Читать книгу Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace - George Hebard Maxwell - Страница 6

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Shall there be an end of war, and of all danger or possibility of war in the future, not only in this, but in all other countries, and shall we have universal peace on earth through all the coming centuries?

That is the most momentous question that has ever confronted any nation in the history of the world. The United States of America stands face to face with it to-day, and can answer the question in the affirmative, if the people of this country so determine.

On their decision depends, not only the safety and perpetuity of this nation, and the welfare of our own people, but the welfare of all the other nations and peoples of the earth as well, through all future time.

The question will have been answered in the affirmative whenever the plan proposed in this book shall have been adopted by the people of the United States.

Its adoption will strengthen every plan that can be devised to prevent war.

It will vitalize the influence of this nation in behalf of peace.

It will make the nation impregnable in case of war, if, notwithstanding all efforts to prevent it, war should come.

In the great crisis through which civilization is now passing, the United States alone has the opportunity and the power to emancipate humanity from militarism, and prevent it from ever again being drawn into the maelstrom of war. Unless that is done, liberty, the world over, will be slowly submerged by the subtle and insidious growth of military power in the affairs of government, and our present civilization will ultimately go the way of all the civilizations of the past.

If, on the other hand, this country rises to the opportunity, and provides a system of national defense which will not only safeguard the nation against foreign invasion or internal conflict, but will also at the same time promote human advancement, insure all the blessings of peace to the people, and check the growth of militarism, we will establish a civilization that will endure as long as the human race can inhabit the earth.

The first thing that must be done to achieve that boon for humanity is to arouse the people of the United States to a realization of the fact that the settlement of this great question cannot be left by anyone to somebody else.

Every man and every woman, the length and breadth of the land, must enlist in a great national campaign of education to get the real facts and all the facts into the minds of the people.

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

This is a government, not so much by the people as by the thought of the people.

Right thought must precede right action. Knowledge must go before right thought. The people cannot think right until they know the facts, and they must study and understand and analyze those facts and face them squarely.

That can be brought about only by a nation-wide campaign in which every patriotic citizen must participate. Each must first learn the facts himself and then carry the knowledge to others—drive it home to them and stir them to action.

To every reader of this book let it be said, as a personal message:

When you have read this book, do not lay it down with the thought:

"Yes, that is a good idea. I hope somebody will succeed in getting it done."

Buckle on your own armor and helmet, lift up your own sword and shield, and go right out into your own community and make converts yourself, who are willing not only to think but to act and to do things themselves, to lift the deepening shadow of militarism from this nation, and rescue the world from the barbarism of war.

The souls of the people must be set on fire to fight a great battle for peace and to save the ideals and traditions of our forefathers from being submerged under the rising tide of militarism.

That battle must be fought with voice and pen against ignorance, indifference, and every powerful interest intrenched in selfish opposition to human advancement.

Popular interest must be stirred to its depths to create an irresistible wave of public sentiment that will sweep away all opposition to the necessary expenditures and legislation.

Every man who would be willing to serve his country in time of war must be enlisted to serve it in time of peace, by fighting in advance of war to safeguard against it and ultimately end it forever.

Every woman who wants the menace of war lifted from the lives of the women of the world must show the faith that is in her by putting her whole heart and soul into the work of enlisting her own community in this great movement to do away with war, and to save the women of the future from the inhuman cruelties and heart-breaking agonies that war has brought upon them in the past.

The people of this country must stubbornly stand their ground to check the future advance of militarism in the United States. For years it has been stealthily gaining, while the people at large have paid no heed. Military expenditures have grown larger and larger—they have trebled within a generation—and the people have voiced no vigorous protest. They have been "asleep at the switch."

There must be an end of this indifference of the majority of the people, who have been selfishly and self-complacently attending to their own affairs while the world has been drifting into a bloody welter of war. It is only by chance that the United States has not already been drawn into it. Complications may at any time arise which will involve this nation in war.

An interest must be awakened as tense and vivid and all-compelling as would be instantly aroused by an actual invasion of the United States by a foreign enemy, and it must be awakened far in advance of that invasion, to make sure that it never happens.

For nearly two thousand years the gentle admonition "On earth Peace, Good Will toward men" has been the ideal which the human race has been struggling to attain.

