SB 273 THE GENESIS OF WAR AND THE FOUNDATION OF PEACE by GERVAISE RUNDALL SAN FRANCISCO A. M. ROBERTSON MCMXVIII COPYRIGHT, 1918 BY GERVAISE RUNDALL DONE BY PHILOPOLIS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO THE GENESIS OF WAR AND THE FOUNDATION OF PEACE PART I pages 7-29 In the Presence of the Beast The Pebble of Understanding PART II . . . ... . . . . pages 30-46 The Narrow Areas of Regenerate Life A Surging Barbaric World The Gleam of Destiny '66865 THE GENESIS OF WAR AND THE FOUNDATION OF PEACE OINCE that August day when this fearful war fell upon the world, we have! been "treated; , ?;' by press, platform, and pulpit, to a confusing variety of thoughts concerfti.ngVi.ti ,,]>''','' '', * ' ; ' We have Treitschke and Bernhardi, who dismiss the imminence of a vital step in the spiritual evolution of the race and, assuming the permanence of the status quo of the law of claw and fang, ably apply themselves to a demonstration of the virtue of war as a means of Teutonic self-preservation and expansion. We have the conventional-minded clergy who, with an even less consistent notion of the reign of sequence and order in the uni- verse, no sooner hear of war's advent than they busy themselves mightily in organizing a nation-wide prayer for peace, all the while deliciously innocent of any comprehension of their own past, present and continuing con- tribution to the causes that alone lead to war. The Genesis of War and We have one belligerent's frank announce- ment of the "law of necessity/' and a com- plete gamut of opinions from all sources upon the scope and authority of international law, upon the rights and duties of neutrals, upon humane treatment of the enemy and of non- combatants. The authority of precedent is strenuously denied and as vigorously upheld. Where, in all this maze of thinking, lies the truth? In proceeding to disentangle and lay straight in our understanding the elements of any one of the complex problems that harass the life of the race, it is necessary to trace pres- ent conditions from their point of origin. It may be said, strictly, that the finite mind is not capable of dealing with origins. But we can greatly aid our thinking by excluding inci- dentals and thereby reducing the complexity of the problem to its simplest terms; we can return, in our thought, to that stage of de- velopment where human life included only the simple, fundamental relations and experi- ences. Today it includes essentially no more, 8 The Foundation of Peace but our perception of this truth is confused by a massed froth of detail. In all the world's literature of fiction there are said to be no more than a score of distinct plots. The en- grossing and all but infinite variety of tale is obtained by mere superficial differences of in- cident and circumstance. It is so with life. The elements in its prob- lems are few. A comprehensive and balanced philosophy of life is not the abstruse thing it seems, possible only to philosophers of pre- tentious and resounding phrase. If the vital essentials of a sound philosophy were possible of ready comprehension only by the minds of these few, it would tend to negative the pri- mary hypothesis of all human thought that the universe is under a just and beneficent rule. In first seeking to understand life, therefore, that we may understand war, the problem is one for direct and simple thought and simple words. It is well within the in- tellectual scope of the average man. Life is not a stationary set of conditions. It is an evolution. It is not a repeating circle, The Genesis offf^ar and but an advancing spiral. Its characterizing trend, in spite of local variation, is toward greater good. This upward trend is insured to all life by the unheralded presence of a commanding principle, or instinct, that, un- detected, weaves its sufficient spell upon con- duct and in its influence provides for the thoughtful an unmistakable sign that a just and beneficent power is in control. It is but a corollary to this truth that the control is absolute, undisputed, and that the life of the universe is conducted in accordance with a comprehensive plan, in view of whose funda- mental outlines all seeming confusion, dis- order and wrong would be revealed as the transitional mechanism for attaining a higher level of order and well-being than would otherwise be possible. Rivalry, antagonism, conflict, battles unto death, destruction of the lives of other beings to feed and furnish or free the life of the de- stroyer, are so marked a feature of all exis- tence, from the lowest to the highest on earth, that it is idle to seek grounds for assert- 10 The Foundation of Peace ing that such strife is external to the Plan and disapproved by its Author. Wherever con- flict is found, it has evolved naturally and in- escapably out of antecedent conditions, and it supplies the logical and exclusive means by which the conscious beings who are immersed in such antecedent conditions can possibly elevate themselves to the stage next higher. Doubtless a level will ultimately be reached where conflict, in the form of physical vio- lence, will have served its necessary purpose and be left behind. In the far reaching and painful way along which strife and violence are the companions of all conscious life in its slow evolution through animal