Abstract

German Pacifism Since the War

Soon the tenth anniversary of the end of the World War I will be here. Ten million men were killed, twenty million more have been crippled, and untold millions damaged in mind and body by military life. Billions of dollars have been senselessly squandered and the whole delicately ramified system of world economy thrown into confusion. One might suppose that all thinking men would be trying to prevent the repetition of a like catastrophe. Fire is everywhere smoldering under the ashes. Science and industry are concentrating on the invention and preparation of new and still more deadly death-dealing machines, while the nations themselves are many times more strange and hostile to one another than before the war. And yet it would be absurd to speak of the failure of pacifism. The notion that the war was a God-given necessity, not to be prevented by human will, is still deeply rooted in many minds, and the sufferings of the war have further bewildered such persons. To clear away this undergrowth requires long, hard labor. But when, ten years after the war's end, America, the strongest nation economically and politically on earth, lays before the world a pact condemning war, that is not to be counted as the least success of the labors of international pacifism.