CHAPTER II
ARMIES AND NAVIES
How is the authority of the state maintained? In whatever guise, or however far removed from the rudest savage tribe to the most modern democratic state, this autocratic power rests on violence and force alone. The first great instrument which supports every government on earth is the soldier with his gun and sword. True, the army may be but rarely used. The civil power, the courts of justice, the policemen and jails generally suffice in civilized lands to maintain existing things; but back of these, to enforce each decree, is the power of armed men with all the modern implements of death.
Thousands of church organizations throughout the Christian world profess the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, of peace on earth and good will to men, and yet each of these Christian lands trains great bodies of armed men to kill their fellows for the preservation of existing things. Europe is made up of great military camps where millions of men are kept apart from their fellows and taught the trade of war alone. And democratic America, feeling the flush of victory and the glow of conquest, is turning her energies and strength to gathering armies and navies that shall equal those across the sea. Not only are these trained soldiers a living denial of the doctrines that are professed, but in obedience to an eternal law, deeper and more beneficent than any ever made by man, these mighty forces are working their own ruin and death. These great armies and navies which give the lie to our professions of faith exist for two purposes: first, to keep in subjection the people of their own land; second, to make war upon and defend against the other nations of the earth. The history of the world is little else than the story of the carnage and destruction wrought on battlefields; carnage and destruction springing not from any difference between the common people of the earth, but due alone to the desires and passions of the rulers of the earth. This ruling class, ever eager to extend its power and strength, ever looking for new people to govern and new lands to tax, has always been ready to turn its face against other powers to satisfy the ruler’s will, and without pity or regret, these rulers have depopulated their kingdoms, and carried ruin and destruction to every portion of the earth for gold and power.
Not only do these European rulers keep many millions of men whose only trade is war, but these must be supported in worse than useless idleness by the labor of the poor. Still other millions are trained to war and are ever ready to answer to their master’s call, to desert their homes and trades and offer up their lives to satisfy the vain ambitions of the ruler of the state. Millions more must give their strength and lives to build forts and ships, make guns and cannon and all the modern implements of war. Apart from any moral question of the right of man to slay his fellow man, all this great burden rests upon the poor. The vast expense of war comes from the production of the land and must serve to weaken and impair its industrial strength. This very force must destroy itself. The best talent of every nation is called upon to invent new implements of destruction—faster sailing boats, stronger forts, more powerful explosives and more deadly guns. As one nation adds to its military stores, so every other nation is also bound to increase its army and navy too. Thus the added force does not augment the military power, but only makes larger the burden of the state; until, to-day, these great armies, aside from producing the moral degradation of the world, are sapping and undermining and consuming the vitality and strength of all the nations of the earth. Cost of labor and strength means cost of life. Thus in their practical results these armies are destroying millions of lives that a policy of peace and non-resistance would conserve and save.
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But when these armies are in action how stands the case? Over and over again the world has been submerged by war. The strongest nations of the earth have been almost destroyed. Devastating wars have left consequences that centuries could not repair. Countless millions of men have been used as food for guns. The miseries and sufferings and brutality following in the wake of war have never been described or imagined, and yet the world persists in teaching the glory and honor and greatness of war. To excuse the wholesale butcheries of men by the governing powers, learned apologists have taught that without the havoc and cruel devastation of war the human race would overrun the earth; and yet every government in the world has used its power and influence to promote and encourage marriage and the rearing of children, to punish infanticide and abortion, and make criminal every device to prevent population; have used their power to heal the sick, to alleviate misery and to prolong life. Every movement to overcome disease, to make cities sanitary, to produce and maintain men and women and children has received the sanction and encouragement of all governments; and still these glorious rulers have ruthlessly slaughtered in the most barbarous and cruel way tens of millions of their fellow men, to add to their glory and perpetuate their names. And philosophers have told us that this was necessary to prevent the over-population of the earth!
No single ruler, however cruel or ambitious, has ever yet been able to bring the whole world beneath his sway, and the ambitions and lusts of these separate chiefs have divided the world into hostile camps and hostile states. Endless wars have been waged to increase or protect the territory governed by these various rulers. In these bloody conflicts the poor serfs have dumbly and patiently met death in a thousand sickening ways to uphold the authority and prowess of the ruler whose sole function has ever been to pillage and rob the poor victims that fate has placed within his power. To these brutal, senseless, fighting millions the boundaries of the state or the color of the flag that they were taught to love could not in the least affect their lives. Whoever their rulers, their mission has ever been to toil and fight and die for the honor of the state and the glory of the chief.
But, to-day, even national preservation demands that the rule of peace shall give place to the rule of war. In the older countries of the earth the great drains made upon industry and life to support vast armies and equip them for slaughter is depopulating states and impoverishing the lands. And besides all this, so far as external power is concerned, no nation adds to its effectiveness to battle with the others by increasing its army and navy. This simply serves to increase the strength of the enemy’s guns and to make new combinations between hostile lands, until the very strength of a nation becomes its weakness and must in turn lead to its decay and overthrow. The nation that would to-day disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrung from its hostile and unwilling serfs. A nation like this would exhibit to the world such an example of moral grandeur and true vitality and worth that no nation, however powerful, would dare to invite the odium and hostility of the world by sending arms and men to conquer a peaceful, productive, non-resistant land. If the integrity and independence of a nation depended upon its forts and guns the smaller countries of Europe would at once be wiped from the map of the world. Switzerland, Holland, Greece, Italy, and Spain are absolutely powerless to defend themselves by force. If these nations should at once disarm every soldier and melt every gun and turn the worse than wasted labor into productive, life-saving work, they could but greatly strengthen themselves amongst the other nations of the earth. Not only this, their example would serve to help turn the tide of the world from the barbarous and soul-destroying path of war toward the higher, nobler life of peace and good will toward men.
But not alone are these small nations made still weaker by war, but every battleship that is built by England, Russia, France, Germany, or the United States really weakens those nations too. It weakens them not alone by the loss of productive power but by the worse than wasted energy which is required to support these implements of death, from the time their first beam is mined in the original ore, until scarred and worthless and racked by scenes of blood and violence and shame, they are thrown out upon the sands to rot. But every battleship weakens a nation by inviting the hostility of the other peoples of the earth, by compelling other rulers to weaken their kingdoms, to build mighty ships and powerful guns. Every preparation for war and violence is really a violation of the neutrality under which great nations profess to live. They are a reflection upon the integrity and humanity of their own people and an insult to every other land on earth. The building of a man of war, the rearing of a fort, or the planting of a gun can be likened only to a man who professes to live in peace and quiet with his neighbors and his friends and who goes about armed with pistol and with dirk.
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But these patent evils and outrages are after all the smallest that flow from violence and strife. The whole pursuit of war weakens the aspirations and ideals of the race. Rulers have ever taught and encouraged the spirit of patriotism, that they might call upon their slaves to give their labor to the privileged class and to freely offer up their lives when the king commands. Every people in the world is taught that their country and their government is the best on earth, and that they should be ever ready to desert their homes, abandon their hopes, aspirations, and ambitions when their ruler calls, and this regardless of the right or wrong for which they fight. The teaching of patriotism and war permeates all society, it reaches to the youngest child and even shapes the character of the unborn babe. It fills the soul with false ambitions, with ignoble desires, and with sordid hopes.
Every sentiment for the improvement of men, for human justice, for the uplifting of the poor, is at once stifled by the wild, hoarse shout for blood. The lowest standard of ethics of which a right-thinking man can possibly conceive is taught to the common soldier whose trade is to shoot his fellow man. In youth he may have learned the command, “Thou shalt not kill,” but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters manhood and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through his neighbor’s heart,—and this unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred, and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because his ruler gives the word. It is not the privilege of the common soldier to ask questions, to consider right and wrong, to think of the misery and suffering his act entails upon others innocent of crime. He may be told to point his gun at his neighbor and his friend, even at his brother or father; if so he must obey commands.
Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die,
represents the code of ethics that governs a soldier’s life.
And yet from men who believe in these ideals, men who sacrifice their right of private judgment in the holiest matter that can weigh upon the conscience and the intellect, the taking of human life,—men who place their lives, their consciences, their destinies, without question or hesitation, into another’s keeping, men whose trade is slaughter and whose cunning consists in their ability to kill their fellows,—from such men it is expected to build great states and rear a noble humanity!
These teachings lead to destruction and death; the destruction of the body and the destruction of the soul. Even on the plea of physical evolution in the long sweep of time, these men must give way to the patient, peaceful, non-resistants, who love their brothers and believe in the sacredness of life. Long ago it was written down that “He who takes the sword shall perish by the sword.”