Remarks at the "Peace Meeting," held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, Sunday afternoon, May 16th, 1909, following a Discourse by Elder W. W. Riter on the subject of "Universal Peace."
I.
THE BLESSEDNESS OF PEACE.
"And he [Jehovah] shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plow shares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
This is the passage of Scripture which Elder Riter referred to as being the one which, perhaps, will be more frequently repeated today than any other passage of Scripture; for in our own land, and other Christian lands, this day is dedicated to the promotion of peace; to the suggesting of ways and means by which peaceful arbitration may be substituted for the dreadful arbitrament of war, in the settlement of international difficulties.
I presume there is no one but what loves peace. We remember, of course, the injunction of the Psalmist, "to seek peace and pursue it." We recall, on this occasion, the song of the angels at the birth of the Christ, when the hope of Isaiah in a new form was expressed in the song of the angels, in the Judean hills—"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." I think of all the salutations that were ever spoken to man, the most beautiful is that salutation of the Christ after his resurrection upon meeting his disciples—"Peace be unto you!" This afterwards became the universal Christian salutation—"Peace be unto you!" "He [the Christ] hath called us to peace," is Paul's declaration. Again: "if it be possible—as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." Of wisdom it is said:
"Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are paths of peace."
From all these expressions we learn, of course, the desirability and the beauty and grace of peace—"peace on earth, and toward men good will." Strange indeed would be the spectacle of a man who would express himself in favor of war instead of peace. Peace is the mother of abundance; the nurse of sciences and of arts; for without peace these things may not abound. Peace is essential to the progress of nations; some one has called it the "calm health of nations." Every prompting of the heart and every deduction of the reasonable mind would array all men upon the side of peace. Good sense demands it; prosperity and progress of nations demand it. I give my voice for peace. But in our contemplation of this subject, there are some other things that, I think, ought to be considered. We must not forget that there is such a thing as "ignoble peace," There has been in the past, and there may be in the future, such things as "honorable wars." There are some things in this world that can not be arbitrated. A burglar, for instance, enters your home, and he loads up his bag with your valuables—your jewelry, your money, the product of your frugality and industry—and when you catch him red-handed in the act, he may not drop his bag and propose arbitration. You can't arbitrate the case; he must be seized and brought before the courts, and receive the punishment due to his crime. The community must be protected against such characters. It is equally true that there are international affairs that may not be arbitrated. A host may not invade our territory, and while still occupying it propose arbitration of differences between us. We will not endure the presence of the invader. He must be driven from the fatherland. Until we reach the basis of assured justice in personal affairs and in national affairs, the world may not hope to dispense with the force that can demand and assure justice. The very existence of law implies force. The great Napoleon, who will yet be recognized as a greater statesman than he was warrior, once said, "Your laws are mere nullities without the force necessary to make them respected." Law implies penalty; penalty implies force; force, in the last analysis of it, means armies and navies, and there is no escaping the conclusion. While God is spoken of as a God of justice, he is also spoken of as a God of battles: and we have a number of instances named in holy writ, where God justified war—notwithstanding all the horrors attendant upon it. There are some things worse than war, and there are some things even better than peace. Justice is better than peace; and without justice, be assured you can have no enduring peace. War is horrible, but slavery is worse. Deprivation of your rights, the right to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness—to be deprived of these is worse than war; and these are worth all that it costs to maintain them, worthy of all that even a war would cost us to maintain them.
II.
THE GOD OF BATTLES.
I was much impressed, many years ago, in reading the account of Joshua, when he was taking possession of the land which God had given to the Hebrew race. As he was nearing Jericho, in the early days of his conquests, on one occasion he observed a stranger approaching, with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him and said, "Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?" "Nay," said this glorious personage, "but as captain of the host of the Lord, am I now come;" and Joshua fell at his feet and worshiped him without reproach, acknowledging him as lord, and inquired what he would have him to do; and the divine personage—for he was no less—required the warrior, Joshua, to remove the very shoes from his feet, for he was standing on holy ground! How different this incident from that where an angel appeared unto John, the beloved disciple, and John, overwhelmed with the glamor of the angel's brightness, fell down and worshiped him, or would have done so, but the angel quickly raised him up and said, "See thou do it not, for I am of thy fellow servants and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus, worship God." But in the case of Joshua bowing down to this personage, with drawn sword in hand, "Captain of the Lord's hosts," he was not stopped in his worship of him; proving to us that this personage was more than an angel—that he was divine. What, Deity? Yes, or why was he worshiped by Joshua? Again, it is written in the Scriptures:
"The sons of Reuben, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh—made war with the Hagarites—and they were helped against them: for they cried to God in the battle, and he was entreated of them; because they put their trust in him.—Then fell down many slain, because the war was of God."