forms from lowest to highest, the mission of strife and the pain it brings is doubtless, in part, (in addition to providing the intense stimulus of necessity for the evo- lution of individual powers and efficiency, and, conceivably, providing in the perfect memory of the subjective mind a background of suffering as an element of contrast essen- tial to a capacity for the long happiness we ii The Genesis of War and believe we are destined to know in future realms) to stimulate the evolving conscious- ness to finally conceive and set up an order of social life that shall be above the need of physical strife, that shall retain the benefits it has unquestionably conferred, while avoid- ing the pain and disaster that have attended it. WHEN an animal, or primitive man, desires a thing, he goes and takes it if he can. This is and must be in accordance with the Plan for that stage of development. But life is not stationary. It is an evolution. And from time to time evolving organisms experience critical stages of transforming change. Sooner or later the ranging soul experiences a series of roughly defeated purposes through the greater strength of others who desire the same things. Sooner or later, when consciousness has been sufficiently evolved, when one has become aware and somewhat weary of the destruc- tiveness of continual fighting, and when he 12 The Foundation of Peace has by force been despoiled of a thing he had made with labor and care, or had held by long usage, he comes to feel there is a higher law than the law of might, and he appeals to it. Here is the dawn of ethics in the individual consciousness. For unnumbered centuries the crude chil- dren of earth have struggled with this baffling spiritual problem, luring them slowly upward to their high and distant heritage. Spiritual leaders have had birth in all the races to aid them and quicken their insight. In the Gol- den Rule and in other teachings has the single essence of the law of right and profitable con- duct been given them. These teachings may be summarized in a single, comprehensive LAW OF JUSTICE, which requires that *TO EVERY SOUL SHALL BE INVIOLABLY PRESERVED *This formula for expressing the ethical principle which, alone, can be justified as a mandate restricting conduct in its social bearings, is here quoted from a manuscript written two years earlier. There its derivation and its absolute right to the exclusive posi- tion given it are worked out in what is meant to be a thorough manner. Some attention is given to its application to social life in general, but the chief purpose of that volume is to attack in a '3 The Genesis of War and AN EQUAL FREEDOM AND OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE USE OF ENVIRONMENT IN HIS OWN WAY FOR THE PROMOTION OF HIS OWN WELL-BEING AS HE CONCEIVES IT. This is the totality and completeness of moral law. more thorough and decisive manner than is usual, in the many volumes on the subject, the problem of revealing the precise reason why society finds itself in the wretched dilemma where it now is and practically always has been with respect to the most vitally im- portant, because potentially the most beautiful and power-giving, phase of human life. This larger volume the author hopes to publish before the end of the present year. In it he believes he has been able to show that the entire schedule of virtues mentioned by writers on ethics, and including the "Eight Cardinal Virtues" announced by Aristotle, are clearly reducible to three fundamental virtues; that the third of these, relating exclusively to social conduct, and the ethical principle of which is expressed in the "Law of Justice" above, is merely a special form of the second, which relates primarily to conduct in its reaction upon self, the result of this reduction being, therefore, to show that all wise and profitable conduct whatsoever flows from the observation of two, only, primary and irreducible principles of action, this analysis tending in a marked degree to clarify the complex and terribly difficult problem of right living; and, further, that of these two comprehensive, primary virtues, the first, though given no more than an obscure place and indirect attention by writers on ethics, practically without exception, is nevertheless deserving of the place here given it as the major princi- ple of all right conduct. The Foundation of Peace There is, in clear understanding, no other moral law. All of the multitude of pro- nouncements which assume to be such and which are in the smallest respect out of parallel with this, are based upon miscon- ception. To pilot the social life by such a defective chart makes some degree of event- ual disaster a certainty. This Law of Justice is the all-sufficient guide for the regener- ation of social well-being, to the limit which is possible with a given scientific knowledge of environment. But the grasp of the average mind upon the ethical principle, even in this "modern" day, is a faltering one, and its application to specific cases is more often grotesque than clear-minded and true. The spirit is weary of antagonism and longs for justice, but the weight of custom is heavy and the ways of the uncomprehending are ruthless ways. Long, long baffled have been the efforts of the enlightened few to build up from its founda- tion in the