CHAPTER XIII.

The Army of Peace

The struggle of the jungle did not cease when the jungle dwellers were united into tribes and the tribes, conquered by stronger peoples had become nations. The staple of history has always been war. "Exhibiting the most forceful as well as the most brutal activity of men, it has shaped most of the primary conditions of life for all communities of the human race. In some way it has determined the career of most nations, from beginning to end.”

Because it has so completely dominated the thought and life of the world, it has always been an obstacle in the way of the truest progress. War has taken its heavy toll from every nation, not only of money but of lives. A careful statistician claims for eleven of the great wars, a cost of $11,105,000,000, and of 3,081,000 lives. But what census taker will ever be able to express in figures the social cost as revealed in broken homes, diverted

Were half the power that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error,

There were no need of arsenals or forts.

Longfellow.

plans, vices developed, brutal passions aroused and industry retarded? What country will ever be able to pay in money for the disease and pain and lost character, the sure results of every campiagn? If this cost could be expressed in dollars, it might be an amount which would beggar a nation.

It may be true that war for war's sake has ceased among the civilized peoples, but the armed neutrality of every nation as represented by its standing army and its ships of war almost equals the expenditure devoted to civil government. The workers of Europe are called upon yearly to give 4,000,000 of their stalwart sons for the army and the navy. These young men who might have been engaged in productive industry, and in the building of homes are drawn away from this constructive work to be trained in the fearful art of killing. To maintain these military establishments in time of peace, the annual cost is one billion and a half of dollars, obtained through the governmental revenues and the direct taxes.

In feverish haste, every nation is building its dreadnaughts costing from $5,000,000 to

$15,000,000. The search for denser armor, for stronger guns and more powerful projectiles is more strenuous than the search for gold. Warships for the air and torpedo boats for the deep sea will make war more terrible and more costly. Our own land is not free from these bankrupting tendencies. Read the war expense for one year of peace as shown in the supply bills of the United States: Army..

Fortifications..

Military Academy

Navy..

$101,197,470.34

8,170,111.00

2,531,521.33

136,935,199.05

Think for a moment what might be a accomplished if this vast amount could be diverted to the constructive side of the work of nation building.

The contention of this chapter is that the time is rapidly coming when war will cease, and we will have an organized army of peace to do the great things worth doing, digging the canals, draining the swamps, dredging the harbors and waterways, reclaiming the desert, cleansing the tropics, and bearing the white man's burden, in many lands where the people are struggling upward toward the light.

Yet a vast amount of work must be done before this ideal shall find fulfillment, and the horrors of war shall be supplanted by the glories of peace. Education, formation of public opinion, and world organization are methods by which ethical sentiments may be transformed into the dynamos of action, and discussion brought to the stage of accomplish

ment.

We call this process a movement, a great peace movement, and as such it is well worthy of careful study by everyone who wishes to have a part in the making of history. We of the 20th Century are not the first to realize the evils of war and pray for the coming of peace. Noble souls throughout the centuries have felt the truth of the saying of Horace Mann. "If a thousandth part of what has been expended in war and preparing its mighty engines had been devoted to the development of reason and the diffusion of Christian principles, nothing would have been known for centuries past of its terrors, its sufferings, its impoverishment, and its demoralization, but what was learned from history."

Let us review the story of the work of the