These incidents represent God indeed as a God of battles. I know it is said that "War is hell," and therefore, from that standpoint, some people may think that God has little or nothing to do with war; but at this point I may say that I share the views of his Grace the Archbishop of Armagh, who, in a poem published a few years ago, said:
"They say that 'war is hell,' the 'great accursed,
'The sin impossible to be forgiven—
Yet I can look beyond it at its worst,
And still find blue in Heaven.
"And when I note how nobly natures form
Under the war's red rain, I deem it true,
That he who made the earthquake and the storm,
Perchance made battles too!
* * * * *
"As the heaven's many colored flames
At sunset are but dust in rich disguise—
The ascending earthquake dust of battle frames
God's pictures in the skies."
III.
JUSTICE THE BASIS OF PEACE.
You will see, from what I have here said, that while I am interested in this question of peace, and believe in it, I have little sympathy with the hysteria that sometimes goes with those who advocate it. If the world wants peace—very good; the world may have it; but that world-peace which has been the dream of prophets and sages must have for its basis justice. No more beautiful expression than this: "Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other;" and peace is of little worth till kissed by righteousness. Make your basis of universal peace universal justice, and peace is assured. And may we hope for it, this universal peace? Most assuredly. It has been promised the world by divine wisdom, and his word will not fail; but when we get universal peace, it will be because righteousness has been established, and because justice is assured. Those of us, then, who are interested in establishing international peace—universal peace—let us proceed by seeking to establish righteousness—personal and national—and by establishing justice. Already there has been wonderful progress made by the world in this direction. Already we may see the twilight breaking over the eastern hills that gives assurance of the coming day of peace spoken of by the prophets. Elder Riter has traced for us some of the developments in this progress. I think, in modern days our movements towards it have been almost by leaps and bounds. It was in 1815 that the first peace society in the world, was organized. That organization was effected in the United States. It took place immediately after the close of the unfortunate war of 1812, our last war, with Great Britain—pray God it may be, indeed, the very last! The circumstances attendant upon that war, the pity of seeing people of the same race and of the same religion, locked in deadly conflict; and then, too, the unhappy circumstances of having the chief great land battle fought some fifteen or twenty days after the peace between the two nations had really been signed—these circumstances created a sentiment against such wars as this, wars between people so closely allied in interest and sentiment, and religion—it was like brother fighting brother! And the great internecine war between the American states presented to the world even a sadder picture, and created a still stronger sentiment for peace. So the peace movement began from these circumstances, and from these beginnings grew until from a purely local movement it became a national one; and today is an international one. In 1899 we had the happiness of seeing the world's first great, permanent international court of arbitration established, the beginning of the fulfilment of that dream of the prophets, the establishment of the universal parliament of the world, the federation of nations. The leading nations of Europe and America sent delegations to the Hague that year, and there was established this permanent court of arbitration, which has already passed upon some twelve international cases, and that has quite a number of cases still pending before it. This is progress beyond the dreams of men a quarter of a century ago. But these things grow slowly. We need not marvel if the movement that finally established this permanent international court of arbitration grew slowly. "Constitutions," says an authority on civil law, "are not made—they grow." They come up out of the long experience of races of men. They are beaten out upon the anvil of human experience. Take a single nation, a homogenous people—how slow they have been, in the centuries of the past, to come to a settlement of the questions pertaining to the civil rights of persons, to their political rights under the law. How slow individuals have been to learn that liberty is liberty under the law; and not the license to do as one pleases, irrespective of the rights of others! You may be assured that if a race or a nation has made slow progress along these lines, when the people were homogenous, when their civilization was identical, when their aspirations were of one character—then you may be assured that nations of different races, civilizations, traditions and temperaments will still make slower progress and require a longer time to conform their conduct to international law, the object of which shall be to dispense justice among the nations. Still we may hope that this movement towards a recognition of international justice and universal peace will be more rapid than in past ages as to national reforms and progress, since we live in an age noted for the diffusion of knowledge, and a constantly widening circle of intelligence.
