LYMAN ABBOTT [Extracts from a speeeh delivered at Tremont Temple, Boston, March 27, 1899.] I. INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD Ir requires a certain amount of civilization to substitute law for war, reason for force. Nations that have lived under the beneficent and inspiring influence of Christianity as long as Italy, Germany, France, England, and the United States ought to be able to settle their controversies by an appeal to reason rather than to force, by law not war. Certainly two nations coming of the same stock, possessing in their veins the same blood, looking back along the past to the same history-certainly two such nations as these, mother and daughter, ought to know how to settle all controversies that may arise between them without the drawing of a sword or the flash of a rifle. What we want, not only between England and America, but between all the civilized nations of the globe, is not arbitration, not an agreement to leave controversies when they arise to a special court, constructed for the purpose of settling them. What we want is a permanent Supreme Court of the nations, that shall be for the nations of the globe what the Supreme Court of the United States is for the States of this Union, to which all questions shall be referred as a matter of course, and by the decision of which all nations will be bound by the sacred obligations of honor. But there are communities that are not reasonable and not bound by honor, just as there are individuals who are not reasonable and are not bound by honor. And then, in the case of the community as in that of the individual, there is no alternative but to compel obedience to reason and to honor. There is a theory that all use of force is wrong; it is labelled Philosophical Anarchism. The philosophical anarchist says to us, Appeal to the reason and the conscience of men. But suppose there is no response? "Then submit to their wrong doing." Therefore the philosophical anarchist will not allow the punishment of a child by the parent, he will not allow the punishment of a pupil by the teacher, he will not allow the maintenance of a prison or jail for the punishment of a law-breaker by the country, he will not allow a policeman in the city, except to show ladies across muddy streets, and he will not allow an army to defend a nation attacked, or to emancipate another nation from despotism. This is a consistent philosophy. I respect it intellectually; I dissent from it both intellectually and morally. The commonly received judgment of men and women says, " Appeal to the reason and the conscience, and if the reason and the conscience will not respond, then, and then only, use force." If the child will obey under the inspiration of affection and argument, by affection and argument secure obedience-but at all costs secure the obedience. If the boy revolts in the school, win him, if you can; if you cannot, put him in a reformschool. If the man sets himself to violate the law by breaking into your house, try to teach him better if you can; but if you cannot, arm your policeman and compel him to respect your property. And if a community disowns honor, disregards reason, refuses to submit its cause to the arbitrament of reason, it is rational, right-minded, and Christian heroism which says, "If we cannot persuade you to obey the law without force, we will compel you by force." I am not, therefore, one of those who think that war is always wrong. I cannot think that Jesus Christ himself inculcated the doctrine that force never could be used-he who, when he saw the traders in the Temple, did not wait to argue with them nor to appeal to their conscience, for he knew that they had neither reason nor conscience, but drove them out with a whip of small cords, driving the cattle before him and overturning the tables of the money-changers and letting the money roll upon the floor. I am not afraid to follow him with whatsoever force it may be necessary for righteousness to put on, when unrighteousness has armed herself to commit wrong. I cannot think all war is wrong. If I did, I should not want to look upon a Bunker Hill Monument, for it would be the monument to our shame; I should want never to speak the word Gettysburg, for my lips would blister and my cheeks would blush; I should want to bury in the grave of oblivion forever the names of Washington and Grant. There are individuals with whom you cannot reason. They are barbarians, and you must use force until you can bring reason and righteousness to bear upon them. There are some communities, made up of barbarians, with which you cannot reason, and from them, if there is to be an international brotherhood and a reorganization of the world, we must compel obedience by force, that the foundations may be laid for the operation of reason and conscience. When Spain sent her navy and her soldiers across the Atlantic and took possession of Cuba, and exterminated the population, and brought in a new population, and then proceeded to harry that new people born of her own loins, so that, after three centuries, she left them without schools, or justice, or good roads, or any one thing that government gives in compensation for taxes, she was guilty of what is rightly called a war of conquest. When England went |