depths and maintain a blessed isle of justice, security and peace in this angry The Genesis of War and and treacherous sea of social life. Faith teaches us that a broad continent must here have its beginning. And soundings reveal that the submerged base is building broader and higher. Each emerging islet, beaten down and scattered by the waves of intolerance, serves to broaden and lift the sure foundation. Headway is perceptible, but it is slow, slow. When two primitive men, evenly matched and weary of fighting, agree to withhold the club while they discuss the right of the mat- ter, then if by rare good fortune they be approximately alike in their understanding, and their weariness, they may find it possible to agree upon a basis for peace. But such an agreement between men of slight moral de- velopment can never be more than tentative. Its continuance depends wholly upon the con- tinuance of their similar understanding of the beneficent possibilities of peace and their equal reluctance to resume conflict. This applies alike to the relations between two individuals, two tribes, two nations, two allied groups of nations. A peace of exhaus- 16 The Foundation of Peace tion, of awaited opportunity, is a false peace. It is not peace at all. It is the ominous still- ness of ambush, while the spirit of revenge or the greed of conquest bides a ripened time. Though it may continue for decades or gener- ations, those who love peace for its spiritual values and significance delude themselves if they believe they look out upon a world essen- tially at peace. No nation of the world has yet known a peace that was not thus tenta- tive and precarious. While we live on earth the soul is enmeshed in the flesh, the pulses run hot, the pains of former generations' wars are not felt, wide differences of national envi- ronment induce widely different trends of national thought and life, inevitably there re- sult slowly intensifying antagonisms that be- come wholly irreconcilable in the present stage of moral and intellectual development and war is the one solution. And war will come repeatedly, with sure sequence if there be not some greater consideration to restrain. In precisely the same class with the zeal- ously repeated effort and mistaken hope to The Genesis of War and attain in world affairs a genuine and perma- nent peace on this false, tentative basis, are those efforts to permanently mitigate the ferocity of conflict. Neither an absence of warfare, nor humanity and fairness in war- fare, are in the slightest degree to be depended upon in an unregenerate world, unless they are enforced by a superior power or by considerations of expediency and self-in- terest. In ordinary wars the public opinion of the world may be sufficient to prevent wholesale and official resort to methods dis- approved by that opinion, since the preserva- tion of favorable international repute is an asset of future self-interest. But the most commanding consideration of self-interest is that of self-preservation, and in a war to the death, which this war virtually is, it is idle to expect that the controlling dynastic groups in any nation, whose continued existence un- der tolerable conditions is sharply menaced, will be influenced in their choice of means by considerations of humanity or international law. Pretexts and sophistries will be cleverly 18 The F o undation ofPeace advanced to maintain a seeming of conven- tional conduct, but their course of action will be most consistently dictated by the sole con- sideration of advantage. A nation driven to the last extremity will dismiss an inherently tentative understand- ing for lessening the horrors of war and will invoke the law of claw and fang to the utter- most. An individual, in an extremity, may sacrifice his life rather than preserve it by means that would cause those he holds dearest to regard him as dishonored. But a nation in an extremity is made up of individuals who are planning and fighting not for themselves so much as for others of their own blood and closest personal ties. Here, in the extremity of international strife, a national altruism dic- tates the dismissal of humane conventions and spurs the resort to the ultimate of ferocity against a common enemy. In the present war, where the announced intention of each side is the final crushing of the very military existence of the other, where half a world's resources are set against the other half, where 19 The Genesis of War and zeal, organization, efficiency, effort, are at an undreamed of maximum, the law of neces- sity logically comes into play and all inher- ently tentative agreements are properly cast to the winds, so far as this action does not reasonably threaten to bring more loss than gain. It is inevitably a question of expe- diency. There exists a wholly irreconcilable difference of opinion as to right and the entire immediate appeal of all directly concerned is to the law of might. 