STANFORD LIBRARY THE STRUCTURE OF LASTING PEACE I INTRODUCTORY: PRECEDENT AND AD- EVER in the history of human war NE fare, which is also the history of civilization, have the state and conduct of war met with so much organized opposition, and so effective repudiation in principle. Wars have been fought before, and men have before yearned and labored for peace. But their hope of its coming and their labor have been grounded on their faith in supernatural intervention; lasting peace could be God-made alone, and only the divine miracle could end any but a particular war with any but a particular peace: the princes of earth are princes of war; the heavenly prince is the prince of peace: If to-day's war is unique in the strength of the forces engaged, the engines employed, and the blood and the treasure poured out, it is also unique in the widespread feeling that it is a civil war, in the determination that it shall be the last war, in the fact that it has been met from the outset, in all the states engaged, with organized and persistent opposition, which may be repressed or martyred, but which cannot be destroyed. Call this opposition what you will quixotic, stupid, treacherous, foolish, saintly, what not (and at different times and in different places it may merit all these eulogia) - it remains in the bulk a unique record of the spirit in the history of the warfare of man upon earth. Precedent for it is lacking; it delineates a new feature in the aspect of humanity. It delineates a new feature because it is secular, definitive, and dynamic, while the pacifism of tradition has been theological, quietistic, and expectant. Modern pacifism rests its claim upon the ground from which militarism has immemorially worked upon the nature and hopes of mankind. It justifies its claim by the citation of history and the analysis of social structures. Peace foundations like that endowed by Mr. Carnegie, associations like the League to Enforce Peace, differ, however, from the vaguer groups with more adventurous social imagination, whose sentimentality is not altogether checked by perception, in that they try to study procedures and seek precedents, and aim to attain no more than they can get. They are the realpolitiker among pacifists, recruited mainly from the office-holding, diplomatic, and academic classes the precedent-determined, backward-looking classes ex-presidents, exsecretaries of state, ex-ambassadors, professors (ex, therefore, by vocation) mostly of international law. Their influence is as obstructive to the building of lasting peace as that of the sentimental groups is irrele vant. For the end desired has no prototype in the international relations of the past, and the situation which teaches so drastically how desirable is this end, no duplicate. It needs to be faced intelligently, on its |