the
world's democracies is the only road to peace.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WAY OF PEACE

The supreme need of the world to-day is peace. Europe is sinking into
the morass of despair because across their frontiers a dozen nations
drilled and armed are watching each other with sullen eyes. From the
shores of the Pacific to the long wash of Australasian seas everywhere
it is the same. Civilisation is perishing; but it is a civilisation
armed to the teeth that is awaiting its obsequies. Every newspaper
proclaims the one need is Peace. The Conference on disarmament has but
one word to express the sum of all its desires--Peace. There must be
some stupendous barrier in the way when all this yearning and endless
talking fail to reach the goal of humanity's striving. However eagerly
the nations pursue it, peace seems to be for ever a receding horizon.
If on one spot of an anguished world statesmen confer as to the things
that make for peace, yet behind their fortified frontiers the nations
are still sharpening their swords. It is, as it has ever been, a mad
world.

I

There must be some hidden cause of this failure of humanity to work out
its own deliverance. And our duty is to find out that cause. It is
quite possible to make an idol even of peace. Peace is not necessarily
the supreme good. If there have been wars which call for repentance
and humiliation on the part of those who waged them, there have been
again and again periods of peace which call for even deeper humiliation
and keener repentance. If we have waged war when we ought to have been
at peace, we have as often been at peace when we ought to have waged
war. Time and again, a generation ago, we heard of Armenians being
massacred. But we kept the peace. There never was a more disgraceful
peace in the history of the world, and awful has been the price that we
have paid for it. To keep the peace when the innocent are being
massacred is damnation. Peace is not then the supreme word in man's
vocabulary. By mouthing it man often falls into the mire. There is a
greater word by far, and that is--righteousness. The only peace worth
having is the fruit of righteousness. That is why peace flies faster
than its pursuers. The votaries of peace have forgotten that fruit
does not grow without roots and soil. Eloquence can do much, but it
cannot grow grapes without vines deep rooted in the soil. And peace is
a fruit of the spirit deep rooted in ri