And after all these centuries we are in the midst of the most bloody and destructive war the world has ever known.

Civilization has crashed backwards into the abyss of barbarism, in Europe at least, and no one can foresee the end.

In the United States the trend is in the same direction. This country will soon become a great military nation if the present tendency is not sharply checked.

Mere ignorance and indifference on the part of the people of the United States must not be allowed to stand in the way of the adoption of the national policy advocated in this book—a policy that will bring permanent and enduring universal peace to the world.

That policy must be adopted. There can be no alternative. The final triumph of militarism would be too appalling to contemplate.

Must every woman who bears a son live under the terror that she may have to dedicate him to be mangled in the service of the War God?

Must every home remain liable to be ruined and destroyed by the fires of war?

Must every fair and beautiful garden-land continue to be subject to the menace of devastation by marching armies or the bloody ruin of the battlefields?

Must the flower of the world's manhood continue to be flung into the jaws of death to satiate the blood lust of militarism?

Must the wheels of industry turn, and the sweat of human labor, for all time, be given to make machinery for human slaughter?

Is there no inspiration to patriotism that will move the people to action but the death combat?

Is there no glory to be won, that will stir heart and brain to supreme effort, except by causing human agony and devastation?

Is there nothing else that will bring out the best there is in men but the stimulus of war, and its demands for sacrifice, even of life itself?

Is there no higher service to their country to which women can give their men than to die fighting to kill the men of other women?

Must this nation, as well as others, so impoverish itself by war and preparation for war that nothing is left to pay for protecting itself against Nature's destroying forces, flood and fire and waste of the country's basic resources?

The intelligent and patriotic men and women of the United States would answer every one of these questions, with all the fervor of their being, in the way they must be answered to save civilization, if the questions could be put to them, face to face, by anyone who was ready to show them what to do to make good that answer and transform the desire into actual accomplishment.

We must therefore arm the multitude with the facts and burn into their minds the clear-cut definite vision of the plan that must be carried out to make certain that accomplishment.

That plan must provide that we shall first do the things which the people of this country can do by themselves alone without saying "by your leave" or "with your help" to any other nation.

The influence of the adoption of a right national policy by the United States will draw the world into the current as soon as its practicability and benefits to humanity have been proved, but we must not begin with a plan that will fail unless adopted by all the great powers of the world.

We cannot allow the success of our own basic plan for peace, and for safeguarding this nation against war, to depend on the coöperation of any other nation.

That has been the difficulty with nearly every plan heretofore proposed for the permanent establishment of peace throughout the world. The agreement of all the nations could not be had, and without such agreement the plan was futile.

Disarmament or the limitation of armaments is impracticable without the consent of all the great powers.

Nationalization of the manufacture of armaments, if it is to be a world-wide influence, must have world-wide adoption.

No plan for a peace tribunal can be successfully made effective without all nations agreeing to abide by its decrees.

And then it will fail unless given power to enforce its decrees.

That power will never be vested in it by the nations, not in this generation at least.

All plans for arbitration rest on the same insecure foundation.

Arbitration voluntarily of any one controversy between nations is practicable, where consent is expressly given to arbitrate that particular controversy.

But a general plan based on an agreement made in advance to arbitrate all future unknown controversies would be unenforceable and would afford no assurance of peace.

The plan for an international force, either army or navy, is too remote a possibility to be depended on now for practical results.

Agitation of these projects is commendable and should be encouraged, but we cannot wait for their adoption to set our own house in order and insure its safety.

In framing a national policy of peace for the United States, we must constantly and clearly draw the line of distinction between the deep-seated original causes of war, and causes which are secondary, or merely precipitating incidents.

The assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo precipitated the present war, but it was not the cause of the war.

Fundamentally, that cause was the check imposed by other nations on the expansion of the German Empire. The necessity for that expansion resulted from the rapid increase in the population, trade, and national wealth of Germany.

The same problem faces the United States with reference to Japan and we cannot evade it by any scheme for arbitration or disarmament. We must squarely face and solve the economic problems that lie at the bottom of all possible conflict between this nation and Japan.

A lighted match may be thrown into a keg of gunpowder and an explosion result. It might be said that the match caused the explosion. In one sense it did—but it was not the match that exploded.

And gunpowder must be protected against matches, if explosions are to be avoided. So with national controversies. The economic causes must be controlled, and conflict avoided by action taken long in advance of a condition of actual controversy.

In our dealings with Japan, as will be shown hereafter, we are sitting on an open keg of gunpowder, lighting matches apparently without the remotest idea of the danger, or of the way to eliminate it.

But the situation on the Pacific Coast with reference to Japan is not the first instance of similar risks that have been run with most appalling losses as a consequence.

The danger of an earthquake in San Francisco was known to everybody. Likewise it must have been known, if the slightest thought had been given to it, that an earthquake might disrupt the water system of the city and make it impossible to quench a fire that might be started by an earthquake.

As San Francisco is now heedless of the need for a policy that will really settle the Japanese trouble, instead of aggravating it, so she was heedless of the earthquake danger. That heedlessness cost the city $300,000,000 in entirely unnecessary damage caused by fire. San Francisco was destroyed by fire, not by the earthquake. The earthquake was unavoidable, the fire was wholly preventable.

That sort of heedlessness is typical of the American people. Busy with the present, they take no thought of the future. Every city in the United States which is liable in any year to a great flood, is equally liable to a great fire—a fire which might as completely destroy it as the San Francisco fire destroyed that city, because, owing to the flood, all the means provided for fire protection when there is no flood, would be rendered useless by the flood.

Yet every such flood-menaced city in the United States stolidly runs the risk. No general precautions are taken to prevent such destruction, though it must be recognized as being possible at any time. Great floods will rarely follow one another in the same place. For this reason, flood protection for a city which has already suffered from a disastrous flood, like Dayton, is no more important than similar protection for all other flood-menaced cities. The only way to safeguard against floods, and the consequent risk of fire losses in flood-menaced cities, is that all such cities should be completely protected against floods, under a nation-wide policy for flood protection and prevention.

When appeal is made to Congress for legislation providing for such a policy and for the appropriations necessary to make it effective, we are told that so much money is required for military expenditures that none can be spared for protection against floods.

Are we to go on for the next ten years doing as we have done in the last ten, and spend another billion dollars for the army and fortifications, while floods ravage unchecked?

If we had been getting actual protection from foreign invasion for that billion dollars, there might have been some justification for its expenditure; but we are getting neither protection from foreign invasion nor protection from flood invasion.

The fact that the people of the country at large give no heed whatever to the risk of tremendous losses of life and property by flood, arises from a fixed habit of apathetic indifference, and the fact that no commercial interest pushes steadily in behalf of flood protection.

There is money to be made, and large dividends may be earned, by furnishing insurance against fire. Consequently the owner of every building in every city is constantly reminded by insurance agents of the importance and necessity of fire insurance. This has been done until public education, stimulated by private profit, has created a habit of thought which instinctively recognizes the danger of fire, and insures against it. The property owner who now fails to carry fire insurance is commonly regarded as assuming an unwarranted risk.

The same conditions exist from a national point of view with reference to war. We build battleships, for example, largely because there is a huge private profit made therefrom, which warrants a nation-wide propaganda to educate and sustain a favorable public sentiment. The profit is large enough to permit of propitiating troublesome opposition by endowing peace palaces. That is a gruesome and ghastly hypocrisy that must come to an end, if the world is ever to attain to universal peace.

The government should, if it needs them, build its own battleships; but the first thing it should do, before it builds any more battleships, is to provide for its other more pressing naval requirements, such as trained men, target practice, transports, coaling stations with adequate coal supplies, swift cruisers, torpedo boats, submarines, aëroplanes, and ammunition.

After all that has been done, if it is made the law of the land that dividends shall no longer be earned by private corporations from building battleships or from manufacturing armor plate, it might be found that no more battleships ought to be built. By that time naval experts may have agreed that, as against torpedoes and aëroplanes, battleships are too uncertain a defense, and may have decided that we need something else.

A battleship costs anywhere from ten to twenty million dollars, and they are too expensive to be built for experiment or ornament.

The people of the United States have been relying on battleships for coast defense, but all Britain's battleships did not protect Scarborough or Hartlepool or Whitby. Neither have the battleships been able to protect themselves from torpedoes, mines, or submarines.

Congress is a mirror. It merely reflects public sentiment. So long as the need for battleships and more battleships—for bigger and still bigger battleships—is constantly dinged into the ears of the people by the profit-takers from the government, just that long will public sentiment, and the legislation and appropriations that respond to it, be warped and one sided. Our navy will continue to be top heavy with dreadnoughts, and inadequate attention will be paid to the other things necessary for a symmetrically equipped and efficient naval defense.

When private profits for building battleships shall have been eliminated, Congress will no longer skimp appropriations to man the battleships we now have, or for other naval equipment, in order to build more dreadnoughts.

After this war, it ought to be possible to conduct to success a nation-wide, and possibly a world-wide propaganda to end forever the earning of dividends from human slaughter.

That is the issue, bluntly and plainly stated, and those who profit by manufacturing the machinery of war must face it squarely. The time will come—it is to be hoped it is near at hand—when they will be held in the same estimation as are nowadays the pirates who forced their victims to walk the plank.

Over-preparedness, as well as unpreparedness, may precipitate a war. The causes of the present European war were, however, more deeply rooted than that. It was inevitable that they would some day result in war. But the war would not have come at this time if Germany had not thought England unprepared. Nor would it have come if Germany had not been, as she supposed, invincible, because armed to the teeth by corporations like the Krupps that make war and the machinery for it the source of stupendous private profits and accumulated wealth.

The growing temptation to create similar conditions in this country must be forever strangled. After the close of this war, the fields of battle in Europe must be cleared of war's devastations, and in the United States of America the field of industry must be cleared of all temptation for our merchants and manufacturers to become slaughterers by wholesale of human beings—murderers and manglers of whole battalions of their fellowmen—slayers of the fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons of millions of women. That is what they become when for money they furnish the means whereby it is done, or is to be in future done, by this or any other country.

It is far better that capital should be idle and labor unemployed than that either should be used to promote death and devastation in return for dividends or wages. All available capital and labor can find occupation in doing things that will promote human welfare. To the extent that the machinery of war may be needed by any government, it should be manufactured for its own use by that government, and never by any private concern or corporation for profit. A world movement to that end is being organized and every patriotic citizen should bear a hand to promote its success. The United States has the opportunity to be the first nation to adopt this advanced and peace-promoting national policy.

Whenever we have put an end to the making of private profit from the manufacture of battleships and machinery of war for our government, we will be relieved of much of the persistent pressure to make our navy top heavy with dreadnoughts, and to steadily increase our naval and military expenditures. More than that, we will then be able to get full, fair, and unprejudiced consideration, by the people at large, of every question relating to war or peace, or to our own preparedness for war, or the extent of the necessity for such preparedness.

Now the people know only a part of the facts on which a comprehensive judgment should be based. They have been urged to do the things which, if done, would result in profit to the manufacturers of battleships or machinery of war. Knowing this, many people go to the other extreme and oppose everything in the way of an adequate military or naval system. This tends to endanger the nation by unpreparedness, just as the Militarists would endanger it by over-preparedness, or a one-sided and unbalanced preparedness, like having battleships without other things even more necessary for naval defense.

The government should manufacture for itself all the machinery needed by it for war on land or sea. Its manufacture by anyone else should be prohibited by law. But it does not by any means follow that the government itself should refrain from manufacturing it, under the conditions that now prevail in the world. Neither does it follow that there will be no more wars. Nor again does it follow that the government should fail to be at all times adequately prepared for war. On the contrary, the possibility of war should be fully recognized and national defense should not be neglected.

Under the conditions that surround this country to-day, no nation should more carefully than ours safeguard against the danger of unpreparedness. The United States should be, not unprepared, but fully prepared, and that can only be accomplished by carrying out the plan advocated in this book, for both immediate and ultimate national defense.

The assumption that this country will never be involved in a foreign war is one which every fact of history, every trait of human character, and every probability of the future proves to be unwarranted, unless measures are taken and things done for national protection, and for the preservation of peace, that are as yet not even contemplated by the people of this country.

The cost of those measures is so small, in comparison with the enormous losses this country would suffer if it became involved in a foreign war, that to forego them because of the cost involved would be as unwise as to fail to equip a passenger steamer with life preservers as a matter of economy.