongs, can stampede a nation into war:

"As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches
Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow,
Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches
And the blind havoc leaps unwarned below,
So grew and gathered through the silent years
The madness of a People, wrong by wrong.
There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears,
No strength in suffering;—but the Past was strong:
The brute despair of trampled centuries
Leapt up with one hoarse yell and snapt its bands,
Groped for its rights with horny, callous hands,
And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes."

The justification of war depends entirely upon the conditions which produce it. In short, war is justifiable only when it is a remedy for evils greater than the evils of the war. War is sometimes a very bitter remedy; nevertheless, there are diseases much worse than the remedy. The horrors of the French Revolution, bad as they were, remedied a condition still more horrible, for the condition of the French common people, "bowed by the weight of centuries," had become so abject that life was intolerable; no change could be for the worse. Under such circumstances there is no fear of death; the fear of death is only fear of the loss of life through love of life. When existence is intolerable, and there is no hope in the heart for better things, life, having no value, is not much loved, and death has no terrors.

In spite of all the bloodshed of the reign of terror, in spite of all who fell under the leadership of Napoleon, the French people were benefited by the Revolution a thousand-fold more than they were injured by it.

If arbitration could prevent such wars, which are man's God-given privilege that a people may secure its inalienable rights, then arbitration, in that respect, would be an iniquitous thing.

War, at best, is a horrible business. It is a reversion to the brute force of primitive savagery, and is never justifiable except in the extremity of last resort. But we must appreciate and acknowledge the fact that the horrors of war, the sacrifice of treasure, the sacrifice of life, are no arguments whatever against war when inalienable human rights are at stake that must be fought for, and that are worth the sacrifice.

There are at times objects and obligations which are worth the sacrifice. To prevent war in such cases would be a disgrace and a crime.

As Admiral Mahan says, "Even the material evils of war are less than the moral evil of compliance with wrong."

Christianity and War

In 1901, the editor of The Christian Herald requested me to write an article in answer to the following question: "Is it consistent for a loyal Christian, who believes that war is contrary to the teachings of the Prince of Peace, to engage in the manufacture of material designed exclusively for the purpose of war?"

In my reply, I pointed out that the great majority of Christians throughout the world, while they hate war, are often called upon themselves to become warriors and to fight for their doctrine of peace. The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage was chosen to reply to my article, which he did by agreeing with all I had said.

According to the annals of history, wars have almost invariably been caused by one party attempting to rob another party, or one people another people. On such occasions, it is self-evident that the blame for the wars rested with the robbers. Those who fought in defense of their lives and property, although actual participants in warfare, were guiltless.

Of course, the attempt to rob and plunder has sometimes been mutual, and both participants have been aggressors, as were Napoleon and Alexander in the Russian war. In the great majority of cases, however, one side has been on the aggressive, and the other on the defensive.

When an officer of the law catches an evil-doer in the act, and is attacked by him, if, in making an arrest, the officer is compelled to draw his own revolver and shoot the malefactor, he does a justifiable act. We have here war in miniature, and it may be taken as a type of all wars. While we are free to grant that wars are wrong, yet the wrong rests entirely with the offenders, instead of with the defenders, of human right.

Housebreaking is wrong, yet the brave knight who, in mediÆval times, breached a castle wall to free some prisoner unjustly held, did a wholly commendable act. Similarly, one nation which raises an army to free from bondage slaves held by another nation, does an equally commendable act, and the blame for the war rests with those who hold the slaves.

War is an ugly and an awful thing, while some peace theories are very beautiful, and they are quite safe in times of peace; but when, in the past, slaves had to be freed, then the true Christians took down their old swords and shouldered their old guns, and went to the front. If we read the inscriptions on the monuments erected to the memory of those who died in our great Civil War, we find it was an army of Christians who fell.

War is often a necessity. It cannot always be avoided, and, when it comes, we want the best tools we can get with which to fight. It is criminal negligence for a nation not to be prepared against war. It is criminal negligence for a great nation not to be abreast of the times in arms and equipment.

Often at the bayonet's point, trade and civilization and even Christianity, have been forced upon the savage, and upon exclusive and unwarlike peoples, and now Christianity, civilization, and militarism, sisters of strange relation, hand in hand, embrace the world.

In "Sartor Resartus" Carlyle says:

"The first ground handful of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling. What will the last do?"

His own answer is that it will

"... achieve the final undisputed prostration of force under thought, of animal courage under spiritual."

Again Carlyle says, in the same work:

"Such I hold to be the genuine use of gunpowder: that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more mind, though all but no body whatever, then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. Hereby, at last is the Goliath powerless and the David resistless; savage animalism is nothing, inventive spiritualism is all."

What does the Bible say about Christ's mission of peace?

"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men" (Luke II: 13, 14).

"And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest ... to guide our feet into the way of peace" (Luke I: 76, 79).

"And his name shall be called ... The Prince of Peace" (Is. IX: 6).