1 HE individual is strictly typical of the state, in ethical relations. Even such crude civil order and peace as we now find in organized states could not be enjoyed until in the pre- ceding unorganized and barbaric population there came to be a sufficient number, loving peace, to subdue and control the less devel- oped and enforce upon them the measures designed to establish it. It is precisely so in the world society of which the nations, instead of individuals, are 20 The Foundation of Peace units. Here the order-loving element have not yet united in controlling numbers. Cun- ning and might are still supreme. The inter- national world is a primitive, barbaric world. The first semblance of a fairly dependable peace will come in world society as it did in the primitive populations, viz.: when a con- trolling group of its peace-loving units organ- ize to impose upon the rest of the social units, by persuasion and by physical force, a cessa- tion of warfare with its intolerable pains and burdens. That motive is strongly evident among the social units of the international world today. The present war has gone beyond the control of conventional rules. It has, logically, nat- urally and inescapably, become a desperation. It has unleashed the depths and heights of human ferocity. It is fanatically inflicting upon all the world's arrested enterprises of personal well-being its dread maximum pen- alty, heavy beyond all comprehension. It marks the breaking point of human tolerance. A transforming change in the affairs of the 21 The Genesis of War and race is imminent. A competent defense of the world against such tragic possibilities must be set up. In its international phase human so- ciety must take the step that shall lift it from a raging, wanton barbarism upward to the lowest level in the realm of order and peace an enforced discontinuance of war as a means of adjusting differences between nations or other groups. Exercising the greatest care to be just and to have no hasty or partisan thought, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion, from the mass of data, that the hope of the world for an effective organization of peace-loving na- tions, at the close of this war, that shall im- pose upon world affairs an era of peace with a tolerable and wholesome degree of justice, rests with a victory of the allied forces.* Rationally interpreted, the indications would seem to be that with a German victory that nation's ruling policy would be one of expan- *This booklet was written in June, 1915, when America was trying to preserve an "honorable" neutrality, for which she is now very tardily striving to redeem herself. 22 The Foundation of Peace sion, of aggrandizement, of advantage over other nations wherever possible. Ten times the overmastering power, military glory, do- minion and established permanence of a Roman Empire is their fondest dream. For the present catastrophe all nations share the guilt, clearly enough, though it were more intelligent to say, instead, that all have been alike at a stage of their aeon-long de- velopment, from zero toward infinity, where the truth that underlies abiding peace was as yet unrealized and impossible to their minds. Therefore, for a conventionally neutral per- son, or nation (without direct material or per- sonal interest in the immediate causes of this conflict), to decide where to yield preference and give aid in consequence of a realization of the inherent responsibilities of world-citi- zenship the determining consideration is not at all one based upon the delusive concep- tion of guilt, in itself, but is wholly one of the relative development of the contending groups in intellectual perception and sympathetic in- sight into the more intimate and heartfelt 23 The Genesis of War and human affairs; wholly one of their relative value as prospective ministers of common, elementary justice to a confused and tortured world. Intimate study of the national life of the contending states would seem to firmly found confidence that the allied nations stand distinctly closer to a realization of the long repeated lessons of war and of other social ex- perience. They avowedly seek the ideal of race autonomy. They have emphatically de- clared that this war must end in crushing militarism from the face of the earth. It is in a high degree probable that a victory of the allied nations would be followed soon by their taking steps to organize a federation of na- tions whose prime purpose should be to ren- der war an impossibility in future. Whether it might succeed without exception is a differ- ent question. In any case it is the step to anticipate now. For those who judge the situation and the possibilities as they are here judged, who realize that the vital destinies of the entire world for centuries to come are now in the 24 The Foundation of Peace balance and that the extremity in which the warring nations find themselves inexorably extends to include us all, who believe that with the victory of one side and not the other will come an opportunity for a transforming advance in the affairs of the race, there can be no such thing as an intelligent and honor- able neutrality in this war. No other conflict has involved such issues and possibilities. The time-honored etiquette of neutrality is void and utterly consumed in the fierce fire of a zeal for human welfare, kindled by the imminence of a great opportunity. IT would seem, both by direct reason and by analogies in the history of civil peace, that the most feasible plan for policing the world against war would be to have one armed force, military and naval, dissociated from the con- stituent nations of the federation and under the direction of