Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1924-03-20

would not do his bidding, whose bull
letin crculates here, states Soviet
! Russia has found an advocate in our
bulletin"
A Warming
What I do earnestly warn you of.
Is the influence of pacifists upon
| womens' clubs. These pacifists, Col
| onel Shumway Of Skowhegan, as
, brave us the bravest, who went
across the seas from this or any
other state. told the Bowdoin Alumni
the other day. are doing things
more terrible than the organizations
so often referred to-" And this work
Is going on. often in such q subtle
way and through so many ramifca-
tons. that some women of the clubs
themselves. are kept in ignorance.
The pacifists are directing their
effort towards women with the idea,
that women are not made of stuff
stern enough to meet the grim facts
OF war. But they are mistaken in
the women of Maine as | saw them
when on our Public Safety Commit
tee. No pleading for q premature
peace--not a motherS whose grief, IL
death came to her son, was not
swallowed up in pride. They not
only gave until it hurt. And when
pestilence swept our State. they went
! forth ministering angels. and faced
death. and met death as bravely as
any soldier in the field.
I suppose also that these pacifsts
think women are more idealistic
than men. They are. Thank God
for 1t! Without idealism. this world
would be n dead world. But there
are idealists and idealists.
Lord Birkenhead in a notable ad-
dress. when installed as Lord Rec
tor OF Glasgow University. said that
an idealist is one who places before
himself as attainable. n goal which
other citizens. perhaps equally NOR
al, do not believe to be so attainabe.
Provided that the idealst he a sound
judge of moral valuations. (Which
understand to mean standards by
reference to which, conduct. is in the
existing scheme of things. adjustedD
And he points out when the idealist
degenerates into the pacifist-and
this is when the idealist believes that
no war will arise in his own day
secondly that If 1t does, it will be the
last.
Such Is not the sort Of an Idealist,
I would have you he. and yet in
Justice, 1t should be said that there
Col. Shumway says. who do not
mean to hure the Government and
act through ignorance and sympa-
thy. But this only makes them the
more dangerous.
The most conspicuous example of
a man of this type. for the revela-
ton Of whose life we are indebted to
my friend George c. Wing. Jr., lived
on Minot Hill. Maine. His name was
William Ladd, called 1.-THE Apostle of
Peace" and the most prominent adj
vocate of Peace in his time in this
hemisphere, if not in the world.
Among his innumerable addresses
and publications, was his promulga-
ton in 1881 of THE Congress of
Nations" which included u Court
of Nations. marvelously suggestive of
the recently proposed international
Court of Justice. A man of the
most exemplary and lovable char
acter, he was an Idoalist without the
sense Of moral valuations.
He disapproved the erection of the
Bunker Hill monument on the
grounds that future generations
would call 1t "a monument of bar
barism." And when Lovejoy was
killed defending his printing press
against q slavery mob, he declared
that LOve1oy was not a martyr, De-
cause he resorted to violence. and
did not die like Christian. So
Ladd himself died without the
sRlory Of achievement"
An Enemy of Preparedness
Necessarily. the Pacifist of all
shades is an enemy of preparedness
In varying degrees. But prepared
ness Is a word that admits of no
qualifications. They attack all form
Of national defepse. They have
crippled the Navy until they have
violated the Naval Treaty by reduc-
ing its efficiency below the assigned
ratio. or course Pacifists are cal
lous to all appeals to the memory OF
its inspiring traditions. They would
have us forget too that the Navy
cannot make war, and is only the
right arm of the most high minded
diplomacy in the world. They would
blind us to its service in peace-to
the fact that without 1t the Monroe
Doctrine would be q myth. and the
Panama Canal closed to us at the
within Of any naval power. They
would blind AIS to the protection the
Navy gives our missionaries on the
rivers Of China and elsewhere. and