The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-05-18

"dL mas otCdSloudlIE dL any rate, Deen
of the greatest benefit to mankind. 1t
has awakened sumbering communities,
developed patriotism and national
spirit, reused and promoted the ability
for national organization and intro
duced new and Broadening ideas among
backward nations. If useful, has it not
been necessary? Does the impelling
force of evolution make unnecessary
sacrifices? If brute and plant
life advance to improved forms
through conflict in the quest for food
and room and light, does not human
life, by the same law, developing the
social status with a gllmmering of eth
zeal motive, proceed, through the strug-
giles between communities, and their
rivalries in the arts of peace, to lay
the foundations OF the thing that we
call civilization, and in such progress
has not conflict been not only inevi-
table, but useful and most important
If war has been necessary and bene-
fetal in the past, will it be necessary
and beneficial through all future time
An affirmative answer to this question
casts aside, it seems to me, all recogni-
ton of any ideal view of human
progress, its irresistible movement and
its ultimate infallible decisions If, in
! the course of things, the time comes
fl ON changed conditions when war can
no longer serve the race in any useful
way, will it not, by the laws of evo-
| luton, disappear?
IS THE RACE READY?
Has the time yet come when this is
desira ble-in other words, is the race
raady for universal peace9
In some ways peace requires more
ideal qualities of character than war
qualities equal to the steady, hum
drum task of self improvement both of
the individual and the community, and
the ready performance of duty. mostly
| routine, when the inspiring calls of
| patriotism and the thronging dangers
created by war have ceased, and when
the duty of heroic self-sacrifice for
| ones country at the battle line or on
| picket guard has become obsolete. Our
utmost imagination may fail to picture
the horror and the shame and the
| pathos of a battlefield at the close of
the fight, and yet are there not fields of
| desolation worse than this, and is not
| the fate of each one of those stricken
thousands infinitely preferable to the
almost daily experience of other thou
sands in the heyday of peace2 Has
| the race reached the stage when it can
| continue to advance without the heroic
! influences of military life? The in
| spring call to arms for country IS sake
! Does it not arouse the best sentiments
of manhood and of wOmanhood also
With Ingersoll, we see the country s
defenders "as they march proudly
away under the Haunting flags, keeping
time to the grand, wild music of war
marching down the streets of the great
cities-through the towns and across
the prairies-down to the fields of
glory, to do and to die for the eternal
right The world admires physical
courage, and is justified in such a SEN
timent. for is it not the visible ex-
preston of that quality of human char
acter which is the protection of native
land and the home-of women and chill
dren-from the hand of violence9 But
until humanity develops a paramount
homage for moral courage, that higher
quality that safeguards the ideal inter
ests of the State and stands for the
things that so to the character devel-
opment of the citizen and the purity of
the government, is it ready for or
equal to the dangers of peace, the selfish
influences of the pursuit of wealth, the
demoralizing influences of material
prosperity. the enfeebling effect of
luxury? Is not war a wholesome check
to these things sometimes, and is not
the race learning 10 appreciate and to
rightly value peace because of its eX-
periences of the varying fortunes of
internal and international conficts9
WAR AND DUELING.
War appears to an extent to occupy
the same status as to the reason of its
use as was formerly held by dueling,
and to an extent as has been held by
the practice of highway robbery and
similar enterprises at all times. As
to dueling the analogy holds as far as
nation-the ehalienger-wages an ag-
gressive war for the preservation of its
socalled honor. really its prestige. The
analogy closes at this point, for there
are no seconds as a rule. there IS no de-
Law of hostilities until the challenge Is
accepted: the attack follows the chai-
lenge: indeed. it sometimes precedes 1t.
The chivalrous fairplay required by the
dueling code is absent; in place of
which. beside human regulations favor
ing non-combatants. prisoners, the
wounded, and Red Cross agents, are
largely provisions for lessenlng the
danger of warfare to those participating
in it. the ultimate effect of which must
be a tendency to perpetuate war SEN
timent; at anv rate. does il not care
fully refrain from increasing the re-
luctanee with which nations begin hos
tilities2
Highway robbery is perhaps more
nearly in line with the principles, the
Continued on Page Two.)