38
Kansas University Weekly.
Turkey have brought the Eastern Question no nearer its solution. The ownership of Alsace-Lorraine, for one thousand years an Eris-apple of contention, has not been determined by innumerable wars. One result has ensued: a hate, a bitterness has been engendered which outlasts generations, which will yet be the sad heritage of the ages to come. But what the armies of France and Germany, in organization and equipment the grandest the world has ever known, have thus signally failed to do, namely: definitely decide one single unimportant question, that "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind" has done completely in almost one hundred instances during our century alone. A better way has been last. Reason has conquered, and found at reason is king.
None have condemned war more than great warriors themselves. "War is the business of barbarians," said Napoleon. "All the devil there is in man comes out in battle," said General Hooker. "War is barbarism and cannot be refined; it is all hell," said Sherman. "I hate war," said Grant, and expressed upon another occasion his firm conviction, that there are no differences between nations which, if approached in a spirit of fairness and justice, cannot be peaceably settled.
War is not only an insult to human intelligence and reason, a virtual denial of God's existence; it is also clearly in direct opposition to the spirit of the Christian religion. The Gospel forbids vengeance, war demands it; the Gospel says: "Love your enemies!" war says: "Kill them!"—the former: "Bless!" the latter; "Curse!" one, "Forgive injuries!" the other, "Avenge them!" Love pervades the Gospel, hatred pervades war; love is of God, hatred is of the devil; peace has its origin in heaven, war in hell. Well may Milton locate the invention of military engines and weapons in Satan's dismal abode. Well may Byron have him laugh long, and loud and wild, as he gazes upon the gory field of Leipsic-
"Running so red
and makes him exclaim,
with the blood of the dead That it blushed like the waves of hell."
"Methinks, they have here little need of me!" No, the pure priniciples of Christianity can never be made to harmonize with war. No war can be conducted on Christian principles. War outrages all ethical systems. It obstructs civilization. In its attempt to supress evil by evil it is a failure—a crime.
But patience. The morning dawns. Not in vain has the steady light of the blessed teachings
of Christ been shining through the centuries. The fruitege of the Gospel of Peace is now at hand.
The day that Victor Hugo saw in prophetic vision, when the nations of Europe, without losing their distinctive individuality, would blend in a higher unity and form a European fraternity; when war between St. Petersburg and Berlin, between London and Paris, would seem as impossible as between Laon and Amiens; when bullets and bombs would be replaced by ballots; when a sacred arbitrament of a great Sovereign Senate, which shall be to Europe what the Parliament is to England, shall decide all questions of difference; a day when canon will be exhibited in our museums as instruments of torture are now, and men will wonder that such things ever could exist;—that day is certainly approaching.
Viewing the present gigantic armaments, it may seem absurd, to speak of the United States of Europe. But things as great have been accomplished. A small company of "Friends," two-hundred years ago, issued the first feeble protest against the traffic in human flesh. Yet that protest swelled to irresistible power, and slavery for a generation has been a thing of the past. A few despised Quakers assembled around the English shoemaker to profess that Christ intended His Gospel of Love to be exercised in national as well as in private life. Today millions echo and follow that same doctrine. In the Roman phraseology "stranger" meant enemy. How has the world changed, now that we begin to realize that we are men, the children of one common Father, united by a more sacred bond even than we are as citizens! And, thanks to God, the world still moves, and rapidly. We live in the most impetuous current of events that ever swept along the river of time. A year now often effects the work of a century. The inventions of dynamite and melinite, of Maxim-gun and smokeless powder, the vast resources, the immense number of men involved, make the prospect of any war so horrible, that even the most courageous or reckless of statesmen shrink from the dreadful responsibility. Science has destroyed war as it was, and made it murder. When, as is true of a recent discovery, a single explosive can shatter an ironclad, and promises even to destroy an entire army, war must of necessity recoil on itself to its own extinction. Personal heorism has become ineffective. Intellectual development abhors the arts of destruction. Every new increase of the standing armies makes an outbreak less probable; every new invention makes the