the central power, and to for- bid all other armament of a kind effective against it in war. The existence of this force T h e Genesis of IF a rand would not necessarily be an intolerable men- ace to the liberties of any people. Every organized state now existing, while preserv- ing far more quiet within its domain than had been experienced before the organization of states and their police power, has neverthe- less used that police power to the oppression, in some degree, of certain elements in its population. This feature of life is wholly unavoidable in an unregenerate world. The abuse of power is gradually lessening, though still marked, even in America. But with the lesson of the present war before them, the risk of the serious misuse of the armed power of a federation of the nations would be distinctly lessened, for some decades, at least. By that time the ideals of democracy will have much further advanced their hold upon national affairs, for these are quickening days. This, together with the fact that the most enlight- ened men available to the current political regimes of the time would undoubtedly repre- sent the nations in the proposed federated government, would steadily increase the 26 The Foundation of Peace world's assurance of the proper conduct of that body. In any case the risks involved are unavoidable, the world being as it is, and the means proposed offers the sole prospect of re- lieving the world of such catastrophes as the one we witness. Conceivably, when the opportunity shall present itself to prepare the way for such a federation, it may be lost through inaction. It will require vision and initiative to win its possibilities for ourselves. There is no salva- tion in a mere ideal, left inert. Reluctance to take prompt, even though venturesome or perilous, action in a crisis, is not born of a love of peace, but of something less noble. In rational forecast, the first semblance of enduring world peace must come through such a federation. Shall the world strive for that consummation at the psychological junc- ture afforded by the terrible affliction of the present war, or shall we through hesitancy and lack of faith suffer the world to wait until another century shall bring a still more bitter 27 The Genesis of War and and agonizing reminder of our part and re- sponsibility in the great drama of reality? We are, by birth, citizens of the world, members of the human family. In modern times ready communication and travel have conferred upon that citizenship great risks, great responsibilities and great powers of in- fluence. This new physical fact of increas- ingly close relationship renders no longer tenable the conventional fiction of the disin- terestedness of one nation in a vital crisis and warfare between any other two. This never has been fully true, at any time in the his- torical past, but has been assumed to be true merely because of the practical difficulties and dangers to non-combatant nations in tak- ing open action in accordance with their actual interests. But these interests have fre- quently found expression in secret action and in the unofficial acts of private individuals. If, then, as world citizens, clearly conscious of our interests, evading none of our responsi- bilities to ourselves or world society, or to posterity, we are to consecrate ourselves to 28 The Foundation of Peace that ideal in the only way we can to any ideal by suitable and immediate action the first objective must be to insure the vic- tory of those nations most in harmony with the spirit of peace. The Genesis of W a r and THE AREA OF CIVILIZATION A FINISHED consideration of ethical philo- sophy, and likewise the sympathetic insight of a ripened experience, in seeking to formu- late the ultimate and sole principle of right conduct, are both drawn to an essential agree- ment with the Law of Justice offered above. Could primitive mankind have received and understandingly lived this single funda- mental precept, the major elements of Para- dise would immediately have been possessed, and it could have been embellished only by their progress in the material sciences, that would have acquainted them with the won- ders of their environment and given them dominion over it. But the utility of this ethical precept was not apparent to them. They undertook life in utter lack of its guidance. They were unac- quainted with the close-linked unity of cre- ated things; unsuspecting of the powerful 30 T h e F o undation ofPe ace reactions which this unity precipitates upon any organic part that, seeking its own good, flouts the good of the whole. Upon the pur- suit of spontaneous desire they suffered no leash. It was their stupendous and fearful task to attack simultaneously the problems of dominion over environment and dominion over self, each fateful problem, through their simultaneous presentation, immeasurably complicating the other. Could such an under- taking be set for any race of beings less than god-like in their inherent capacities? Primitive man was boldly, arrogantly inno- cent of all suspicion that the gold of this precept awaited his far explorations in the continent of experience. If he wanted a thing, he straightway went and took it if he could. If another wanted it too, so much the worse for that other. This was, to him, the unques- tioned