War, in its Moral Aspect

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 12, 1 September 1900, Page 903

War, in its Moral Aspect

A Reply

By W. She muff ]3ain

V/j^iAR, in Its Moral Aspect," was Ijl the title of an article which — \»A»^j under the signature of Gerald L. Peacock — recently appeared in this Magazine. Of the various considerations it advanced in support of the contention that human warfare possesses a moral aspect, the first is the most powerful : " From warfare of one kind or another we cannot escape in this world." The statement is irrefutable. We see conflict on every side of us in this world, and we learn that it prevails in other worlds ; in the elementary tumults of our parent star, and in the occasional clash of systems throughout the Cosmos. We believe that warfare is nature's method, one of her prime evolutionary forces. But man is part of nature, and a very noble part ; he is conscious of power to modify some of her processes, and he is steadily advancing in fresh fields of experiment. Normal man is so fortunately endowed that he must cope with difficulty ; he has so much energy that inaction means misery to him. Fortunately, too, his ideals are constantly enlarging ; grow ing higher, growing wider ; and thus he sets himself to overcome one kind of difficulty to-day and another kind, more complex, to-morrow. Before long he will realise that his so-called civilisation is retarding his development from primeval savagery, and he will examine the system on which it is founded. He will see that its basis principle, competitiveness, fulfils to the last letter its own current maxim : Each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost ; and he will contrast this maxim with the words : All for Vol. I.— No. 12.— 64.

each, and God for all. Ho is listening now to that terrible query : Is life worth living ? — listening in a world so rich, so generous, so beautiful, that the question ought to be deemed a blasphemy. A recent computation showed that tlio State of Texas alone could be made to yield ample sustenance for the entire human family ; and it has been mathematically demonstrated that if every man and woman wore to work but two hours daily, they could produce the necessities in abundance for all, while if they worked four hours daily there would be a general opulence beyond anything we can now imagine. And yet, with such potentialities, the struggle for mere existence is so keen that work lulls its thousands, and worry its thousands of thousands in every generation. The terrible question : Is life worth living ? gains a still more terrible answer, for an ever-increasing percentage deliberately end their being in the negative decision. 'And it is not so much the lack of food that slays as the dearth of joy. Body and soul are alike imperative in their demand for sustenance ; but body and soul are thwarted, maimed, crushed by present unnatural conditions, and the fineßt sensibilities suffer the deepest injury. Present conditions are unnatural. The shark, the tiger, the wolf are far beneath us in evolutionary grade, and still we practise their modes of action. Yet we know that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and that our most exquisite happiness consists in the happiness of those dear to us. When the race has, at last, learned to make liberal use of such knowledge it will have learned to live naturally. And

then it will turn its powers of conflict against any forces which may still impede its upward way. The article under consideration praises the splendid qualities which illuminate the battlefield. These are fervently to be admired, all the more gladly because we believe that men are greater than the greatest emergency. The shipwreck, the flaming city, the derailed locomotive, the plague, the icefield are eloquent of man's " loyalty to duty and his enthusiastic self-devotion to comrades in the hour of extreme peril." They are eloquent, too, of that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. The brilliant heroisms of the battlefield are, as a rule, the cause of increased animosity between belligerents, each side disparaging, and even falsifying the actions of their opponents, and rending wider yet the breach between their respective partisans outside the fray. Of the fray itself no pen can adequately write. Men who have mingled in it describe it in one terse and terrible phrase : War is hell ! A veteran tells a typical story of his first engagement. He was very young, and, as he stood in position, he thought of his English village, and of his widowed, delicate mother, until tears streamed from his eyes. He glanced around and saw his officer, also very young, sitting motionless on horsebsck, his face absolutely white, and great tears rolling from his eyes too. Presently the order to attack was sounded, and very soon there was a smell of human blood in the hot, evil air. That smell transmogrified everyone. The men became demons, maddened in sheer lust of more blood, howling the most frightful imprecations, conscious of nothing but the desire to kill — other men— other sons of far-away mothers. Shall we dare to speak of morality here ? The need and value of patriotism cannot be over-rated. Each people has necessarily its own characteristics, and the greater the people the greater its power of contribution to -the welfare of the race. The Englishspeaking people, British, Colonial, American,

