THE SPIRIT OF WAR

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 9, 1896

THE SPIRIT OF WAR.

In Joel 3: 9-12 is a prediction of the war spirit which will possess the world in the last days. Have we not its fulfilment now? Read the following excerpts from an editorial in the New York Nation of December 12:—

“We pointed out very recently that we were the only nominally Christian people, and in fact the only civilized people, that produced public men who were not ashamed to call for war as a means of educating the young or making trade brisk, or as a means of gratifying the national pride; and not for war, either, with any particular power or in any particular quarrel, but for war generally with anybody who could be fastened on as an enemy—in fact, war for fun. This shocking spectacle has been reserved for our country in the 107th year of the republic of Washington and Franklin.

“In fact, we have an increasing body of politicians among us who talk of it, and teach our children to talk of it, as if it were a game of football, with a large list of casualties; and yet when we think of the floods of misery which pour over the length and breadth of a country from even one battle field, the savage contempt for humanity with which every victor gazes on his dead and wounded, one can hardly help feeling that the prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom which rises every day from millions of lips, is the most frightful mockery of which the Christian world is guilty. Among even the most military of European states, war is treated to-day as a deplorable but inevitable mode of settling disputes. It has been reserved for American statesmen to treat it as a useful national tonic, to be sought after, and not simply accepted. The great national advantage of being out of the way of fighting and slaughter, in which the founders of the republic rejoiced, we treat as a calamity, and reach for quarrels or seeds of quarrels as eagerly as a toper seeks his bottle. . . .”

“We have made much fun of the southerners for the readiness to stab and shoot which this quickness to resent insults has produced among them. We have shown them a thousand times that readiness to take offense is the mark of either an uncivilized man or a fool; that the more eager you are to resent insults, the more insults you are sure to receive. But real Jingoes pass most of their time looking out for them and calling attention to them. In their eyes the whole world is constantly trying to insult or ‘put upon’ the United States, and it is mainly to chastise these people that they want a large navy.

“No wonder, therefore, that Chaplain Condon took it into his head to pray for an increase of the swashbuckler spirit, for Congress to be made more quarrelsome, more vindictive, more ready to make widows and orphans, to blow human bodies into small pieces, to burn towns, and lay waste farms, and ruin trade, and issue greenbacks, and cheat creditors, and turn the thoughts of young men away from industry and charity, and to fill their hearts with hatred of their fellow men and joy over their misery, and generally to roll back the tide of civilization.”