law of his pursuit of the enterprises of life. He applied it without abatement alike to all the creatures he preyed upon and to his neighbor, his female associates, his half do- mesticated dog and horse. Kindness paid no 3 1 T h e Genesis of W a rand dividends that he had discerned and the obli- gation of equality and fairness, firmly inher- ent in life, was quite as undisclosed to his thought, and would have been as startling and repellent, as the vision of a thunderous dreadnought on the waters where he ven- tured with his canoe. Utter lack of consid- eration for other beings characterized all his activities. What countless generations of existence on this heartless plan have with tedious slowness successively sifted down into the conscious- ness of the race their imponderable contribu- tions to build those deep and unrealized strata of human experience and tendency that bear upon their surface our own hereditary and transient day! When, in course of time, to rid themselves of the unbearable pains and the personal and economic insecurity of habitual, murderous strife, a controlling element organized a primi- tive state and its police power, no such com- prehensive ideal of conduct as that embodied in the Law of Justice had occurred to them. 32 Th e Fo u n da tio n ofPeace They were only weary of constant battle and of the menace and pinch of famine. They had certain crude notions of justice and their new laws concerned themselves only with the maximum offenses against justice and peace. A chief could still sell his daughter for a horse or weapon. He still had power of life or death over his female associates and their progeny. Slaves did his menial tasks, and of their rank, or barely above it, were his wives. The ad- vance guard of what we have now come to call civilization, as represented by the primi- tive tribal or civil state, took possession of and reduced to its idea of order the narrow margins, only, of the wide-ranging continent of human interest based upon social relation- ships. Of the black sum of repellent injustice and cruelty that characterized the utter bar- barism preceding the primitive civil state, its laws restrained only those offenses primarily affecting the security of person from direct physical attack and a sufficient peace to en- able industry to provide for the economic necessities. All other human affairs were left 33 T h e Genesis of W a rand outside the pale of civilized order, immune, unregulated, to shift for themselves in the perilous wilderness of barbarism. In all the subsequent development of civil law, down to the present, the basic motives for the regulations added have been these two original motives of the immunity of the body from direct physical violence and the ad- vancement of the economic interest of the classes in control. The original marginal provinces of civilized order have been some- what further extended. But, holding in view the entire scope, the full continent, of human social interest, it is clear that the modern civilized state has extended its control to but a small part of it. The ethical principle, how- ever, the Law of Justice, contemplates all human relations, wide-ranging however they may be beyond the narrow scope of civil law, and until the wholesome dominion of this principle is acknowledged in their farthest reach and in all human contacts whatsoever, human life remains but partly and superfi- cially civilized and predominantly unregener- 34 T h e Foundation ofPe ace ate and barbaric. A social regime dominated by an almost exclusively economic ideal is too busy with this and too blind to the other values of life to reach out into these remote and hidden areas with any effective regula- tion or educative influence and thus extend to them the salvation of justice. In these broad regions of life, then, and by such men as are spiritually ungrown, the instincts of savagery and barbarism remain unchecked. Abiding security and peace in human rela- tions rest exclusively upon a foundation of the simplest elements of fairness and justice. Distinct progress has been made in the direc- tion of this ideal, but in no nation of the world has it been deeply and comprehensively established. In no modern society do the lives of the people proceed, under the impulse of their divinely implanted instinctive desires and aspirations, to a fair opportunity for self- expression and self-development, free from the hindrance and blight of injustice at the hands of institutions and customs, of com- mercial brigandage, and of the exempt and 35 The Genesis of War and unregulated tyrannies which weaker or dis- advantaged members of a family commonly suffer at the whim of the stronger, and which children all but universally experience, sooner or later, from parents, who are inevitably in some degree defective in wisdom and sym- pathy. In the privacy that shields from public knowledge the continual contacts of husband and wife, of parent and child, and of the mem- bers of any household group, there is a wide scope for the exercise of injustice and bru- tality far within the limits of the mere require- ment that no law shall be violated. It is no exaggeration to say that here is a jungle of bitter wrong that lies, uninterfered with, be- yond the pale of order and distinctly within the outer wilderness of