ve our
independence by opposing a unitary strength to the enfeebling European
dualism; otherwise we might not have dared to use so shrill a tone in
admonishing the great powers. But even had the eagle not screeched, we
might still have led a satisfactory national existence. Whatever was
true in the past, however, we need no longer be so completely
defenceless that we must fear that peace in Europe would mean a
conquest of America. We should rather have Europe fight itself than
us, but--in dollars and cents as in other values--we should prefer to
see the world at peace.

We shall not secure peace, however, by merely wishing for it or by
merely preaching it. In the midst of war there has always been the
longing for peace, and throughout the centuries voices have been raised
calling upon mankind to give up its war upon itself. The ideal of
peace {219} pervades much of all folklore; it inspires the Old
Testament prophets and is everywhere expressed in the New Testament.
The religious ideals of the Chinese, Hindus and Persians are suffused
with the hope of peace, and Greek and Roman philosophers and poets
dreamed of a peaceful commonwealth of peoples and planned the
Federation of the World. The Early Church Fathers, Irenaeus, Clement of
Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, preached the gospel of
peace, and while the Church doctrines later changed in this respect,
there reappeared again and again during the Mediaeval Period the
conception of a World State, presided over by Emperor or Pope, and
ending once for all the ceaseless strife among princes. After the
Reformation religious sects grew up, like the Mennonites and the
Quakers, who preached not only peace but non-resistance. Out of all
this longing for peace, out of all these proposals, however, came
nothing. Similarly the pacifist writings of the Abbe de St. Pierre, of
Rousseau, of Leibnitz, of Montesquieu, of Voltaire, of Kant, of Jeremy
Bentham and of hundreds of others did not bring the world a single step
nearer to an elimination of war.[1]

Throughout this long history, pacifism failed because it was in no
sense based upon the actual conditions of the world. It was a
religious, sentimental, hortatory pacifism. Finding peace desirable,
it pleaded with the men who ruled nations to compose their quarrels.
It was an appeal not to the interest but to the sentiments of men. It
discovered that war was evil and exhorted nations and rulers to refrain
fro