are incomparably the greatest whom the world has known ; therefore their opportunities are the greatest. Were they federated. — as they might have been but for the most wicked war of the last century — they could practically control the globe : they could influence the other peoples of civilisation for the general good, and police the savage races in beneficent subjection. There was unspeakable disappointment to many true lovers of mankind when America flung from her the splendour of her destiny that she might scramble in the arena of national aggrandisement. Cuba's cause could have been otherwise championed ; hut the financiers of "Wall-street dictated the course to be pursued. And there are many to regret that our own beautiful young colonies have rushed impetuously, generously, nobly into the maelstrom of old-world madness. They believe that the very worst difficulties can be pacifically arranged, if taken in time. They consider that real statemanship is capable of amalgamating the most stubborn incompatibilities, and of reconciling the most opposed interests. They see that the ravening of the war-god is insatiable, that it slays or mutilates the physically finest man, blights the woman with lifelong anguish, and lays grievous burdens upon the toilers of every land. They are patriotic, as Robert Burns was patriotic. He, more than any other man, fused the Scottish people into the most patriotic nationality under the sun ; and he endeared himself to the wide human heart by proclaiming universal kinship. And so with that mighty soul, Walt Whitman. He loved his " Americans " with passionate rapture, and he is for all time the laureate of the world's comradeship. Grerald L. Peacocke writes scathingly of the horrors of peace. The vilenesses and villainies he loathes are indeed horrors, but they are not horrors of peace. This globe has not yet been blessed by peace ; war has been its ruler, absolute, never-deposed. The competitiveness of everyday life is war, manifesting itself by flaring ever, and again into mutual slaughter. Thus, when Euskin

— as quoted — so mournfully contrasts the achievements of peace with those of war, he is simply deploring two aspects of the selfsame curse. He strikes a magnificent chord when he says : " A pure or holy state of anything is that in which all its parts are helpful or consistent. The highest and first law of the universe, and the other name of life, is, therefore, ' help.' The other name of death is ' separation.' Government and co-operation are in all things, and eternally the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death." — Mhics of the Dust, p. 229. Tennyson is quoted in glorification of war. Unfortunately, Tennyson could and did descend to what has been styled " glorified journalism." True aud great poet as he was, he reflected the mind of his day. He had not the bold creative thought of Burns, Shelley, and Whitman. We are very often informed that wars and rumours of war " must be." The Book, which yields the quotation, is the professed guide of the leading Powers. If it were their actual guide, the words would be in consonance with the life and teachings of Christ. Then we are told — in Christendom — that the ideal of peace is a very fine one, but it is a long way off; for we cannot

change human nature. Other ideals have seemed a long way off, and have boon realised. Tho duel was fashionable in England until that great-minded man, tho Prince Consort, compelled such a change in public opinion that the person who killed another in privnte quarrel was considered no longer an honourable gentleman but a murderer. The Prince inaugurated tho first great exhibition as a Templo of Peace. Ho was logical enough to sco that tho immorality of the individual cannot possibly bo the morality of the nation; and had ho lived beyond his early prime, there can bo little question that ho would have mouhlod public opinion to a like perception. Public opinion is the mightiest lover in human affairs. Human nature cannot help conforming itself, more or loss, to public opinion. Therefore, although recent and current events may causo tho dreadful anticipation that war will yet destroy tho whole nation, they also permit tho trust that, in a very near future, war will destroy itself. Day by iay these events are widening and intensifying the sentiment that regards national slaughter as it regards individual slaughter: incomparably greater in degree, but the same in kind, absolutely and inevitably immoral.