unregenerate barbar- ism, where cruelty, cunning and might may rove practically unchecked. Not only does substantially the entire re- gion of domestic life, the "sacred precincts of home," lie beyond any real control and at the mercy of the one who is in a position of 36 T h e Foundation ofPe ace advantage there, but to a very great extent do all other relationships, between neighbors, between employer and employed, between those who meet socially, also lie beyond the boundaries of any effective regulation or in- fluence. The law does not, and usually can- not, directly concern itself with them and public opinion is too easily evaded or duped, and in itself is too passionate, whimsical and diverse to redeem these areas of life and bring them within the realm of order and peace. Enumerate in your thought the constant violations of justice that go on in these out- lying preserves of native barbarism. Reflect upon the petty imposition and rudeness; the bald selfishness; the insolence offered in the security of superior physical or economic strength; or behind the sacred screen of pre- tended domestic harmony upheld before the world; the clever venom of conventionally correct innuendo, gossip and safely placed slander; the rude repression of the efferves- cent spirit of childhood and youth; the bland denial of youth's choice of a career, or of a 37 The Genesis of W^ a r and mate; the barren and accusing wastes in child life that mark the absence of the Mon- tessori ideal in our care of the young; the devastating injustice of those phases of the industrial system that have so far fended off legal control. A man may not steal a loaf of bread, but he may say to another who has labored faith- fully with him and taken the wage of forty years, "My need of thee hath ceased; find thy living elsewhere/' He may, through the devices of adroit and magnetic salesmanship, profit his own purse by burdening the inexperienced with pur- chases it were clearly not to their interest to make. He may conserve his comfortably salaried position as pastor of a church of the prosper- ous, touching with language deferential and unctuous to the hearts of his parish the moral aspects of the ceaselessly intensifying social- economic crisis; he may do this, inwardly conscious of the hypocrisy of his course as an ordained minister of untainted Christ-truth 38 T h e Foundation of Peace to the world; he may do this, knowing that an increasingly conspicuous number of his brother shepherds, stung by the inadequacy of helpful thought and act to which their zeal is firmly limited by the thrifty conservatism of the church, are throwing off its uniform, renouncing its support, and striding forth into a more sincere and precarious crusade where the intellect and heart may speak from con- viction and faith. He may thus preserve him- self and his own in softness and abundance while seeking in a measure to buy an indul- gence for his writhing soul by confessing, in a funk of moral weakness and desire for con- doning sympathy, to a perfectly safe confes- sor, the sad predicament to which his hope- ful ministry has brought him. It is well known that numbers have made this confes- sion. He may do this dastardly betrayal of a sacred trust, gathered within whose province and mission are the highest earthly oppor- tunities of an intelligent and sympathetic being; he may bring dishonor to the office of a priest of truth, he may use it to mislead 39 T h e Genesis of W a rand his people, but he may not steal a loaf of bread to feed the unfairly dispossessed and starving. It is further illuminating to observe that in even those narrow areas of life which the law assumes to specifically control, our courts are crowded with the business of keeping in check attempted subversions of legally pre- scribed justice. A thoughtful mind can hardly deny that the quality of our social life is deeply dis- colored with the willingness to live in viola- tion of the primal and instinctive Law of Justice, is deeply characterized by the settled habit of so living, and is agonized and restless with the accumulating pain of its results. Is such a world a domain of peace? The guns of war may not at the moment thunder and rend, but the maggots of injustice worry and gnaw within all our life. The spirit of war broods over our thought, and all the imple- ments of war of antagonism, invasion, espionage, dissembling, siege and conquest those intangible weapons which are not denied 40 T h e Foundation ofPe ace to us by the civil law, are ruthlessly employed at the prompting of that spirit of conquest in battling for our narrowly conceived in- terests, while uncomprehendingly we speak of the world as enjoying a season of peace. But, "Peace, oh Virtue, peace is all thine own." Any violation whatsoever of the one moral virtue, of the principle of justice, of equal opportunity in life, whether between individuals or groups, brings a state of an- tagonism and essential warfare. It may pass into a phase of cowed submission, but the elements of warfare have been evoked by injustice, and violent outbreak waits only upon a sufficient opportunity. The frequency with which this seething, underlying warfare in social life breaks the imposed conventions and seizes upon even the forbidden weapons of sudden death is a confirmation of its per- ennial