I hold that there is nothing whatever in the foregoing quotations inconsistent with warring for the right. From the nature of things, war is often the price of peace, and justice can only be enforced by the sword. In the great American Rebellion it was the voice of guns alone that could command the emancipation of the slaves.

An apostle of the Prince of Peace may often best serve his Master by becoming a good soldier. The Christian armies that turned back and drove out of Europe the invading Moors rendered their Master better service than had they, in order to escape war, fled before the advancing hosts of Islam.

Should China and India become really aroused and advance during the next twenty-five years as rapidly as has Japan during a like period in the past, and should the great "Yellow Peril" rise in its might, and threaten the Christian World, is there a single soldier of the Cross now enlisted in the cause of Peace who would not then buckle on his cartridge-belt, shoulder his gun, and go and fight in the defense of his religion and his home?

I must confess my belief that, if invasion were threatened on the Atlantic Coast, some of the pacifists I have met would not buckle on the cartridge-belt, but would, on the contrary, gird up their loins, take the advice of Horace Greeley, and go West.

Let us again quote from the Scriptures:

"The Lord is a man of war" (Ex. XV: 3).

"The Lord of Hosts is his name" (Is. LI: 15).

"Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight" (Ps. CXLIV: 1).

It is evident that the modern Christian misunderstands Christ's true mission, for he said:

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. X: 34).

"I am come to send fire on the earth" (Luke XII: 49).

"And he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one ... for the things concerning me have an end" (Luke XXII: 36, 37).

St. Paul said:

"For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain; for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil" (Rom. XIII: 4).

Dr. Lyman Abbott, who is one of the best of America's big men, and one of the biggest of America's best men, has the following to say about war:

"I am not, therefore, one of those who think that war is always wrong. I cannot think that Jesus Christ Himself inculcated the doctrine that force never could be used—He who, when He saw the traders in the Temple, did not wait to argue with them nor to appeal to their conscience, for He knew that they had neither reason nor conscience, but drove them out with a whip of small cords, driving the cattle before Him and overturning the tables of the money-changers and letting the money roll upon the floor. I am not afraid to follow Him with whatsoever force it may be necessary for righteousness to put on, when unrighteousness has armed herself to commit wrong. I cannot think all war is wrong. If I did, I should not want to look upon a Bunker Hill Monument, for it would be a monument to our shame; I should want never to speak the name of Gettysburg, for my lips would blister and my cheeks would blush; I should want to bury in the grave of oblivion the names of Washington and Grant."

There can be but one interpretation of Christian duty and but one interpretation of true peace. Without justice, the mere absence of war does not constitute peace to the Christian. Neither to the Christian is warfare waged in the interest of justice incompatible with the peace principles which underlie his religious faith. Therefore, the true interpretation of peace is absence of war, where justice reigns, and the true Christian mission is to see that justice be done, for without it there can be no righteous peace. Such peace as can reign with injustice becomes the abettor of injustice.

While I believe in international conciliation and arbitration, peace and good will, I do not believe in unlimited arbitration. I do not believe that arbitration can ever be a universal panacea with which all evils can be cured without resort to firearms. There are times when throats have to be cut, and when God is on the side of the executioner.

When a nation persists perennially in war, it can only be brought to peace by some other nation which will meet it on the battlefield. Christ established the dictum that they who take the sword shall perish by the sword. War begets war. The sword brings the sword. As Napoleon said about sparing murderers and abolishing capital punishment, "Que messieurs les assassins commencent."

We want to put a stop to wars to save life. I wonder why it is that we are not equally anxious to prevent loss of life from other causes besides war. Why are we not equally interested in preventing the tremendous loss of life from easily preventable railroad disasters? An international movement for safety equipment and sanitation, with an enlistment of effort and money equal to that being devoted to this great peace movement would save many more lives every year than the annual loss in the Napoleonic wars.

Dr. Strong, President of the American Institute of Social Service, stated at a dinner several years ago, that the number of persons killed and wounded every year in the United States alone by railroad accidents, steamship accidents, workshop accidents, accidents in the streets, and other accidents—all very largely due to preventable causes—amounts to more than 500,000. In the Japanese-Russian war a total of 333,786 men were killed and wounded on both sides, not counting the losses in naval battles. During the same period in the United States alone the great army of American laborers engaged in manufacturing and building operations suffered a loss of 425,000 killed and injured; 92,000 more were therefore killed and injured in our industries in one year than during that entire war.

I wonder why it is that we are not as enthusiastic in this social-service work as we are in attacking the problem of war. Is it that there is more glory and more that appeals to the martial imagination in attacking war and warriors than there is in the prosaic, tame, and glamourless enterprise of simply saving human life in peaceful pursuits for the mere sake of saving it? Is it the old war spirit in the breasts of the peace men that moves them? Are they fighters, too? In attacking war, do they feel that they are somehow identified with the pomp and circumstance of glorious war?