Kansas University Weekly.
37
LITERARY.
Is Peace A Dream?
BY P. A. CLAASSEN.
A darkened chamber—a death-bed scene—and one of the world's noblest men is breathing his last. He has comprehended nature in its deepest meaning, he has penetrated the depths of human existence, "he has thought God's thoughts after Him." And yet, as he gazes into the mysteries of the Unknown, as the veil of Eternity is being lifted, he whispers his dying prayer: "More Light!"
Expressed or unexpressed, realized in part or striven for with unsatisfied yearning, these words have been the prayer, the object of the ages of human existence. Ever pressing onward with a motion as continuous as the passage of time, humanity has climbed higher and higher to nobler conceptions, to wider vistas. However dark and bloody the records of the dominion of human violence, passion, and greed, we can yet clearly see, how through all generations, like a golden thread,
"An increasing purpose runs.
And the thoughts of men are widened
With the process of the suns."
This progress has been by no means a material or intellectual one alone. As from the Alpine heights of a new and better humanity widens further and further the horizon of a new and better morality, so there must come a time when the sun of Thor's day shall have set,when "man-slaying,blood-polluted,city-smiting Mars" shall have been dethroned,and the Prince of Peace shall reign over a new earth, redeemed from its selfishness and sin.
The history of mankind is the historoy of wars. The whole earth is but an immense altar where life is immolated without end, without measure, without respite. This has led historians to the bitter conclusion, that war is the natural condition of the world. Granting man's beastly propensities however, is it less true that his civilization is determined by the extent to which his evil dispositions are subdued? War is a resort to brute-force, where reason and the divine part of our nature are rudely dethroned. The issue decided by war is not right and justice, but physical superiority. The conqueror may, like Brennus, throw his sword into the scales and balance them in his favor. But is the true moral relation changed? When the equilibrium is restored, the balances will return to their former position. But even if they should be destroyed there are scales of eternal justice whose equilibrium is never disturbed. They will still register right and truth and the world's history will finally prove the world's judgment.
No mind can comprehend the material waste and destruction of war. No words can express, no canvas can picture its horrors. Not the pen of a Carlyle, nor the colors of a Doré could give a true conception. War is a theme where exaggeration is impossible. Bring your imagination into play. Watch man after man fall. Look upon the green grass crimsoned with human blood. Listen to the moanings and groans of the dying. Mark these writhing, mangled forms. Gaze upon the pallor and anguish of these faces to whom death is more merciful than man himself. Then realize that these are men,—the images of Divinity. What crime is theirs? Why should they writhe and suffer? Is their death voluntary? Are they willing participants? Measure who can the doleful light of distress that radiates as from a bloody sun, penetrating innumerable homes! Give the height and the breadth and the depth of this infinite sorrow! What must have preceded the times when madness follows agony?
But more dreadful than material loss and social degeneration are the moral results. What moral debasement must ensue when every human feeling must be renounced, when reason must be abandoned, when passions like so many blood-hounds are unleashed and suffered to rage, when crimes stalk abroad in soldier's garb, unwhipped of justice! How can daily organized murder make man anything but wild and ferocious? His hand is blood-stained. He has against his will, it may be, pierced a man against whom he has no personal enmity, a man beautiful and noble perhaps, a man made in the image of God. The effect of the terrible scene can never be effaced from his memory. The tiger and the hyena in the nocturnal depths of his own soul are unchained. He thirsts for more blood; he rages in wild fury. The two beings within him wrestle for supremacy, the man from heaven who shudders at such scenes, and his dismal counterpart that rejoices at writhing and destruction. Which will conquer, where
"The gates of mercy shall be all shut up; And the fleshid soldier rough and hard of heart;
And the flesh'd soldier rough and hard of heart.
in liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell;?"
And to what effect is all this misery, horror and destruction? All the wars of Russia and