World Affairs Institute

THE PASSING OF BULLETS AND MONISMSource: Advocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 82, No. 9/10 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1920),pp. 296-297Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20659478 .

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296 ADVOCATE OF PEACE Sept.-Oct. ever the direct economic effect of the meeting, the nature of this organization shows the return to sane

methods of international effort. States not members of the League participate on equal terms with States in the

League. Government officials, bankers, and commercial

men vote not as international groups, but as individuals. Decisions reached are to take simply the form of recom mendations to the various governments. Thus they will be without binding force unless ratified by the nations to whom the recommendations are made. No Article X or XVI of the League of Nations here. The publicity seems complete. We have before us, therefore, a Hague Conference in miniature. Such a meeting will lead to other and still more important international conferences. The rational methods of handling international disputes approach.

THE ATTITUDE OF FOREIGN LABOR TOWARD WAR

I T Now appears that the military wing of governments must reckon with organized forces of labor. Evi

dence of this accumulates. The war-making and peace

defining agencies of governments find themselves reckon

ing even with labor groups radical in their policies, bent

upon extremism; but among practically all of the labor

groups, especially abroad, military action in behalf of nationalism is openly and incorrigibly opposed. Owing to the conservative character of our people and to the control of our organized labor by "moderates," this newer aspect of anti-militarism has not taken concrete form in the United States; but statesmen abroad are

facing the phenomenon with no little trepidation. The International Miners' Congress at its last con

ference decided to order a universal shut-down in pro duction of fuel rather than have the masses undergo a

repetition of the war experiences of 1914-18. British Government officials, expediting transmission

of supplies to military opponents of the Russian Soviet

Government, have had their shipping operations blocked

by the refusal of marine workers to handle the goods. German Government officials assenting, the transmis

sion of ships and supplies through the Kiel Canal has been checked by workers sympathizing more or less with Russia, refusing to let Poland be reinforced in a military way.

British military operations in Ireland have been

hampered by refusal of the transport workers to carry food and supplies to the troops and to the constabulary. British trades-unionism, by its peremptory notice, served on the Premier in August, forced him to moderate his Polish policy.

In the Far East, Japan has begun to see that her

proletariat will no longer show unquestioning loyalty to the throne or meek acceptance of conscription for national glory ; and even in China the laboring classes, led by Chinese who were in Europe during the war and who caught the revolutionary disease, are now preparing to shape the national policy as well as to fight the

strongly entrenched merchants' guilds. To no incon siderable extent much of the delay in "composing" the world after the war that defeated Germany has been due to the fact that government negotiators have had to reckon with this new factor in peace-making. Old fashioned statesmen have plotted and planned as if only they had to agree on boundaries, to parcel out territory, and to impose reparations. They have been taught since the armistice that there is a rapidly increasing proportion of Europe's and of Asia's population that will not fight to enforce these bargainings. Social recon struction and abolition of war as a method of settling disputes interest the workers there more than the preser vation or extension of political entities. The first nation candidly to recognize this epoch-marking change and ad just its ethics and its administrative and its diplomatic technique to the fact will be the first to emerge from the ruck of the present turmoil and to get started on the way to economic rehabilitation, to internal peace, and to friendly relations with the rest of the world.

THE PASSING OF BULLETS AND MONISM

D

URING THE war, more American boys were killed

and wounded by gas than by bullets. This terrible means of destruction was particularly effective in sur

prise attacks. We are now told by our War Department that of 266,112 admissions to the American hospitals in France, 88,980 were due to gas. This number is 33.4 per cent, while our casualties from gunshot missiles were 32 per cent, shrapnel 15.2 per cent, shell 8 per cent, 1,156 being wounded by hand-grenades and 245 by bayonets. Furthermore, we are told that these figures are true in spite of the fact that the Germans often ran short of gas. On the other hand, at the time of the Armistice we of the United States had one chlorine plant capable of manufacturing from ten to fifteen times as much gas as the Germans were able to make alto gether. If the war had continued, we would have had enough gas to overwhelm the enemy in every battle. Thus, if wars are to continue, we must adjust our minds to the fact that our boys will go down not because of bullets, shells, and the like, but because of asphyxiating gases.

