VII
PEACE
PEACE
My first wish is to see the whole world at peace and the inhabitants of it as one band of brothers, striving which should contribute most to the happiness of mankind.
PEACE
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His Hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
I WOULD THAT WARS SHOULD CEASE
I would that wars should cease,
I would the globe from end to end
Might sow and reap in peace,
And some new Spirit o'erbear the old,
Or Trade refrain the Powers
From war with kindly links of gold,
Or Love with wreaths of flowers.
Slav, Teuton, Kelt, I count them all
My friends and brother souls,
With all the peoples, great and small,
That wheel between the poles.
But since our mortal shadow, Ill,
To waste this earth began—
Perchance from some abuse of Will
In worlds before the man
Involving ours—he needs must fight
To make true peace his own,
He needs must combat might with might,
Or Might would rule alone.
PEACE
I call you to witness, my fellow-countrymen, that I have spent every thought and energy that has been vouchsafed me in order to keep this country out of war. It cannot be disclosed now, perhaps it never can be disclosed, how anxious and how difficult the task has been, but my heart has been in it. I have not grudged a single burden that has been thrown upon me with that end in view, for I knew that not only my own heart but the heart of all America was in the cause of peace.
(At Des Moines, February 1, 1916)
PEACE AT TOO GREAT A PRICE
There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect. One cannot pay the price of duties abdicated, of glorious opportunities neglected, of character, national character, vindicated and exemplified in action.
(At Des Moines, February 1, 1916)
LOVE HONOR ONLY BETTER THAN PEACE
There are all sorts of people in the United States, and there are people who think that we ought to use the force of the United States to get everything we can get with it. But you do not think that, and I do not think that, and not one American in a hundred thousand thinks that. We would use this force, not to carry out any policy that even smacked of aggression of any kind, because this Nation loves peace more than it loves anything else except honor.
(At Topeka, February 2, 1916)
THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA IS PEACE
In my efforts for peace I have been conscious of representing the spirit of America and no private convictions merely of my own. It is hard to hold the balance even where so many passions are involved, but I have known that in their hearts and by their purposes the people of America were seeking to hold the balance even.
(To New York Federation of Churches, January 27, 1916)
ACTIVITIES IN PEACE
Peace does not mean inaction. There may be infinite activity; there may be almost violent activity in the midst of peace. Peace dwells, after all, in the character and in the heart, and that is where peace is rooted in this blessed country of ours. It is rooted in the hearts of the people. The only place where tinder lies and the spark may kindle a flame is where still deeper things lie which they love, the principles and independence of their own life. Let no man drop fire there! Because peace is inconsistent with the loss of self-respect. More than that, peace is inconsistent with the abandonment of principle.
(To New York Federation of Churches, January 27, 1916)
THE BASIS OF PEACE
Peace can be rebuilt only upon the ancient and accepted principles of international law, only upon those things which remind nations of their duties to each other, and deeper than that, of their duties to mankind and to humanity.
(To D. A. R., Washington, D. C., October 11, 1915)
FRIENDSHIP BREEDS PEACE
America is at peace because she entertains a real friendship for all the nations of the world. It is not, as some have mistakenly supposed, a peace based upon self-interest. It is a peace based upon some of the most generous sentiments that characterize the heart. Our peace is not based upon the mere convenience of our national life. For great issues which it is our honorable obligation to defend we would plunge into any trouble necessary in order to defend our honor and our integrity—the honor and integrity of our nation.
(At St. Louis, February 3, 1916)
UNIVERSAL PEACE MOVEMENT
A great deal of the (universal) peace movement appears to be due to sentiment. Patriotism expresses itself in sentiment, but fundamentally it is what a man will sacrifice for public sentiment. When peace is conducted with an element of self-sacrifice we will not need peace societies. The peace movement should not be so much a protest against the clash of elements as against the causes of warfare. The only basis of peace is justice. I do not object to war because it is cruel and unjust, but because it is a clumsy and brutal instrument to get at justice. Warfare for right is honorable and will continue until some substantial instrument for the accomplishment of justice is substituted. What is needed is enlightenment in our own affairs as well as international questions. Mankind is an impartial jury not because mankind is all-wise, but because most of them are not directly interested. America started right with a Declaration addressed to "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." It is necessary that we get back to that fundamental belief. As soon as we are just to the people of the United States we will be in a position to be an instrument for universal peace.
(To Universal Peace Union, at Philadelphia, February 18, 1912)
"FIXED DESIRE OF THE HUMAN HEART"
I consider the agitation for international arbitration and world peace a deep-seated and permanent thing, representing the fixed and universal desire of the human heart.
(In Christian Herald, September, 1911)
Back to our shores he comes from the sad strand,
And some who know so much of that and this,
And what can never be, and what's amiss,
Give him cold welcome to his native land;
And some, the humbler hearted, understand
At least that through the strife he bears with him,
And shields as best he may with hopeful hand,
A little troubled flame, late-kindled and dim.
High tide in all the waters of the world,
The winds of all the wild years up and out,
And one frail light amid their fury swirled!
It shall not perish; strong through storm and doubt
It must burn on—to blaze at last sublime,
A watch-fire on the topmost hill of time.
VALE—ATQUE SALVE
(As a second presidential term was ending)
(February 25, 1921)
A Broken figure disappears alone
Down the dark roadway of the overthrown;
Yet is there time ere fades the twilight chill
For one more volley! Hasten, ye who will,
To seize on stick and shard, and hurl them after
The bent wayfarer! All your taunting laughter
Will fall unanswered; naught will he hurl back
Who plods in silence down the fated track.
But let none save the perfect cast a stone!
We, the imperfect, see the doom foreknown
On them whose vision passes human deed,
Who, free themselves in spirit, would have freed
Mankind at one quick stroke from its old bonds
Of greed and self that still to self responds.
Yet, bred in imperfections, know we not
That, stumbling through the mists, the light forgot,
Sudden we see the clouds lift from our land,
And on its sun-lit heights again we stand!
Then shall our leader through the valleys shine
A mystic form, a name to intertwine
With legends of kept faith, unbroken hope,
And quenchless gleam on gorge and icy slope.
