60 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 15. 



fense of our homes and our country, and are 

 as morally justifiable as would be the act of a 

 man who kills the villain who seeks the life of 

 his wife or little ones. But wars which arise 

 to settle a point of national honor, in the dip- 

 lomatic use of the word, are exactly analogous 

 to an affair of honor ( or, rather, of dishonor ) 

 between individuals. Thank God that the set- 

 tlement of such affairs by the duel is practical- 

 ly extinct ! There has come about a healthy 

 revolt of the moral sense of the world, always 

 excepting those German universities where 

 the moral sense is the subject of theoretical 

 rather than practical exercise, and where duel- 

 ing is in most high honor. 



When we see so plainly the moral grounds 

 on which rests the abolition of the personal 

 duel, can we for a single instant stop short of 

 applying the same conclusion to the national 

 duel? What better right have a hundred 

 thousand men to resort to bloodshed over a 

 point which, even by the irritable code of dip- 

 lomacy, can touch each one but indirectly, 

 when at the same time a private conflict on 

 the same grounds is declared by the Christian 

 sense of the world to be an immoral and dis- 

 graceful thing ? Or, to put the analogy in 

 still closer terms, what better justification 

 have two kings or two parliaments, using each 

 a hundred thousand men as weapons, to enter 

 into a deadly combat over a point of honor or 

 aggression, than have two private citizens in 

 resorting to pistols at ten paces as a settlement 

 of a dispute at cards ? 



The pensonal duel and the national duel 

 must be called by the same name — murder by 

 agreement, or, rather, murder by disagreement. 



3. Again, it has long been argued that war 

 is the great civilizer, and it has been consider- 

 ed conclusive to point to the fact that no his- 

 tory of civilization can be written without re- 

 cording an almost unbroken succession of 

 wars. 



This is as nmch as to say, after the manner 

 of those who unwittingly tamper with that 

 rusty old kicking musket called ' ' inductive 

 logic," "Wars have occurred, and progress 

 has been made in civilization, ^therefore wars 

 have produced civilization." But the old gun 

 is ju.st as liable to recoil, and prove eqvially 

 well that war is the end of civilization, since 

 the two have gone hand in hand. One can 

 prove any thing by such logic. The old as- 

 trologers had just as good a right to the con- 

 clusion that a certain star was the cause of a 

 certain man's destiny, because of some observ- 

 ed connection in time between the man's 

 birth and the planet under which he was born, 

 or of its conjunction with another planet. 

 But whether it has ever been true in the past 

 that war has aided and not in reality retarded 

 civilization, we do not need to consider now 

 so much as we need to be sure of the fact that 

 it never can be true in the future. 



War is an anachronism. It is out of date. 

 War is a relic of barbarism, as truly as is the 

 voodoo superstition of the Louisiana negroes. 



Do we seek for a cause of the advance of 

 civilization ? Civilization has come about just 

 in proportion as brute force has been made 

 subordinate to intelligence. It is intelligence 



that has built cities, cultivated fields, improved 

 machinery, increased production. It is brute 

 force by which all these are quickly and easily 

 destroyed. 



The war spirit is an anachronism because it 

 seeks to enthrone brute force, and 1o lay tax 

 upon the finest powers of the intelligence of 

 men in order that brains and skill may be the 

 servants of the war spirit. 



Co-operation is the highway' along which 

 the car of progress moves. The world has 

 become much smaller than it used to be, and 

 consequently the nations are much closer to- 

 gether now than formerly. Therefore if this 

 war tendency is not checked it must inevita- 

 bly retard progress, for war is the death of co- 

 operation. Wars henceforth can result only 

 in tearing asunder and upheaving the cement- 

 ed blocks of national co-operation which are 

 the paving of that highway. Wars can suc- 

 ceed only in blocking, retarding, and over- 

 turning progress. War is the world's road 

 agent. At the cannon's mouth it relieves 

 prosperity of her valuables, and with scientific 

 coolness breaks open and rifles the treasure- 

 safe of peace. 



4. The application of greater intelligence to 

 war combines with this ever increasing near- 

 ness of nation with nation to render war far 

 more destructive than it ever was in former 

 times. The growing science of war makes it 

 more deadly, and the identity of interests of 

 one nation with another makes war more far- 

 reaching in its consequences. 



I am not soiTy that this is so; perhaps in no 

 other way can the world be made to realize 

 the awful follj^ of war. When the folly of it 

 becomes plain, perhaps then we shall by de- 

 grees come to see also that war is the hideous 

 crime of nations. 



Every sober-minded statesman in Europe, 

 worthy of the name, deplores the awful wrong 

 of war, and dreads to precipitate its calamity; 

 yet Europe is hardly less than one vast armed 

 camp, and the strange policy of every Euro- 

 pean nation is to seek to maintain peace by 

 the continued increase of its armament. 

 Strange method ! What kind of peace must 

 result ? Only a strained and artificial peace. 

 Quiet, it is true, but not that of a home, a 

 school, or a church. Rather, it is the omi- 

 nous silence of a powder-magazine. A single 

 match will produce an explosion; and that ex- 

 plosion must bring disaster to a whole conti- 

 nent. An armed peace is no real peace, because 

 the principle of peace is not recognized. An 

 armed peace is merely a suspension of hostili- 

 ties. There is but one true basis for peace, 

 and that is f/ie annaineni of reason. 



5. Here is the ground for the appeal to ar- 

 bitration. It assumes two things. 1. That 

 justice and not robbery is what nations desire; 

 2. That the enlightened reason of impartial 

 statesmen is capable of deciding disputes 

 justly. Sooner or later nations must come to 

 these assumptions, not only as they have al- 

 ready done for minor questions, but also for 

 the large ones; and the ultimate outcome must 

 be the abolition of the trial by war, and the 

 disbanding of the standing armies. When 

 the court of arbitration for the world has be- 



