Newer Ideals of Peace (1906)

Their wordsThe following pages present the claims of the newer, more aggressive ideals of peace, as over against the older dovelike ideal. These newer ideals are active and dynamic, and it is believed that if their forces were made really operative upon society, they would, in the end, quite as a natural process, do away with war.

Their wordsCertainly no theory could be devised which is more cumbersome, more roundabout, more extravagant, than the reductio ad absurdum of the peace-secured-by-the-preparation-for-war theory.

Their wordsIt is possible that we shall be saved from warfare by the “fighting rabble” itself, by the “quarrelsome mob” turned into kindly citizens of the world through the pressure of a cosmopolitan neighborhood.

Their wordsThere arises the hope that when this newer patriotism becomes large enough, it will overcome arbitrary boundaries and soak up the notion of nationalism. We may then give up war, because we shall find it as difficult to make war upon a nation at the other side of the globe as upon our next-door neighbor.

Their wordsWe care less each day for the heroism connected with warfare and destruction, and constantly admire more that which pertains to labor and the nourishing of human life.

Their wordsThey depended upon penalties, coercion, compulsion, remnants of military codes, to hold the community together; and it may be possible to trace much of the maladministration of our cities to these survivals, to the fact that our early democracy was a moral romanticism, rather than a well-grounded belief in social capacity and in the efficiency of the popular will.

Their wordsWe also assume in our formal attempts to teach patriotism to him and to his children, that experience and traditions have no value, and that a new sentiment must be put into aliens by some external process.

Their wordsThis devotion, this comradeship, and this fine esprit de corps should have been won by the Government itself from these newly arrived, scared, and untrained citizens.

Their wordsUnless we subordinate class interests and class feeling to a broader conception of social progress, unless we take pains to come in contact with the surging and diverse peoples who make up the nation, we cannot hope to attain a sane social development.

Their wordsIn all fairness, these difficulties should be distributed and should not be allowed to fall completely upon the group of working-people whose labor is displaced as a result of the changes and who are obliged to learn anew their method of work and mode of life.

Their wordsClass and group divisions with their divergent moralities become most dangerous when their members believe that the inferior group or class cannot be appealed to by reason and fair dealing, but must be treated upon a lower plane.

Their wordsWe may gradually discover that in the interests of this industrial society of ours it becomes a distinct loss to put large numbers of producers prematurely at work, not only because the community inevitably loses their mature working power, but also because their “free labor quality,” which is so valuable, is permanently destroyed.

Their wordsWe may at last discover that we are imperiling our civilization at the moment of its marked materialism, by wantonly sacrificing to that materialism the eternal spirit of youth, the power of variation, which alone is able to prevent it from degenerating into a mere mechanism.

Their wordsBut rival cities have long since ceased to settle their claims by force of arms, and we shall have to admit, I think, that this early test of the elector is no longer fitted to the modern city, whatever may be true, in the last analysis, of the basis for the Federal Government.

Their wordsShe will bear her share of civic responsibility because she is essential to the normal development of the city of the future, and because the definition of the loyal citizen as one who is ready to shed his blood for his country, has become inadequate and obsolete.

Their wordsWe have come to realize that the great task of pushing forward social justice could be enormously accelerated if primitive methods as well as primitive weapons were once for all abolished.

Their wordsThe task that is really before us is first to see to it, that the old virtues bequeathed by war are not retained after they have become a social deterrent and that social progress is not checked by a certain contempt for human nature which is but the inherited result of conquest.

Their wordsIt is the military idea, resting content as it does with the passive results of order and discipline, which confesses a totally inadequate conception of the value and power of human life.