Thus Moses leading to the very door
Of promise might not cross its threshold o'er—
Yet towers secure the leader evermore!
THE KNOWN SOLDIER
(For the day of President Wilson's burial)
(February 7, 1924)
Now through the stifling air thick with the murk
Of self and pettiness—shame's perfect work—
A sense of greatness spreads from sea to sea;
For greatness was, when, bound in unity
Of generous aim, men of our blended race
Stood looking each into his neighbor's face
And said, "This towering thought, this cleaving word
Speaks for America"—and the world heard.
Then, with new vision of unwonted scope,
They lifted up their eyes to the hills of hope.
To-day remembered greatness stirs again
The spirit that kindled once the hearts of men.
And out from smoldering embers starts a flame
Fanned by the whisper of a burning name.
Humblest and highest to that greatness thrill,
For the known soldier, dauntless of heart and will,
Mortally stricken in the long-drawn fray,
Reviling none, a wounded leader, lay,
And passed in silence to the eternal rest
Wherewith the soldier of the spirit is blest,
For all his weariness, his strength outpoured,
Blest even as the soldier of the sword.
Proud stands his country, bared and bowed of head,
While safe he sleeps among the deathless dead.
DISARMAMENT
"Put up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow
Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe
Down which a groaning diapason runs
From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons
Of desolate women in their far-off homes,
Waiting to hear the step that never comes!
O men and brothers! let that voice be heard.
War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword!
Fear not the end. There is a story told
In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold,
And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit
With grave responses listening unto it:
Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,
Buddha, the holy and benevolent,
Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of look,
Whose awful voice the hills and forests shook.
"O son of peace!" the giant cried, "thy fate
Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to hate."
The unarmed Buddha looking, with no trace
Of fear or anger, in the monster's face,
In pity said: "Poor fiend, even thee I love."
Lo! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank
To hand-breadth size; the huge abhorrence shrank
Into the form and fashion of a dove;
And where the thunder of its rage was heard,
Circling above him sweetly sang the bird:
"Hate hath no harm for love," so ran the song;
"And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!"
TO PEACE
The cup, the ruby cup
Whence anguish drips,
At last is lifted up
Against our lips.
Though we, till seas run dry,
Your lovers are,
How can we put it by,
Red cup of war?
We champion your task;
Your wounds we bind;
Behind the battle mask
Our eyes are kind.
Upon this foaming edge
Of blood and flame,
With shuddering lips we pledge
Your name.
RE-ARMAMENT
Not all the armor forged by man, not all the weapons he has made for his defense, have saved him.
Ships and guns, poisonous fumes, deadly engines of the skies and the waters, have availed, for the moment, not to make the old world better, but to make the new world worse.
The incense of valor and sacrifice and death—all honor and reverence to the noble spirits who made these immortal offerings!—has risen from the altars, and not yet is the world re-born.
Therefore it is that man, wounded, bleeding, burdened, staggering, fumbles at the buckles that bind the weight of his armor on his back, longing to cast it off, and wondering if they that take the sword must after all perish by the sword.
Shall he then throw away all his weapons of conquest and defense?
There is one armor that the world of men and women, as a world, has never yet put on. The churches have long bungled with its fastenings, but the world has gone unfended, and few have been those in whose hands the mystical sword of the spirit has shone with daily use.
This armor, waiting to be worn, is the armor of brotherhood and sacrifice, the sword of unselfishness, a conquering sword, with the power, when used, to unite the world in love. And there are none who may not put it on.
A dream of the poets? Yes. But there are dreams that come true. Even now the poet's voice is merged and drowned in the universal cry, "Disarm." The prudent and fearful hold back, and ask, "Disarm, and stand defenseless?" The answer comes, to all a single answer, "Disarm and arm again, with a new armor, not yet tried."
THE PATH TO PEACE
It may be there is a hope of getting the nations to agree to outlaw war. That would be good. It may be they would keep the pledge under all circumstances, once it was taken. But there is no guarantee of either of these things. The problem of achieving peace is certainly more comprehensive than that. The greatest hope of peace lies neither in legal enactment, nor in the individual's announcement that he personally will have nothing to do with any future war. Behind both is the problem of the world's learning to live on a human basis. The real advance in peace up to this moment rests more than anything upon advances in the human art of living together. Hope rests upon the further development of all those advantages for intercourse we have over the past: communication and travel; education and interchange of teachers; the development of the sciences in the spheres of human interest, such as medicine and agriculture; the world-wide contact of investigators of nature; the meeting of statesmen from the world over around a common table;—and with these the development of law; of conscience, of public opinion and a common religion.
Fair land of dear desire,
Where beauty like a gleam
Awakes the hidden fire
Of what our souls would dream!
Where shining ilex glistens,
And cypress' somber shade
Above dim fountains listens
In some forgotten glade.
Ah! land of dear desire,
Thy beauty floods again
My heart with sudden fire
And burns away its pain.
I dream with Perugino
On some far Umbrian hill,
Or walk with sweet Saint Francis
Till this world's fret is still;
Until my soul reposes
As, once unscourged he lay,
Amid the thornless roses
Until the break of day.
Dear saint, who was the brother
Of every living thing,
Could we to one another
Thy gracious message bring.
The world renewed, awaking,
Would shed the shattered, torn,
Grim night of its own making,
And pledge a peace reborn.
Fair land of dear desire
Thy beauty like a dream
Shall kindle and inspire
What all our souls would dream!
PRAYER FOR THE SPIRITUAL UNION OF MANKIND
War has failed to end War; diplomacy has failed to end War; only ties of the Spirit infallibly unite: therefore we pray for the Divine Alliance of Nations.
Eternal God, Father of All Souls:
Grant unto us such clear vision of the sin of war, that we may earnestly seek that coöperation between nations which alone can make war impossible. As man by his inventions has made the whole world into one neighborhood, grant that he may, by his coöperations, make the whole world into one brotherhood. Help us to break down all race prejudice, stay the greed of those who profit by war, and the ambitions of those who seek an imperialistic conquest, drenched in blood. Guide all statesmen to seek a just basis for international action in the interests of peace. Arouse in the whole body of the people an adventurous willingness, as they sacrificed greatly for war, so, also, for international good-will, to dare bravely, think wisely, decide resolutely and to achieve triumphantly. Amen.
PEACE
The cannon's voice is dumb,
The sword is sheathed again,
Homeward our legions come,—
Is it peace for the sons of men?
Peace for the troubled earth
And the host of those that lie
In the lands that gave them birth
Or beneath a stranger sky?
Shall children laugh for aye
And the sound of weeping cease
At the call of those who cry
Peace—when there is no peace?
Peace? What is peace but a name
For the war that shall not end
While souls are wrought in flame
High heaven to defend—?
Peace is a living sword
Forged for the hand of man
And the smithy of the Lord
In the halls where life began.
Peace is a challenge blown
In the trumpet of the wind.—
Till the stars are overthrown
Lift up your eyes, O blind!
And with your eyes mark well
God's banners swinging clear.
What do these banners tell?
To arms! For peace is here!
Have you forgotten yet?
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same—and war's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?
Look down, and swear by the slain of the war that you'll never forget.
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz—
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench—
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack—
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads—those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.
THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE
AN INTERVIEW WITH
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
(October 18, 1914)
The United States of Europe.
Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, firmly believes that the organization of such a federation will be the outcome, soon or late, of a situation built up through years of European failure to adjust government to the growth of civilization.
He thinks it possible that the ending of the present war may see the rising of the new sun of democracy to light a day of freedom for our transatlantic neighbors.
He tells me that thinking men in all the contending nations are beginning vividly to consider such a contingency, to argue for it or against it; in other words, to regard it as an undoubted possibility.
Dr. Butler's acquaintance among those thinking men of all shades of political belief is probably wider than that of any other American, and it is significant of the startling importance of what he says that by far the greater number of his European friends, the men upon whose views he has largely, directly or indirectly, based his conclusions, are not of the socialistic or of any other revolutionary or semi-revolutionary groups, but are among the most conservative and most important figures in European political, literary and educational fields.
This being unquestionably true, it is by no means improbable that in the interview which follows, fruit of two evenings in Dr. Butler's library, may be found the most important speculative utterance yet to appear in relation to the general European war.
Dr. Butler's estimate of the place which the United States now holds upon the stage of the theater of world progress and his forecast of the tremendously momentous rôle which she is destined to play there must make every American's heart first swell with pride and then thrill with a realization of responsibility.
The United States of Europe, modeled after and instructed by the United States of America! The thought is stimulating.
Said Dr. Butler:
"The European cataclysm puts the people of the United States in a unique and tremendously important position. As neutrals we are able to observe events and to learn the lesson that they teach. If we learn rightly we shall gain for ourselves and be able to confer upon others benefits far more important than any of the material advantages which may come to us through a shrewd handling of the new possibilities in international trade.
"I hesitate to discuss any phase of the great conflict now raging in Europe. By to-day's mail, for example, I received long, personal letters from Lord Haldane, from Lord Morley, from Lord Weardale, and from Lord Bryce. Another has just come from Prof. Schiemann of Berlin, perhaps the Emperor's most intimate adviser; another from Prof. Lammasch of Austria, who was the Presiding Judge of the British-American arbitration in relation to the Newfoundland fisheries a few years ago, and who is a member of the Austrian House of Peers. Still others are from M. Ribot, Minister of Finance in France, and M. d'Estournelles de Constant. These confidential letters give a wealth of information as to the intellectual and political forces that are behind the conflict.
"You will understand, then, that without disloyalty to my many friends in Europe, I could not discuss with freedom the causes or the progress of the war, or speculate in detail about the future of the European problem. My friends in Germany, France, and England all write to me with the utmost freedom and not for the public eye; so you see that my great difficulty, when you ask me to talk about the meaning of the struggle, arises from the obligation that I am under to preserve a proper personal reserve regarding the great figures behind the vast intellectual and political changes which are really in the background of the war.
"If such reserve is necessary in my case, it seems to me that it also is necessary for the country as a whole. The attitude of the President has been impeccable. That of the whole American press and people should be the same.
"Especially is it true that all Americans who hope to have influence, as individuals, in shaping the events which will follow the war, must avoid any expression which even might be tortured into an avowal of partisanship or final judgment.
"Even the free expression of views criticizing particular details of the war, which might, in fact, deserve criticism, may destroy one's chance of future possible usefulness. A statement which might be unquestionably true may also be remembered to the damage of some important cause later on.
"There are reasons why my position is, perhaps, more difficult than that of some others. Talking is often a hazardous practice, and never more so than now.
"The world is at the crossroads, and everything may depend upon the United States, which has been thrust by events into a unique position of moral leadership. Whether the march of the future is to be to the right or to the left, uphill or down, after the war is over, may well depend upon the course this nation shall then take, and upon the influence which it shall exercise.
"If we keep our heads clear there are two things that we can bring insistently to the attention of Europe—each of vast import at such a time as that which will follow the ending of the war.
"The first of these is the fact that race antagonisms tend to die away and disappear under the influence of liberal and enlightened political institutions. This has been proved in the United States.
"We have huge Celtic, Latin, Teutonic and Slavic populations all living here at peace and in harmony; and, as years pass, they tend to merge, creating new and homogeneous types. The Old World antagonisms have become memories. This proves that such antagonisms are not mysterious attributes of geography or climate, but that they are the outgrowth principally of social and political conditions. Here a man can do about what he likes, so long as he does not violate the law; he may pray as he pleases or not at all, and he may speak any language that he chooses.
"The United States is itself proof that most of the contentions of Europeans as to race antagonisms are ill-founded. We have demonstrated that racial antagonisms need not necessarily become the basis of permanent hatred and an excuse for war.
"If human beings are given the chance they will make the most of themselves, and, by living happily—which means by living at peace—they will avoid conflict. The hyphen tends to disappear from American terminology. The German-American, the Italo-American, the Irish-American all become Americans.
"So, by and large, our institutions have proved their capacity to amalgamate and to set free every type of human being which thus far has come under our flag. There is in this a lesson which may well be taken seriously to heart by the leaders of opinion in Europe when this war ends.
"The second thing which we may, with propriety, press upon the attention of the people of Europe after peace comes to them, is the fact that we are not only the great exponents, but the great example, of the success of the principle of federation in its application to unity of political life regardless of local, economic and racial differences.
"If our fathers had attempted to organize this country upon the basis of a single, closely unified State, it would have gone to smash almost at the outset, wrecked by clashing economic and personal interests. Indeed, this nearly happened in the civil war, which was more economic than political in its origin.
"But, though we had our difficulties, we did find a way to make a unified nation of a hundred million people and forty-eight commonwealths, all bound together in unity and in loyalty to a common political ideal and a common political purpose.
"Just as certainly as we sit here this must and will be the future of Europe. There will be a federation into the United States of Europe.
"When one nation sets out to assert itself by force against the will, or even the wish, of its neighbors, disaster must inevitably come. Disaster would have come here if, in 1789, New York had endeavored to assert itself against New England or Pennsylvania.
"As a matter of fact certain inhabitants of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania did try something of the sort after the Federal Government had been formed, but, fortunately, their effort was a failure.
"The leaders of our national life had established such a flexible and admirable plan of government that it was soon apparent that each State could retain its identity, forming its own ideals and shaping its own progress, and still remain a loyal part of the whole; that each State could make a place for itself in the new federation and not be destroyed thereby.
"There is no reason why each nation in Europe should not make a place for itself in the sun of unity which I am sure is rising there behind the war clouds. Europe's stupendous economic loss, which already has been appalling and will soon be incalculable, will give us an opportunity to press this argument home.
"True internationalism is not the enemy of the nationalistic principle. On the contrary, it helps true nationalism to thrive. The Vermonter is more a Vermonter because he is an American, and there is no reason why Hungary, for example, should not be more than ever before Hungarian after it becomes a member of the United States of Europe.
"Europe, of course, is not without examples of the successful application of the principle of federation within itself. It so happens that the federated State next greatest to our own is the German Empire. It is only forty-three years old, but there federation has been notably successful. So the idea of federation is familiar to German publicists.
"It is familiar, also, to the English and has lately been pressed there as the probable final solution of the Irish question.
"It has insistently suggested itself as the solution of the Balkan problem.
"In a lesser way it already is represented in the structure of Austria-Hungary.
"This principle of nation building, of international building through federation, certainly has in it the seeds of the world's next great development—and we Americans are in a position both to expound the theory and to illustrate the practice. It seems to me that this is the greatest work which America will have to do at the end of this war.
"These are the things which I am writing to my European correspondents in the several belligerent countries by every mail.
"The cataclysm is so awful that it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that on July 31 the sun went down upon a world which never will be seen again.
"This conflict is the birth-throe of a new European order of things. The man who attempts to judge the future by the old standards or to force the future back to them will be found to be hopelessly out of date. The world will have no use for him. The world has left behind forever the international policies of Palmerston and of Beaconsfield and even those of Bismarck, which were far more powerful.
"When the war ends, conditions will be such that a new kind of imagination and a new kind of statesmanship will be required. This war will prove to be the most effective education of 500,000,000 people which could possibly have been thought of, although it is the most costly and most terrible means which could have been chosen. The results of this education will be shown, I think, in the process of general reconstruction which will follow.
"All the talk of which we hear so much about the peril from the Slav or from the Teuton or from the Celt is unworthy of serious attention. It would be quite as reasonable to discuss seriously the red-headed peril or the six-footer peril.
"There is no peril to the world in the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt or any other race, provided the people of that race have an opportunity to develop as social and economic units, and are not bottled up so that an explosion must come.
"It is my firm belief that nowhere in the world, from this time on, will any form of government be tolerated which does not set men free to develop in this fashion."
I asked Dr. Butler to make some prognostication of what the United States of Europe, which he so confidently expects, will be. He answered:
"I can say only this: The international organization of the world already has progressed much farther than is ordinarily understood. Ever since the Franco-Prussian war and the Geneva Arbitration, both landmarks in modern history, this has advanced inconspicuously, but by leaps and bounds.
"The postal service of the world has been internationalized in its control for years. The several Postal Conventions have given evidences of an international administrative organization of the highest order.
"Europe abounds in illustrations of the international administration of large things. The very laws of war, which are at present the subject of so much and such bitter discussion, are the result of international organization.
"They were not adopted by a Congress, a Parliament, or a Reichstag. They were agreed to by many and divergent peoples, who sent representatives to meet for their discussion and determination.
"In the admiralty law we have a most striking example of uniformity of practice in all parts of the world. If a ship is captured or harmed in the Far East and taken into Yokohama or Nagasaki, damages will be assessed and collected precisely as they would be in New York or Liverpool.
"The world is gradually developing a code for international legal procedure. Special arbitral tribunals have tended to merge and grow into the international court at The Hague, and that, in turn, will develop until it becomes a real supreme judicial tribunal.
"Of course the analogy with the federated State fails at some points, but I believe the time will come when each nation will deposit in a world federation some portion of its sovereignty.
"When this occurs we shall be able to establish an international executive and an international police, both devised for the especial purpose of enforcing the decisions of the international court.
"Here, again, we offer a perfect object lesson. Our central Government is one of limited and defined powers. Our history can show Europe how such limitations and definitions can be established and interpreted, and how they can be modified and amended when necessary to meet new conditions.
"My colleague, Prof. John Bassett Moore, is now preparing and publishing a series of annotated reports of the decisions of the several international arbitration tribunals, in order that the Governments and jurists of the world may have at hand, as they have in the United States Supreme Court reports, a record of decided cases, which, when the time comes, may be referred to as precedents.
"It will be through gradual processes such as this that the great end will be accomplished. Beginning with such annotated reports as a basis for precedents, each new case tried before this tribunal will add a further precedent, and, presently, a complete international code will be in existence. It was in this way that the English common law was built, and such has been the history of the admirable work done by our own judicial system.
"The study of such problems as these is at this time infinitely more important than the consideration of how large a fine shall be inflicted by the victors upon the vanquished.
"There is the probability of some dislocation of territory and some shiftings of sovereignty after the war ends, but these will be of comparatively minor importance. The important result of this great war will be the stimulation of international organization along some such lines as I have suggested.
