The Press Wednesday, June 23, 1926. "A Peacemakers' Pilgrimage."

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18725, 23 June 1926, Page 10

The Press Wednesday, June 23, 1926. "A Peacemakers' Pilgrimage."

The Peacemakers' Pilgrimage wliich is .cow "lending a mediaeval aspect" to Hyde Park knows exactly what it wants and precisely what to do to get it. In those respects it differs from most of the expeditions which have set out during the last seven or eight hundred years—even in Henry Ford's ark—to conquer or convert the wicked. It is going to have some speeches made and a resolution presented, and will then " bring pressure to bear on the Gov- " ernment to make it take such a lead "in the proposed Disarmament Con"ference that war will be rendered " impossible." It has the great advantage also over earlier crusades that its march has lasted only a month, has involved no hardships, and has " cul- " minated " in sunshine and a fancydress parade within train, car, bus, and telephone reach of home. Apparently also it has not been laughed at. Even the children of the Middle Ages were laughed at when they went forth, ten and twenty and thirty thousand of them, to die, so miserably as most of them did die, for a foolish idea; but if the Homeland has not laughed no Dominion should. And yet it must be very difficult in London not to laugh at those who speak o£ " render- " ing war impossible" about the day after to-morrow. There must be some at least who remember that their fathers, grandfathers, and even great-, grandfathers were offered the same hopes, subjected to the same appeals, and condemned for the same callousness and brutality as those are supposed to possess to-day who cling to their weapons of defence. It is nearly' eighty years since Leigh Hunt, or one of his anonymous colleagues, was warning Londoners in the "Examiner" that "if tile Peace Congress [of 184S] "lives long enough, and grows big " enough, it will probably end by turn- " ing. to and thrashing all the soldiers." It is indeed not a compliment to the pl'esent age, or to its newspapers, that articles written nearly a hundred years ago could be reproduced to-day with only the slightest verbal changes, and be worth reproducing and worth reading. Take this further passage from the,"Examiner" (September, 1848): In the Catholic Church there used to be a devil's advocatcj upon whose fallacious arguments and cavils the ofth&dox polemic weapons were exercised, and made to show their edge and potency. The peace congress wants this convenience, it has no devil's advocate; it would be as easy to find a •defender and eulogist of cholera as a defender and eulogist of war. And lot us add that it would bo about as profitable to start a health congress against cholera, that is, an association to combat cholera by preaching the blessings of health, as a peace congress against war. Or this: No one pretends to have a good -word to say for war; the best to be pleaded for it is that it is an evil preferable to something worse. It is irrational, nobody gainsays it; but what is there amiss i# the world that is not irrational, and that would not be put an ond to by the reign'of pure reason? ,And why not, then, have an honesty congress t abolish the foolish practice of theft? and a virtue congress to banish forever the not mdre injurious than irrational immoralities? Or this: The cause of peace cannot be served by the repugnant extravagances to which we have adverted; and we have our doubts whothor, with the discreet' est conduct and language, the tion that peace wants Congresses for tho comprehension of its blessings tends tp the pUfpose in view. As well might wo have congresses to demonstrate the dfotastefulness of taxes. The world is 614 enough to knew what it pays for waf, and the most effectual missionary ef jpeace is the tajp-gatheter. Though they all lose a good deal by being torn out of their col}» text these , extracts show how little we have changed in eighty years either for better or for wotse. Aud the " Examiner " was not the only famous journal in 1848 which saw the absurdity of "an unbridled " enthusiasm for peace." The passages We have quoted were provoked by .the "fanatical extravagances"• of two'leading pacifists, one of whom described the Affliy as " practical Atheism," while the Othe* " cooliy propounded the "hypothesis* tljat if Louis Philippe had captured the country a few years earlier it might have been just as well for everybody, smce v it "did not follow /'that people were always the worse " off for being conquered." But only a week or'two earlier a much more famous man, Mr Richard Cobden, had aroused the wrath and ridicule of .the "Spectator" by publishing a letter in ijvhich he said that war would inuaediatefy disappear if the. eyes of the world were opened to its enormous expense and Waste. "You need only " publish in the different Continental " languages a fen? simple facts," he argued—and he gave the facts: four DjiOipilß of men in arms at a total cost of £200,000,000 a year—yfiu need do no more than that and Wars would cease. We cannot find room for the "Spectator's" withering comment, or feel sure that if space had been found for it a month ago in the great English 1 dailies the result would have been a slump in sandals. Before we could feel sure of that we should have to know that men and women are wiser . ia 1926 than they were in 1848, and more prompt to recognise what " looks u like a suggestion of the Arch-Enemy i "to betray the whole of what mankind j "has gained since the Middle Ages." f The Hyde Park exhibition hardly justifies that confidence.