cient concern into the moral effect of our present insistence upon peace as an end in itself, rather than as an instrumentality for effecting greater ends outside and beyond itself. The maintenance of the so-called arts of peace is not a sufficient justification for peace under all conditions. To the degree in which we fail to clothe peace with moral power, to identify it with objects of moral concern, to make it the incentive and opportunity for sacrifice and heroism, we leave it under the popular imputation of selfishness. I follow out the danger from this defect in our advocacy of peace into sufficient detail to indicate the extent of the popular distrust, and to show the grounds of it.

II

The most evident, and in some respects the most justifiable, ground of popular distrust of the peace movement is the fear that it may effect a change in the relative moral value of things which have thus far held the first place in the estimation of men. These first things are justice, liberty, and, more recently, equality. Of these there is probably the greatest sensitiveness in regard to liberty. But loyalty to some one of these moral constants, as the given circumstance may direct, has been regarded as the primary duty. Will this distinction be maintained under peace, or will there be a tendency to raise the relative value of those secondary duties which are incident to some supreme struggle in behalf of liberty or justice?

We are gaining an understanding of the relative significance of the primary duty of defending liberty as we are called upon to meet one of the secondary duties thrust upon us by the war. We have accepted neutrality as our national duty in the present crisis. We have accepted it as prescribed by our

position, rendering physical participation in the war relatively impracticable; as most consistent with our traditions warning us against foreign alliances; and as necessitated apparently by the composite character of the nation, made up as it is out of the nations at war. It has been accepted, under the high leadership of the President, as a duty which carries with it the distinction of making us the 'mediating nation of the world.' 'We are,' to use his words, 'compounded of the nations of the world; we mediate their blood; we mediate their traditions; we mediate their sentiments, their tastes, their passions; we are ourselves compounded of those things. Therefore we are able to understand all nations. In that sense America is a mediating nation.'

This is a noble and commanding conception of the duty attending the increase and expansion of the nation, but it inevitably suggests Mr. Lincoln's conception of the duty attending its origin and the cause of its existence, in the familiar words of the Gettysburg speech. It was the conception there set forth, realized in the sight of the world, which brought hither the peoples out of all nations who have made this a composite nation. It is this conception, not the increase of numbers which it has effected, which is the reason of our continuance as a nation. It is this conception which is entitled to undisputed precedence as the generations pass and as still newer peoples and races enter our gates.

These two conceptions, that of a composite and mediating nation, and that of a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the maintenance of it, are in no sense incompatible if they are held in true proportion the one to the other. If in the final settlement of the issues of the present war this nation shall be able, because of its neutrality, to cast the vote which shall reinstate

Belgium in its sovereignty and restore to France its ravished provinces, we shall have achieved a great victory for the new policy of making neutrality tributary to liberty. If we fail in our endeavor, the endeavor will stand to our credit in the account with peace, but not to our credit in the account with liberty. The liberty-loving and sacrificing nations, though they may in that event have suffered defeat, will necessarily assume the moral leadership among kindred nations, leaving to us the place of leadership in the cause of neutrality. Just what this may signify in the long future will depend upon the part which neutrality is to play in international affairs. But at present there are those among us who cannot persuade themselves that the cause of neutrality in its widest reach is comparable with the cause of liberty. While we follow with approval the course of the Administration in the vindication of our rights as a neutral nation, our hearts are in the contest across the sea. We are conscious that the great issues are being settled there. Our unofficial neutrality is charged with sympathies which find their only relief and satisfaction in the fact that our official neutrality can be legitimately used to the advantage of those with whom we sympathize.

Our present position, however, as related to the supreme issue of the war, is calculated to awaken, and has awakened in many minds, serious forebodings. In the event of the final victory of Germany we have the definite prospect of the consolidation of the Teutonic nations, with the inclusion of the tributary races of Southeastern Europe, and with the incorporation of the Turk, giving a combination for the support of militarism such as the world has not seen since the days of the Roman Empire. No one can fail to understand the part which this combination would

play in the continued struggle between absolutism and democracy, a struggle in which there will be lessening room for the operation of neutrality, and a straitening of place for the neutral nations. The forecast gives significance to the words of Lord Cromer: "If Germany should be vanquished in the present contest, all will fortunately be well for nations which have been able to preserve their neutrality. The triumph of the Allies will incidentally involve their triumph. But if the contrary should prove to be the case, and if Germany should emerge victorious from the struggle, neutrals will eventually have to ask themselves whether a more timely and active interference on their part might not have obviated the disastrous results which must inevitably ensue both to themselves and to the world in general.'

In this view of the situation national preparedness assumes a new meaning. It means self-defense in all contingencies, but it means in certain contingencies the wider defense of liberty. I doubt if the more extreme pacifists have ever contemplated the defeat of the Allies, at least their disastrous defeat. It is one thing to hold the more absolute views of peace unvexed by any thought of the actual danger to liberty, and another thing to entertain the same views in quietness of mind if the securities of liberty are evidently endangered. But the advocacy of peace may be carried to the point of 'moral temerity' through a fatal lack of perspective, as in the present untimely effort to arrest the war at the very moment when militarism is in the ascendant, and when the party of aggression has the most to gain and the least to lose. The whole circumstance of the war as it proceeds makes the problem of peace terribly urgent, but it makes the problem also terribly searching in its questionings. What kind of peace

are we willing to accept as the outcome of the war? What unexpiated crimes against liberty are we willing to forget? What securities of liberty are we willing to forego?

The German Chancellor has announced that it is Germany's aim 'to be the shield of freedom and peace for the small and the big nations of Europe.' When we think of universal peace, do we or do we not tolerate the thought of a peace established in militarism and guaranteed by militarism?

III

The problem of universal peace cannot be restricted to wars induced by national ambitions or by national antagonisms: it must take due account of the social strife. The social strife represents a possible transition, not only in the incitements to war but also in the means of war, from the nation to the class as the unit of organized power. On the ethical side it represents that widespread struggle for equality which may supersede the struggle for liberty as the chief cause of revolution.

The comparative unconcern regarding this phase of warfare has produced in not a few minds a distrust of what may be termed the democracy of peace. The movement for universal peace did not enter upon the crusade against war with that popular sympathy which might have been gained by some earnest endeavor to compose the social strife. The opportunity had been for a long time present, and it had become increasingly urgent. The war, it must be remembered, did not come upon us simply as an interruption of peaceful pursuits. It caused rather an instant and complete diversion from contentions which had filled the minds of peoples and of rulers with anxieties and forebodings. With the exception of Germany - the reasons for this ex

ception have since become evident every nation was profoundly agitated by the threatenings of the social strife. But this state of affairs received little attention from the advocates of peace. Doubtless the danger was underestimated, but the impression often produced was that of indifference to the issues involved. It was noted that the sympathies of men could be enlisted for the crusade against war who were themselves interested parties in the social strife.

In what form, and with what energy, the social strife may be renewed at the close of the war by the nations more immediately involved in it, no one may predict. We can, however, foresee the possibility that in some nations, perhaps in England, the war may avert a social revolution by having virtually effected a social revolution. Such a reduction of economic inequality may have been brought about, and such a redistribution of political power may have been made, that the tension of the social strife may prove to have been greatly relieved. In this country the conditions will certainly be different, creating the tendency to increase rather than to diminish the social strife. Very much of the spirit of sacrifice which has supported the nations at war may be expected to go over into the economic struggle to recover the markets of the world. This willingness to endure economic sacrifice must cause a cheapening of the market, which in turn must affect the wages of the American workman. Dr. David Jayne Hill goes so far as to predict that America will be made the dumping-ground for the cheaply made goods of Germany, owing to the continued hostility of the opposing nations as expressed in restrictions upon trade. It is doubtful if a like protective restriction in this country would maintain wages at the present standard. Incidentally, and yet very seriously,

the disturbance of the labor market caused by the manufacture of war munitions may affect the whole labor situation when the collapse of that stimulated industry shall occur. No one who believes in the legitimacy of this industry, or sympathizes with the intent of it, can blind his eyes to the economic danger which lurks in its development. In fact, at the time when the rupture of diplomatic relations between this country and Germany seemed imminent, it was a partial relief of the strain to reflect that, in that event, this industry might come under the control of the government for the regulation of its profits, as well as for the direction of its uses.

It has long been evident, though the fact has not yet made its due impression, that industrialism is the modern training-school for war or peace. It is there that men are actually thinking of one another in terms of war or peace. It is there that they learn to organize for or against one another. The lockout and the strike are distinctly warlike measures. Arbitration is a term of war, the most advanced term looking toward peace, but still presupposing a state of warfare. Coöperation, in some one of its manifold forms, is the only distinctive term of peace. It is such, not simply because it implies sympathetic action, but because it educates all concerned in 'those sobrieties on which democracy must at last rest.' As we recall how many persons are in the training school of industrialism, how early they enter it and how long they remain in it, and how various and how influential are the experiences through which they pass, we can see how far back the peace movement must reach in its educative work. What can we hope to accomplish in the training of our diplomats for carrying out the policy of universal peace, if we cannot train our captains of industry, in the

ranks both of capital and of labor, to think and to act in the terms of peace? The inconsistency is greater than a nation can maintain, and at the same time aspire to the place of leadership in the cause of universal peace. Peace is not a contrivance for the settlement of disputes between nations. Peace is a state of mind in peoples themselves, developed, if at all, out of the ordinary experiences of associated life. The social strife creates a state of mind which makes peace in any large sense seem impracticable. If we cannot do business according to the principles and methods of peace, how can we expect that such a course of action will be successful in the conduct of the government? Nothing would refute so quickly or so effectively the charge that peacemakers are theorists as the application of the principles and methods of peace to industrialism. So long as it is necessary to employ the Federal army to keep the peace in Colorado, or for like emergencies in other states, it is very difficult to persuade the average man of the moral consistency of efforts for general disarmament.

IV

In accounting for the lack of popular response to the present claims of peace, we must recall the pessimistic views which pervaded society, during the years of peace immediately preceding the war, regarding the spiritual outcome of our modern material civilization. Now that war has come and wakened men to the larger issues of life, they do not care simply to revert to former conditions.

I think that the pessimism which preceded the war was overwrought; but no one can deny its existence, or doubt that we are now feeling the effect of it in our endeavor to justify the demands of peace. In view of this past experi

ence, which is still fresh in the minds of men, it is manifestly harder for them to believe in the satisfaction, within the restrictions of peace, of some of those higher instincts which have free play in the tumult of war. Certainly it gives an added pertinency to the questions, where is the moral stimulus of peace, and what is its moral equipment for the tasks, the conflicts, and the adventures of life?

When we turn from our past unsatisfying experiences to observe more carefully the range of ordinary moral incentives and opportunities, we are impressed by two conditions. On the one hand we see the lessening of what may be termed the heroic opportunity for the average man. The outer world seems to be closing in upon him. Once, and in days not far remote, this outer world gave him freedom, incitement, adventure. It created heroic types out of common men. The seafaring man made England. The pioneer made America, as one may see in reading, for example, Winston Churchill's The Crossing, worthy of a permanent place in American literature as an epic of early American life. To-day it is the task, the 'job,' which confronts the average man, not the adventure. When we think of the splendid possibilities in industrialism to arouse the energies, to quicken the imagination, to multiply the power of each man by that of his fellows, we might assume an increase rather than a lessening of the opportunity for the strenuous life. But the fact is otherwise. Industrialism has not yet realized its possibilities of incentive and opportunity. For the present the raw immigrant is more in the line of succession to the pioneer than any man amongst us. He may be disappointed, disillusioned, but not before he has bequeathed to his children desires and ambitions which he may have failed to realize.

On the other hand, passing from the average to the exceptional man, the man with the full opportunities of the intellectual life before him, we see how easy it is for him to detach himself from the incentives of the spiritual life. It would not be charitable or true to say that the expansion of the intellectual life has produced merely intellectualism. It has produced great moral results, as notably through many of the sacrifices attending the progress of science. But it has also produced a class, corresponding to that of the newly rich in social life, which has not found its place in the intellectual world. With many of this class the mark of intellectual superiority is a certain disdain of any of the recognized sources of the spiritual incentive. As a result of this intellectual contempt, the inner world of spiritual motive is closed to the man of this type as effectually as is the outer world of adventure to the average man.

War brings the heroic opportunity to the door of the average man, and the heroic incentive to the mind of the exceptional man. We deplore this kind of opportunity and this kind of incentive. The cost is fearful, to be reckoned largely in the price which others must pay; but men recognize the opportunity and feel the incentive. It would be worse than idle for us to ignore the quick transition which war may effect in responsive natures from the commonplace or the cynical to the sacrificial and the sublime. No one of us can deny, nor can we read unmoved, the testimony of those who have passed or are now passing through this experience. A poet, of the quality of Rupert Brooke, reborn out of the experience of the present war and at the cost of his life, has the right to be heard.

Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,

And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,