"Dislocation of territory and the shifting of sovereigns as the result of international disagreements are medieval practices. After this war the world will want to solve its problems in terms of the future, not in those of the outgrown past.
"Conventional diplomacy and conventional statesmanship have very evidently broken down in Europe. They have made a disastrous failure of the work with which they were intrusted. They did not and could not prevent the war because they knew and used only the old formulas. They had no tools for a job like this.
"A new type of international statesman is certain to arise, who will have a grasp of new tendencies, a new outlook upon life. Bismarck used to say that it would pay any nation to wear the clean linen of a civilized State. The truth of this must be taught to those nations of the world which are weakest in morale, and it can only be done, I suppose, as similar work is accomplished with individuals. Courts, not killings, have accomplished it with individuals.
"One more point ought to be remembered. We sometimes hear it said that nationalism, the desire for national expression by each individual nation, makes the permanent peace and good order of the world impossible.
"To me it seems absurd to believe that this is any truer of nations than it is of individuals. It is not each nation's desire for national expression which makes peace impossible; it is the fact that thus far in the world's history such desire has been bound up with militarism.
"The nation whose frontier bristles with bayonets and with forts is like the individual with a magazine pistol in his pocket. Both make for murder. Both in their hearts really mean murder.
"The world will be better when the nations invite the judgment of their neighbors and are influenced by it.
"When John Hay said that the Golden Rule and the Open Door should guide our new diplomacy, he said something which should be applicable to the new diplomacy of the whole world. The Golden Rule and a free chance are all that any man ought to want or ought to have, and they are all that any nation ought to want or ought to have.
"One of the controlling principles of a democratic State is that its military and naval establishments must be completely subservient to the civil power. They should form the police, and not be the dominant factor of any national life.
"As soon as they go beyond this simple function in any nation, then that nation is afflicted with militarism.
"It is difficult to make predictions of the war's effect on us. As I see it, our position will depend a good deal upon the outcome of the conflict, and what that will be no one at present knows.
"If a new map of Europe follows the war, its permanence will depend upon whether or not the changes are such as will permit nationalities to organize as nations.
"The world should have learned through the lessons of the past that it is impossible permanently and peacefully to submerge large bodies of aliens if they are treated as aliens. That is the opposite of the mixing process which is so successfully building a nation out of varied nationalities in the United States.
"The old Romans understood this. They permitted their outlying vassal nations to speak any language they chose and to worship whatever god they chose, so long as they recognized the sovereignty of Rome. When a conquering nation goes beyond that, and begins to suppress religions, languages, and customs, it begins, at that very moment, to sow the seeds of insurrection and revolution.
"My old teacher and colleague, Professor Burgess, once defined a nation as an ethnographic unit inhabiting a geographic unit. That is an illuminating definition. If a nation is not an ethnographic unit, it tries to become one by oppressing or amalgamating the weaker portions of its people. If it is not a geographic unit, it tries to become one by reaching out to a mountain chain or to the sea—to something which will serve as a real dividing line between it and its next neighbors.
"The accuracy of this definition can hardly be denied, and we all know what the violations of this principle have been in Europe. It is unnecessary for me to point them out.
"Races rarely have been successfully mixed by conquest." The military winner of a war is not always the real conqueror in the long run. The Normans conquered Saxon England, but Saxon law and Saxon institutions worked up through the new power and have dominated England's later history. The Teutonic tribes conquered Rome, but Roman civilization, by a sort of capillary attraction, went up into the mass above and presently dominated the Teutons.
"The persistency of a civilization may well be superior in tenacity to mere military conquest and control.
"The smallness of the number of instances in which conquering nations have been able successfully to deal with alien peoples is extraordinary. The Romans were usually successful, and England has been successful with all but the Irish, but perhaps no other peoples have been successful in high degree in an effort to hold alien populations as vassals and to make them really happy and comfortable as such.
"One of the war's chief effects on us will be to change our point of view. Europe will be more vivid to us from now on. There are many public men who have never thought much about Europe, and who have been far from a realization of its actual importance to us. It has been a place to which to go for a Summer holiday.
"But, suddenly, they find that they cannot sell their cotton there or their copper, that they cannot market their stocks and bonds there, that they cannot send money to their families who are traveling there, because there is a war. To such men the war must have made it apparent that interdependence among nations is more than a mere phrase.
"All our trade and all our economic and social policies must recognize this. The world has discovered that money without credit means little. One cannot use money if one cannot use one's credit to draw it whenever and wherever needed. Credit is intangible and volatile, and may be destroyed over night.
"I saw this in Venice.
"On July 31 I could have drawn every cent that my letter of credit called for up to the time the banks closed. At 10 o'clock in the morning on August 1, I could not draw the value of a postage stamp.
"Yet the banker in New York who issued my letter of credit had not failed. His standing was as good as ever it had been. But the world's system of international exchange of credit had suffered a stroke of paralysis over night.
"This realization of international interdependence, I hope, will elevate and refine our patriotism by teaching men a wider sympathy and a deeper understanding of other peoples, nations, and languages. I sincerely hope it will educate us up to what I have called 'The International Mind.'
"When Joseph Chamberlain began his campaign after returning from South Africa, his key-note was, 'Learn to think imperially.' I think our keynote should be, 'Learn to think internationally,' to see ourselves not in competition with the other peoples of the world, but working with them toward a common end, the advance of civilization.
"There are hopeful signs, even in the midst of the gloom that hangs over us. Think what it has meant for the great nations of Europe to have come to us, as they have done, asking our favorable public opinion. We have no army and navy worthy of their fears. They could have been induced by nothing save their conviction that we are the possessors of sound political ideals and a great moral force in the world.
"In other words, they do not want us to fight for them, but they do want us to approve of them. They want us to pass judgment upon the humanity and the legality of their acts, because they feel that our judgment will be the judgment of history. There is a lesson in this.
"If we had not repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act last June they would not have come to us as they are doing now. Who would have cared for our opinion in the matter of a treaty violation if, for mere financial interest or from sheer vanity, we ourselves had violated a solemn treaty?
"When Congress repealed the Panama Canal Tolls Exemption act it marked an epoch in the history of the United States. This did more than the Spanish War, more than the building of the Panama Canal, or than anything else I can think of to make us a true world power.
"As a nation we have kept our word when sorely tempted to break it. We made Cuba independent, we have not exploited the Philippines, we have stood by our word as to Panama Canal tolls.
"In consequence we are the first moral power in the world to-day. Others may be first with armies, still others first with navies. But we have made good our right to be appealed to on questions of national and international morality. That Europe is seeking our favor is the acknowledgment of this fact by the European nations and their tribute to it."
I could not welcome you, oh! longed-for peace,
Unless your coming had been heralded
By victory. The legions who have bled
Had elsewise died in vain for our release.
But now that you come sternly, let me kneel
And pay my tribute to the myriad dead,
Who counted not the blood that they have shed
Against the goal their valor shall reveal.
Ah! what had been the shame, had all the stars
And stripes of our brave flag drooped still unfurled,
When the fair freedom of the weary world
Hung in the balance. Welcome then the scars!
Welcome the sacrifice! With lifted head
Our nation greets dear Peace as honor's right;
And ye the Brave, the Fallen in the fight,
Had ye not perished, then were honor dead!
THE THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
"WHEN THERE IS PEACE"
"When there is Peace, this land no more
Will be the land we knew of yore."
Thus do the facile seers foretell
The truth that none can buy or sell
And e'en the wisest must ignore.
When we have bled at every pore,
Shall we still strive for gear and store?
Will it be Heaven, will it be Hell,
When there is Peace?
This let us pray—for this implore—
That, all base dreams thrust out at door,
We may in nobler aims excel,
And, like men waking from a spell,
Grow stronger, worthier than before,
When there is Peace!
When all our troubled errantries are done,
And faiths and lures alike have lost their sway,
And but the subtle body, rotting alone,
Is left to prove the daring of our day;
And if we won, head-high, or if we lost
Is now no matter anywhere; and unswerved
The seasons roll, indifferent to the cost
Of pageantries we ruled or faiths we served—
Then of the passion whose attainment was
So serious business while we lived and sought,
Perhaps some faint and ghostly flush shall pass
Out of a vase or song or tower we wrought,
And rest one moment upon men as blind
As we were, bent on hopes we leave behind.
I trust the young—who, dreaming, shall awake
On sudden Springs and capture, fluttering by,
These gleams of memory—capture them, and make
Old lights to flicker on new wings that fly.
Then such a dreamer shall, in one, bear fruit
Of all that from our million Junes could live,—
From pulses quenched, lips even whose dust is mute,
Hopes whose so mighty part was fugitive.
He shall inherit us; and not yet come
Into the full enthrallment of his day,
Shall feel, within his bosom, stir the bloom
Of all our Springs, a thousand years away—
The moment's mirror of our final light
In infinite dust vanishing down the night.
So out of horrors that could break the heart,
Did the heart keep its bitterer memories,
There desperately survives some rarer part—
Old, meager consolations such as these.
And when the baffled spirit dares to brood
Alone with its own destiny face to face
It finds, in that grim midnight solitude,
Some ancient smoldering altar of the race.
With hard-won fuel we feed the little fire,
Shielding its hesitant flame against the blast—
We, heritors of an unfulfilled desire—
That it burn brighter than in the somber past.
At midnight, by the ghostly flame, alone,
We pray,—beside that altar's blood-drenched stone.
LOVE, GIVE ME THE FEEL OF TO-MORROW
Come, love, help me move all the mirrors out of my workshop,
All the sore spots out of my heart!
You only can give me what I need;
A steel girder faith to build on,
The feel of to-morrow in my land.
Andante of a happy city's hundred thousand feet,
Keeping step in a grand procession,
Telling the world they walk in peace and freedom,
Broadcasting a forever and ever armistice day.
You are a pacifist? So am I:
A maker of peace who would not be?
But how is it made with the maniac cry
Of war in our ears from far and nigh,
And bloodstains darkening earth and sea?
By patience, you say, by suffering long,
By trust far-reaching and calm good-will?
By closing the eyes to might-made wrong,
By yielding the weak to the maw of the strong,
And standing forever and ever still?
These should have done their work ere now—
And honor to him who held at bay
The headlong band that would not allow
Reason, with faith-illumined brow,
To seek through darkness the hidden way!
Alas! it was lost—and the wolves are loose,
Ranging the night with their fangs of blood.
Shall we stand for aye in a tacit truce
With evil, and watch while the hosts of good
Flounder and fall in the death-dyed mud?
Nay, pacifist, nay, the lover of peace,
Because he loves it, must stand its friend:
In sorrow for agony's brief increase,
Yet smiting, at need, till war shall cease—
All for the peace that shall not end!
THESE TEN YEARS SINCE WE WENT TO WAR
(Editorial from The New York Evening Post)
(April 6, 1927)
It is not altogether easy to recapture the mood with which, on April 6, 1917, the people of this country received the news that we were at war with Germany. There was nothing of elation in that mood, although there was a pervading satisfaction that at last we were making the proper reply to a challenge which was more and more insistently being flung at our feet.
For three years we had watched the titanic struggle across the sea, observing horror piled on horror until we wondered how human flesh and blood and resolution could endure the ghastly load. A people that at such a moment entered the war light-heartedly would have been demonstrating its unfitness to have a part in the combat. Not such was our mood. We took up the gage of battle with the grim determination to quit us like men in the discharge of a terrible but necessary task.
Nineteen months later we were celebrating the return of peace. Armistice Day witnessed an unprecedented outburst of joy. We poured into the streets, giving an exhibition of gayety which children might have envied. "The war is over," we kept repeating, as if we could not say the happy words often enough.
Ten years have passed. With them has gone the riotous feeling of Armistice Day. Now we continually hear the question: "Is it over?"
True, the fighting is over. But we are still in the economic shadow which loomed blacker and blacker as the war cloud lifted. It has been said that the true close of our Civil War was not Appomattox but the panic of 1873, eight years later. Looking back upon our era, what event will the future historian select as marking the real end of the conflict which began in 1914?
The end of the war on its emotional side may be said to have been reached with Germany's admission to the League of Nations with the approval of France. To see those two nations side by side in an organization whose avowed purpose is the substitution of open and peaceful methods for the secret processes culminating in war which have been the rule hitherto is as gratifying a development as could be wished. Yet out of the very war which brought about this result have grown new animosities. Some of the nations created by that war are at odds with one another and also with some of the nations to whose efforts they owe their creation. In the ten-year perspective the war that was to end war does not look so final as enthusiastic spirits proclaimed it to be.
The chief factor in the feeling of disheartenment which has to no small extent succeeded the gaiety of Armistice Day is the shock which has been sustained by the ideal of democracy. While kings and emperors have been swept aside, autocrats have appeared in Italy, Spain and Poland, with Russia freeing herself from the Czars only to fall into the hands of an oligarchy. The seamy side of democracy is being held up for inspection and we are bidden to compare it with the finished side of autocracy.
"Don't you see that democracy's shortcomings are much worse than autocracy's virtues?" This, in effect, is the astounding question which is being put to free peoples in the second decade of the twentieth century and ten years after the outbreak of a war which saw the triumph of the world's leading democracies over its most powerful monarchies.
The question may safely be left to answer itself. To doubt that intelligent nations will in the long run continue to prefer the ills of liberty to the afflictions of despotism is to doubt their political sanity.
Out of the disillusionment that has overtaken those who, viewing the war as a gigantic crusade, expected impossibilities has been born a grotesque fantasy—the notion that nobody won the war but that all were alike losers. The force which this idea has it owes to the fact that it is that most dangerous of all errors, a half-truth. The Allies did lose—they lost heavily in men and in money. But to argue from this fact that they would have lost no more by a different outcome of the struggle, that the result was really a matter of indifference, is to show an amazing forgetfulness of the alternative with which they were faced. Ten years ago we knew better.
Had the war ended in a stalemate Europe would have reverted to the armed camp which it had been for decades. The Kaiser and the military and naval clique around him would have been left without victory, but they would have been left without defeat also. The moral of the war, preached in every capital, would have been the necessity for still more effective preparation for Armageddon.
But a stalemate was not the alternative with which the Allies were confronted. That alternative was the triumph of the Central Powers. What that triumph would have meant was shown clearly enough at the time, however stupidly we have forgotten it, in the various programs issued from Berlin regarding the reconstructed map of Europe that was to follow the victory of the Kaiser—for such it would inevitably have been.
Belgium a part of the new and greater German Empire, Holland a vassal state, France reduced to impotency, Great Britain rendered powerless and, together with the United States, paying tribute to Berlin in the form of colossal indemnities—such was the alternative of Allied success. Yet it made no difference whether we won or lost the war!
The only thing to say about reasoning like this is that it is the sort of muddleheadedness that makes the best ally of scheming rulers and plotting diplomatists.
One war, at least, is not over—the war against silly half-truths and their sinister implications.
QUOTATIONS FOR PEACE DAY
(From the Scriptures)
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
And their spears into pruning-hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they have war any more.
AFTER
After the darkness, dawning
And stir of the rested wing,
Fresh fragrance from the meadow,
Fresh hope in everything!
After the winter, springtime
And dreams that flowerlike throng;
After the tempest, silence;
After the silence, song!
After the heat of anger,
Love that all life enwraps;
After the stress of battle,
The trumpet sounding "taps";
After despair and doubting,
A faith without alloy;
God here and over yonder,—
The end of all things Joy!
SEW THE FLAGS TOGETHER
Great wave of youth, ere you be spent,
Sweep over every monument
Of caste, smash every high imperial wall
That stands against the new World State,
And overwhelm each ravening hate,
And heal, and make blood-brothers of us all.
Nor let your clamor cease
Till ballots conquer guns.
Drum on for the world's peace
Till the Tory power is gone.
Envenomed lame old age
Is not our heritage,
But springtime's vast release, and flaming dawn.
Peasants, rise in splendor
And your accounting render,
Ere the lords unnerve your hand!
Sew the flags together.
Do not tear them down.
Hurl the worlds together.
Dethrone the wallowing monster
And the clown.
Resolving only that shall grow
In Balkan furrow, Chinese row,
That blooms, and is perpetually young,
That only be held bright and clear
That brings heart-wisdom year by year
And puts this thrilling word upon the tongue:
"The United States of Europe, Asia, and the World."
"Youth will be served," now let us cry.
Hurl the referendum.
Your fathers, five long years ago,
Resolved to strike, too late.
Now
Sun-crowned crowds
Innumerable,
Of boys and girls
Imperial,
With your patchwork flag of brotherhood
On high
With every silk
In one flower-banner whirled—
Rise,
Citizens of one tremendous state,
The United States of Europe, Asia, and the World.
The dawn is rose-drest and impearled.
The guards of privilege are spent,
The blood-fed captains nod.
So Saxon, Slav, French, German,
Rise,
Yankee, Chinese, Japanese,
All the lands, all the seas,
With the blazing rainbow flag unfurled,
Rise,
Rise,
Take the sick dragons by surprise,
Highly establish,
In the name of God,
The United States of Europe, Asia, and the World.
THE CHRIST OF THE ANDES
After volcanoes husht with snows,
Up where the wide-winged condor goes,
Great Aconcagua, husht and high,
Sends down the ancient peace of the sky.
So, poised in clean Andean air,
Where bleak with cliffs the grim peaks stare,
Christ, reaching out his sacred hands,
Sheds his brave peace upon the lands.
There once of old wild battles roared
And brother-blood was on the sword;
Now all the fields are rich with grain
And only roses redden the plain.
Torn were the peoples with feuds and hates—
Fear on the mountain-walls, death at the gates;
Then through the clamor of arms was heard
A whisper of the Master's word.
"Fling down your swords; be friends again:
Ye are not wolf-packs: ye are men.
Let brother-counsel be the Law;
Not serpent fang, not tiger claw."
Chile and Argentina heard;
The great hopes in their spirits stirred;
The red swords from their clenched fists fell,
And heaven shone out where once was hell!
They hurled their cannons into flame
And out of the forge the strong Christ came.