existence and intensity. The Genesis of War and 1 HE ethical relations between individuals are a true type of those between nations. When we emerge to the study of the ethical relations between nations, or groups of allied nations, we find there is no organized power superior to them which may undertake the authoritative regulation of international con- tacts. And, just as those affairs of individual life lying outside the scope of the state's legal regulation thereby lie in a region of unre- straint, and one of barbaric injustice and cruelty precisely to the extent to which the persons concerned are of undeveloped charac- ter, not giving voluntary obedience to the Law of Justice, so even to a greater extent do the affairs between nations lie outside, in this unredeemed region, and wholly at the mercy of whatever degree of character development may be possessed by the classes who direct the affairs of the various states. And, if a marked and even characteristic quality of average individual human life, when ranging free from restraint in the un- 42 T h e F o un d a ti o n ofPeac e supervised regions of experience, be one so largely unregenerate, conspicuously unkind and unfair, as pointed out above, one pro- voking marked antagonism and unrest in the personal relations, discoloring the whole social life with the dark tinge of resentment and strife, how may we expect that from such a corrupt fountain of individual conduct a sat- isfying justice, order and beneficent peace shall flow forth in that similarly unsupervised and irresponsible region where the nations meet and parley? And when international war, thus unavoidably arising in this ungov- erned region, spreads its hot and stinging devastation throughout all human life, at the spur of desperate necessities, how stupid to supplicate either the heavens or the warring units to give us peace, conceived as mere cessation from present armed conflict, and to leave, untouched and unappealed to, those red fountains of injustice, intolerance, and essential warfare that flow on and on in all our social life, ceaselessly providing the re- sistless antecedent conditions, the momentum 43 T h e Genesis of W a rand of habits and tendencies, that render it wholly impossible that the world escape the logical sequence international war when- ever some nation, representing but a group of these unregenerate individuals operating in an ungoverned region, finds itself in a posi- tion of advantage. How hopeless the dream of universal and securely established peace until the world is regenerated at the fountain head of all social conditions the individual's understanding and accustomed life. I have said that modern society is super- ficially civilized and predominatingly unre- generate and barbaric. I believe that a full recognition of this truth is a vital requisite to anyone's sociological understanding and use- fulness. We love justice; but few hearts there be that are regenerated beyond the possi- bility of yielding under severe stress and in- flicting upon others recognized injustice and loss that they may preserve possessions dear unto themselves. We love peace and human sympathy; but the protean weapon of Force lays ready at the prompt handof each oneof us. 44 The Foundation of Peace The idea of individual guilt for these threatening conditions, however, has little place in rational thought. Distinctions of race and national feeling and the many an- tagonisms of personal interest are until comes the transforming miracle of the dawn- ing of a new belief, and the freedom to live it quite as insuperable barriers to an abiding peace as are the distinctions of structure and disposition that set the animal species against each other in irrevocable enmity. All this warfare so stands confirmed and inevitable in the Plan. In human affairs it will continue until that magic moment when the concept of a world-wide brotherhood and equality of opportunity shall gain ascendancy and lay a beneficent hand of adequate physi- cal power upon the helm of human affairs. I am far from despairing of the human raw material. It is quite good enough. The great need is to free it from the tremendous handi- cap of unjust social and economic institutions, grown up without human intent or realiza- tion, which now practically impose upon men 45 The Genesis o f W a r self-preservation's mandate of necessity to individually resort to an equal injustice, in self-defense; to follow this freedom by giving to the young, and to all, the best instruction, most protecting care and sympathetic guid- ance the composite wisdom of the race can devise, devoting to such care of the young probably from one-quarter to one-third of the entire material resources of society and a like part of its labor time. Humanity is charged and vital with inherent good, and will re- spond to these fundamental necessities as gloriously as vegetation responds to the bene- ficent springtime and intelligent care. This task is beyond the ideals and beyond the resources of any national effort that is not cooperative in the most devoted and thorough- going sense. But it represents the exclusive means of arresting our progress toward an anti-climax and of catching the upward swing of the cycle toward a beneficent destiny. VB 1248 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY