PEACE AND YET WAR by St. Paul Pioneer Press

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 33.

"PEACE AND YET WAR."

By St. Paul Pioneer Press

THE International Peace Society is deserving of great credit for the persistence with which it waves the olive branch year after year, and preaches the gospel of international amity and comity, even amid the angry mutterings and the harsh clangor of multiform preparations for war. The peace society professes to believe that the era of warfare upon earth is drawing to a close, and it thinks that it is accelerating this conclusion by spending a few thousands a year and sending a score or two of peace lecturers into the field. Yet the European powers have given little heed to peace lectures. About two-thirds of the vast aggregate of the budgets of these governments is chargeable to increased armaments since the Franco-Prussian war. The erection of the German Empire has been a pretty expensive thing for Europe. It increased the national debts from $13,000,000,000 to over $21,000,000,000. Thus, the apprehension of war is almost as expensive as war itself.

The Peace Society, with admirable intentions, has, unfortunately, not been able to allay even the apprehension of war. The truth is, when nations make up their minds to fight, all the conferences in the world won't prevent them. About forty years ago the Peace Society, with impressive ceremonies, celebrated in London the advent of enduring peace. Yet immediately after, the costly Crimean war occurred, originating in a trivial dispute about the holy places in Palestine, and this was followed by the ambitious wars of Prussia, the Dano-Germanic, the Austro-Prussian, the Austro-Italian, the Franco-Prussian wars. The trouble is that nations are not always bent on justice, and they have lusts and passions, and in order to effectuate combativeness they have to be strong; iron and steel walled; studded with fortifications, bristling with cannon. They arm to verify their exorbitant pretensions and to rebut and muzzle the exorbitant pretensions of their next-door neighbors. This spirit is abroad to-day. The arts of peace, on exhibition, glorify Paris to-day. The triumphs of those arts delight the world, and yet French foundries and shipyards are humming with intense activity, turning out big and small guns, gunpowder, torpedoes, steel war-ships and small arms. It is so in Italy, where every energy is tending to keep army and navy in a state of war efficiency. It is so in old Spain, where the debt-burdened and bankrupt government is selling State lands to raise money to increase the naval armament. Germany is a bristling military camp, and the Krupp foundries are always in full blast, producing the material of war. England is spending more money than even on her fleet, and Russia and Austria, and every other European State are hard at work preparing as if war would break out within a few months.

On our side of the Atlantic the same spirit obtains to a lesser degree. The South American Governments are arming, and our own Government is spending a hundred millions on war vessels, and three new costly cruisers have just been ordered. The world is apparently getting ready for a bloody war. New and deadly machinery for killing men and destroying seaboard cities is constantly invented, and to-day, in our present stage of preparation, there is not a seaboard city which could not be shelled and destroyed by a hostile European fleet. Our expenditures are justified by the general arming in Europe, for strongly armed nations with slight principle are constantly tempted to pick quarrels, and our seaboard cities must be protected. Bad management of a small affair, like the Samoan incident, might have precipitated conflict with Germany. We will have to be prepared for defense even while the Peace Society chants its millennial psalm. For the millennium is not yet.