'Twas thus they molded in happy fire
The tall Christ of their heart's desire....
O Christ of Olivet, you husht the wars
Under the far Andean stars:
Lift now your strong nail-wounded hands
Over all peoples, over all lands—
Stretch out those comrade hands to be
A shelter over land and sea!
THE CHRIST OF THE ANDES
Far, far away to the south of these United States, on the other side of the Equator, at the farthest end of South America, are the countries of Chile and Argentina. While we are picking roses and shooting firecrackers on the Fourth of July, they are shivering in winter; and they have their roses and warm weather at Christmas. In their winter, the sun is away at the north making us warm; and they talk about the South Pole when they want to name the coldest place they can. You might think that would be a very topsy-turvy place to be in; but you must not expect to hear that the people walk on their heads or build their houses upside down, for they are not really very different, after all, from North Americans. They have their work and their play, their good times and their bad times and their just-middling times, as we do. They have their election days, when they choose their Presidents and Congressmen (though they do not call them so), and then there are speeches and parades and brass bands and great excitement just as there is here. Although they have their flower time at Christmas, they do not love the dear Christ-child any the less for that, and they welcome His birthday as gladly as any of you. In fact, if they had not loved the Christ-child very dearly, there would not have been any story to tell; but you see they did; so this was the way it happened.
It was really the fault of the Andes mountains; though they certainly did not mean to do any harm and never even knew they did. Now the Argentine Republic is on the Atlantic Ocean side of South America, and Chile on the Pacific side, and the Andes mountains rise between. These are very, very high mountains, so high that the snow never melts on their tops, but stays there both in summer and in winter, as on our Rockies; in fact, they are really the southern end of the Rockies, with a different name. Since the mountains are so very high, and so snowy, and rocky, and very steep, you can easily see that it would be hard work for surveyors to scramble up with their tripods to find out just where the boundary line between the two countries really ought to be. So they just did what they could, and the places that did not seem to matter much they took for granted. Thus it happened that in some places nobody knew where the boundary line really was; but the rulers of both countries thought they knew, and you may be sure they thought it was just where it would give their own particular country the biggest share of the land and the best right to the lakes and rivers. If they had been two naughty boys, they would have said, "I tell you the rights to those lakes and rivers are mine," and "They're not; they're mine." Then they would have begun to pound each other, which would not have decided at all which one really owned the lakes and rivers, but only which one had the strongest fists. Although not naughty boys, they behaved much like them; for they squabbled in long Spanish words, and then began to get ready to fight it out.
Each one tried to build the biggest warships, make the most guns and drill the greatest number of soldiers; and the poor people of both countries, who did not care at all where the boundary was, had to pay for it all, although they might not have enough money left to buy shoes for their children.
This was the way things were going when the women and clergymen of the country made up their minds to try to put a stop to it. The good Bishop Benavente, of Argentina, went around the country pleading for peace and trying to make the people think what a very foolish thing war is.
After they were done fighting, he said, they would not know any better than before to whom the land and the rights to the waterways really did belong; they would be merely causing their families to suffer and spending their money foolishly. He begged the people to remember Christ and to keep peace. Over in Chile, Bishop Java went among his people and talked to them in the same way; and before long the two bishops and their faithful priests made the people see how foolish it would be to hate and wound and kill each other, when they might easily settle the question without hurting any one, and become better friends than ever before.
So the two countries agreed to ask the King of England to be their judge. Like a wise judge, he gave each a part of the country in dispute, and settled the question of the rights to the waterways so that every one was well satisfied and thankful to have the matter so happily ended. In their friendly joy, they made treaties of peace.
Now the question arose, what should they do with all their cannon and warships and forts, which would not be needed, if there was to be no war? Finally, it was agreed that they should sell their ships to merchants, to carry useful things—wool, wheat, metals—all over the world. They sent the soldiers home to work in the fields and mines, and they spent the money their ships and guns used to cost, in making better roads and safer harbors.
In the meantime, a beautiful statue of Christ had been made by a young sculptor of Argentina, named Señor Mateo Alonso, from bronze cannon which had been taken at the time Argentina was fighting against Spain for her independence. The cannon were melted into a great figure of Christ more than twenty-five feet high, with one hand stretched out to bless the two peaceful countries, and the other holding a cross. One hundred thousand dollars were raised, mostly by the women of both countries, to pay for this wonderful statue. The leading part in the work was taken by Angela de Oliviera Cezar de Costa. On the 28th of May, 1903, the day the treaty of peace was signed, Señora de Costa invited the President of Argentina and General Montt, the representative of the President of Chile, to come to the yard of a large college in Argentina to inspect this great statue. While they were there she asked permission to have it placed on the highest accessible pinnacle of the Andes, on one of the disputed boundary lines. This was granted, and, after the winter had passed, the work of getting it up the mountains was begun.
The statue was so large and heavy that this was a hard matter. It was carried by rail to the base of the mountains; the rest of the way was so rough and steep that not even the biggest and strongest railroad engine could climb it; so it was placed on gun carriages, drawn by mules. Where the road was too bad for the mules to climb safely, the people took the ropes and helped, for fear the precious statue might fall and break.
There was great joy on the day when the statue was finally ready in its place. Hundreds of people toiled up the steep road the night before, to be ready for the hymns and prayers when the statue should be uncovered. The Argentines camped on the Chilean side of the boundary, and the Chileans on the Argentine side, to show their friendship and good-will. When the statue was at last all ready to be seen, there was a great burst of music and firing of guns. The sound echoed far over the mountains and through the valleys, where all the people could hear and add their voices to the chorus.
Then every one waited in breathless silence while the cover was taken off, and the lovely face of Christ looked at them, seeming to say again, as of old, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." In the hearts of those hundreds of people the angels sang again their chorus of "Peace on earth, good-will to men."
There stands that statue now, strong and immovable as the Andes themselves, where Chile and Argentina may look and remember for ages to come. They have learned the lesson of peace, and these are the words they have written on the granite at the base of the statue:
"Sooner shall these mountains crumble to dust than Argentines and Chileans break the peace which at the feet of Christ the Redeemer they have sworn to maintain."
THE UNIVERSAL PEACE
For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.