Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/172



we cannot eliminate war. It seems so deeply rooted in human institutions! It is so easy to stir up hate, so hard to create understandings! Thus, in the late eighteenth century, the republican must have felt about the elimination of kings. The institution of monarchy appeared unassailable—the task seemed at times hopeless. And surely we cannot, unless we work up the zeal of those early republicans, make reasonable pacifism a governing motive in our political thinking and action.

Yet this reasonable pacifism had made progress, even before the late war. Peace, all the reference books will tell you, had in the nineteenth century cast off its old negative meaning and taken on a positive meaning. It was no longer regarded simply as the rest between wars; it was an end in itself. The Hague Conferences, powerless as they were to prevent either the great war or its barbarities, still showed that a great part of humanity wanted peace, would take much trouble to get it. We, by our relations with Latin America, proved how two continents might live in practical harmony. When