In this text I have read to you, there is one thing that I want to call your attention to, that we are apt to overlook, and that is this: "And He [Jehovah] shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people," etc. Mark you that! Jehovah "shall judge among the nations;" then comes your promise of the beating of swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. When? When Jehovah judges among the nations—when his law, the very essence of which is justice, is observed and honored by the nations; then we may hope to find the fulfillment of the dream of the prophet,—and not until then. And when the dream of the poets and sages shall come to pass, and the federation of nations shall be a reality, and there shall be the world's parliament—what then? Why, even then you will find that law implies force to compel obedience, and that force in the last analysis of things means armies, navies—war! So that when the world shall be removed from the possibilities of war, I do not know. My judgment is that we shall need courts, police, armies, navies—the embodiment of force, just so long as on the part of individuals and groups of individuals and communities and nations there is a disposition to resort to acts of injustice, to violate law, to gratify the disposition in man to make aggression upon his fellow-men. These things must be restrained; and, in some cases force only is the means by which they may be restrained; so that the means of the enforcement of law, so far as I can see, must live as long as there is law.
Well, this view is not so very hopeful for international—for universal peace, is it? I read, in my Scriptures, about their having been war even in heaven; and I do not know but what there may be future wars in other heavens—I am sure there will be if there is rebellion against law, and justice, and good order; and it will extend into the future, as well as being a reality of the past. Now, do you not see that the end of all our reflections upon the subject simply means that you must have righteousness or you can have no peace? You must have justice or you can never have peace. Neither Gods nor men have been able to have peace in the past, not even in heaven, apart from these principles; and what holds as to the past, I think is very likely to hold for the future.
As to the sorrow that wars bring to us—I scarcely know what to say of that. But even sorrows have their mission in this world; and suffering has its mission. I think that any Christian who rightly understands the gospel of Jesus Christ will value all the more the salvation that comes to him, by reason of what it cost—the blood-sweat of the Christ in Gethsemane, as well as his sufferings on Calvary. I think a man should value the liberties that he enjoys all the more because of the awful price that has been paid for them. I read here in our Book of Doctrine and Covenants that God inspired the fathers of our republic to establish the Constitution of our country—the United States; and he tells us that he "redeemed the land by the shedding of blood." Are these battles of the past, these sufferings and sacrifices of past generations, of no value? I prize the liberties of our age and the civilization of our times, not only because of the value of the things in themselves, but also because of the price that the generations in the past have paid for them. They become sanctified through the suffering and the sacrifice that it has been necessary to make fo them. Father Ryan has voiced some sentiments, in which I share, and I am going to read them to you. It is said by some one, whom I do not now remember, that "Calvaries and crucifixes take deepest hold of humanity—the triumphs of might are transient, they pass away and are forgotten—the sufferings of Right are graven deepest on the chronicles of nations." I do not believe that all the suffering of the past is wasted, by any manner of means, "Crowns of roses fade; crowns of thorns endure!" And now for this poem:
THE LAND WITH MEMORIES.
"Yes! give me a land where the ruins are spread,
And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead;
Yes, give me a land that is blest by the dust,
And bright with the deeds of the downtrodden just!
Yes, give me the land that hath legend and lays
Enshrining the memories of long-vanished days;
Yes, give me a land that hath story and song,
To tell of the strife of the Right with the Wrong;
Yes, give me the land with a grave in each spot,
And names in the graves that shall not be forgot!
Yes, give me the land of the wreck and the tomb,
There's a grandeur in graves—there's a glory in gloom!
For out of the gloom future brightness is born,
And the graves of the dead, with the grass overgrown,
May yet form the footstool of Liberty's throne,
And each single wreck in the war-path of Might,
Shall yet be a rock in the Temple of Right!"[1]
[Footnote 1: This poem was often quoted by Mr. Alexander Stephens, of Georgia, than whom America has produced few greater statesmen, and this poem for him seemed to voice the sorrows of the South after the close of the war between the States.]
Now, let us have peace, even if we have to fight for it—and in my judgment, for some time to come, if you have peace, it will be because you are prepared to fight for it; and when the great central government shall be established—the world's federation of nations—it will need the force, the power to compel men to submit to its just decrees. This dream of the poet, here in Isaiah, shall be fulfilled in very deed, when God shall judge among the nations; because when he judges among the nations, he will judge in righteousness, and he will judge in justice; that will insure the world's peace; and our national armaments then will not be necessary. But what experiences, national and international, lie between where we now stand and the attainment of that end—who may tell? Another prophet caught a glimpse of that side of the question, when he declared that the nations would beat their plows into swords, and their pruning hooks into spears (Joel 3:10); and there is something in the way of experience in that kind for modern nations, in all probability. Yet, I am a man of peace, I believe in peace. I intend to work for peace, but I cannot close my eyes to some of these things that are born out of the experiences of races and nations of men; but may God grant that the spirit of peace may increase in the world—there is much need of it, but when peace becomes universal and permanent, be assured it will be so, because righteousness and justice shall have been established in the world.