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1920 ADVOCATE OF PEACE 297

General William L. Sibert does not forget that this

form of chemical warfare has always been viewed with

horror and condemned as barbarous. Indeed, in The

Hague conferences special conventions were adopted

planning for the abolition of that type of warfare ; but

General Sibert says:

"As soon as the scientific world developed means of

protecting the soldier against it, and the various ad

vantages, strategical and tactical, of its use became

known, military men began to look upon it as a means of warfare that had come to stay and must be reckoned with."

General Sibert is right. In the future wars, if wars

there are to be, chemists will kill their millions. The

war chemists of all the nations are getting ready. Not

only field guns, but all forms of aircraft will make it

possible to asphyxiate whole communities, armies, States.

General Sibert assured us that the gas manufactured

by the American chemists just before the end of the war

would have been far more deadly than the German gas. Of course, improvements in this means of destruction

are not confined to any one nation. Another world war

will be as much more hideous and destructive than the

war of 1914-18 as that was more devastating than any of its predecessors.

But gas is not the only fearsome substitute for the

familiar bullet of other days.. Submarine and super marine craft bid fair to put present designs of surface

steaming vessels out of commission in the not-distant

future. The armed hydroplane, carrried on specially constructed vessels, will form part of the equipment of

the armed fleets built on old lines, and will do the scout

ing for the fleet and some of its guerrilla fighting.

Aeroplane fleets from the land will sally forth to bomb

all craft that dare to keep on the surface. In short, as

Admiral Fisher, of the British Navy, the modern Nelson, pointed out not long before his recent death, the whole naval policy of Great Britain must be adjusted to a new

technique, and assets which she formerly derived from her isolated position no longer exist. But the doom of

the dreadnaught and cruiser is not only written in the swift evolution of the air-traversing fighting craft. To the submarine of the type perfected during the present war recent inventors have added a submarine "tank"

that will- crawl up river beds and along the shores of

lakes and the coasts of oceans and emerge where least

desired, first bombing from below any enemy craft, and

then taking to land and using the usual "tank tactics." The French admit having such a new weapon.

Thus does the "war against war" go on. Science ap

plied both blesses and curses mankind. Here you see

swords being beaten into plowshares ; there you see spears

being transformed into poison-gas containers. The sun

of peace shines here; a mile away the hail of war falls in

torrents. God is in his world; yes, but so is the Devil.

Monism faced by the actual facts of history is a pitiable

thing. The older dualism was truer to facts, and the

record of applied science in connection with war

proves it.

EMBARRASSING THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

F RoM EUROPEANS, nearer the scenes of continental re

adjustment than we, the evidence accumulates that

the alliance which imposed the Treaty of Versailles is

increasingly undergoing a gradual dissolution. Ever

since President Wilson's second trip to France, our own

opinion has been, to use the language of Charles K.

Hughes, that the League of Nations as proposed out of

Paris "has a bad heart." The insurmountable difficulties

confronting such a proposed alliance, savoring of a

superstate, are appearing now from many quarters. An embarrassment of an unexpected sort appears just

now from "The Little Entente," made up of Czecho

Slovakia, Austria, Jugo-Slavia, Roumania, and later,

perhaps, of Greece, Bulgaria, and Poland. Dr. Benes, the Czech foreign secretary, has been able to establish

what appears to be an acceptable program for this

group. The plan proposes a neutrality toward Bolshevik

Russia, and a guarantee of protection against the viola

tion of their neutrality by any ambitions of Hungary. It appears that the Little Entente is opposed to the

newly established French-Magyar Danubian Federation. In the presence of such a situation one wonders what

position France can take; and naturally inquires, What

is to become of the Supreme Council in the premises? What are the Great Powers going to say? What of the

League? Still more embarrassing, perhaps, the Rou manian foreign secretary has suggested that the Little Entente should be given a seat on the Executive of the

League of Nations. Another embarrassing situation for the League of

Nations lies in what seems to be the fact, namely, that France has just completed a treaty with Belgium, a

treaty referred to by the Manchester Guardian as of "the most intimate kind." The treaty is reported to be a military alliance, under the terms of which each coun

try binds- itself to come to the assistance of the other when attacked. Under the circumstances, that seems a natural step; but what of the League? Under the terms of the Covenant of the League of Nations, of which both France and Belgium are members, this treaty must be communicated to the League and published.

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