Defenseless America. Hudson Maxim
among them] prophesying war."
CHAPTER II
CAN LAW BE SUBSTITUTED FOR WAR?
I am a peace advocate—that is to say, I am one who advocates an active campaign in the cause of peace, employing the best means and instruments for the accomplishment of practical results.
Unfortunately, a wide difference of opinion exists in the ranks of those who style themselves peace advocates as to how the war against war can best be fought. That difference of opinion is as to whether we should arm for the fray, or disarm for it. Shall we go into the fight with sword and buckler, and with armor on, prepared to return blow with stronger blow; or shall we go into the fight with bared breasts, and, when we receive a blow upon one cheek turn the other cheek also, and let both our eyes be blackened and our nose be skinned in order to shame our antagonist, by giving him an object lesson of the horrors of war?
Ernst Haeckel has said there is nothing constant but change. He might have said also that there is a no more consistent thing in its constancy than human inconsistency.
That other great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, declared that, as he grew older, the more and more he realized the extent to which mankind is governed by irrationality.
Josh Billings said, "It is not so much the ignorance of men that makes them ridiculous as what they know that is not so."
The complex problems of ethics, eugenics, economics, and human dynamics, which enter into all questions and problems of peace and war, are like so many Chinese puzzles to the ordinary mind.
There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of minds—the ratiocinative and the irrational; in other words, the logical and the illogical. The logical mind proceeds scientifically from sure premises to just conclusions, taking no direction and traveling no faster and no farther in any direction than warranted and justified by ascertained fact. The irrational or illogical mind, on the contrary, is unable to discriminate between belief and knowledge, between facts and fancies. Consequently, this type of mind proceeds from guess to conclusion, with the result that final judgment is necessarily distorted, warped, and swerved from truth just in proportion as the basic guess is incorrect or false.
There is a no more momentous problem before the world today than that of international jurisprudence, especially with respect to the maintenance of peace where practicable, and the control of wars, when wars are inevitable or necessary; and there is no subject of such moment more fruitful of irrationalism.
In the light of practical common-sense, there is nothing funnier in the writings of Mark Twain than the inconsistent prating of our peace sophists. It is as though they let not their right-hand brain know what their left-hand brain is doing. They are usually brimmed and primed with sacrificial sentimentality and over-soul. Their delicatessen natures shrink from contact with the stern, man-making realities of life. They are the disciples of soft stuff. The mush and moonshine of maudlin sentimentalism are their element. They possess no powers of discrimination between the actual and the erroneous. The guise of fact is no recommendation to them unless it fits into their scheme. An error is far more welcome if it comes in a garmenture that conforms with their ideals. They put their union label on what we receive by the grace of God, but they fail to recognize and appreciate that they cannot comprehend the infinite; that what to them seems disorder and confusion in the world may be the most perfect order in the eye of God. They cannot understand how infinite wisdom, infinite justice, and infinite mercy should have created a warring world; consequently, they have set themselves the task of repairing the faults of creation and of recreating the world to suit their own ideas as to what infinite wisdom and mercy ought to be.
When one of these peace sophists gets into a fight, however, he promptly prays to God to help him whip the other fellow. The pacific sentimentalist is usually a most arrant coward. In time of war, the cowardly sentimental pacifists are the loudest in appeals to Almighty God to fight on their side and to lead their army to victory—that same army which in time of peace they have done everything in their power to disarm and disband.
Recently, when speaking at a church, I was asked the question, "How long is it going to take to make might right?" I asked my interrogator this question: "If, at the creation, you had been consulted and your advice asked as to whether or not a world should be made in which all life should feed on other life, and half of the animal creation should be made prey for the other half; whether everything should be made tooth and nail, claw and scale, hunter and hunted, terror and blood, strife and war; whether or not the cat should train for the hunt by torturing the little bird—how would you have replied to God?" My querist did not answer me, but went home to think it over.
I do not purpose to make any apology for Infinite Wisdom. My pacifist friends are doing that constantly. It is my humble opinion that the Creator did the best He could for us, and that we ought to be thankful and grateful.
I believe with Pope, that:
"Spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear—whatever is, is right."
I realize that the most perfect order is confusion to the mind that is not constituted to comprehend it.
I know that the macrocosmic mechanism moves with mathematical exactitude, and that we, in comparison, are mighty only in our arrogance; that, in fact, we are but microscopic specks in the drift of worlds.
Nature seems to care little for individuals, but very much for races and species; little indeed for a person, very much for a people.
The terms right and wrong, good and bad, are entirely relative. Right for an individual may not be so for a large aggregation of individuals. The welfare of a nation or a people may not be the welfare of the world, and God has His eye on the world.
The wrong are weak, the right are strong. This mean the two terms right and wrong; And truth sought out to any length, Finds all wrong weakness, all right strength.
Formative Strife
Primeval man found himself thrust into an environment where all animal life fed on other life, and half the animal creation was prey for the other half. He was one of the hunted. Yet, with less strength but greater cunning, he was destined to master all. Man's supremacy has been developed by warfare of wit, craft, and cunning, versus brute force.
Primitive man found himself "up a tree" in both the actual and the metaphoric sense. His teeth and claws were no match for those of the leopard and the sabre-toothed tiger. He had no recourse but flight until stern necessity taught him to wield a club.
Then he climbed down from his abode in trees, and began the conquest of the earth. The club made man a traveler. His forays with that weapon taught him to walk and fight upon his hind legs, and gave him his erect carriage. But he had to travel a long and thorny pathway indeed, armed only with a club, before he invented the stone hatchet and spear of sharpened flint or bone. It was a far-flung span across the gulf of time from the tree-home to the cave in the hill, his new abiding-place.
The bow and arrow, which enabled him to kill at long range, were his next weapon, and were the greatest invention of all time.
The protection of the heart with the left arm and shield, with the right arm free to wield the sword or hurl the javelin, made man right-handed.
Armed with the bow and arrow, spear and shield, man was equipped still better for travel; and ever since travel has been widening out the sky and broadening man's mental horizon.
The fighting spirit widened the acquaintance of different peoples, and the terrible menace of some savage common enemy forced different tribes to unite and build up nations. Union against danger is the best