The blessings of war

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THE

BLESSINGS

OF WAR

-'By
pfk. W. Ross

Author of The Western Gate, The

Whirligig of Men, Etc.; President

The National Marine League of

the U. S. A.

published by
The National Marine League of

THE U. S. A.

OLD SLIP : NEW YORK

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■"R63

Copyright, 1917, by

P. H. W. Ross
in the United States and Canada.

All Rights Reserved.

Designed and Produced by
The Simpson Press,
299 Madison Ave., New York

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FOREWORD

Disciplined intelligence is mightier than
disciplined docility. At the beginning of the
war, the world was amazed at the perfect
discipline of the German people no less than
of the German army. Events have proved,
however, that individualistic nations such
as the British under stress will freely accept
discipline with consequences still more ama-
zing than the disciplined docility of the
iGerman people.

I believe that in America the results will
be even more striking than in Great Britain.
It is true that we have been somewhat riot-
ous in our individualism; but at all events
we do possess initiative and we are highly
intelligent, although we may not be docile
or humble. But when the hour has struck

for self -discipline, self-control, and submis-
sion to central governmental authority, we
may be quite sure that the Americans of to-
day will not act as did those of 1777, when
Washington's little army of 3,500, ragged
and unequipped, went running through the
Jersey woods. Why? Because at that time
federal authority could not command the re-
si^ect of the people. Things are different
now; and it is for this reason that I have
written the following pages.

My earnest hope is that this little story
will animate the souls of all young men who
read it; that they will gird up their loins,
sharpen their intelligence, and stand to-
gether for a great national movement, know-
ing in advance what great issues are at stake
for us of today and for posterity in years to
come.

The Author.

THE BLESSINGS OF WAR

I.

CCUSTOMED as we are

to the phrase "the blessmgs
of peace," let us occupy
our minds for a while with
"the blessings of war." It
sounds anomalous, does it
not? "The blessings of
war!" We associate with
war anything but blessings. We think of
the dreadful sufferings of the wounded, the
grief of widows and orphans; of shattered
fortunes and desolated countrysides; the
stagnation of industry, and the general mis-
ery and despair and utter hopelessness of

a war-ridden country. And yet, if we can
dissociate our minds from the immediate de-
tails of war, retain our faith in the ultimate
goodness of God, and take a broadei* view
of life and of the destinies of nations, we
shall find that war has its blessings no less
than peace.

Our remote ancestors many thousands of
years ago were taught that the Supreme
Godhead manifested Himself in three forms,
as Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Brahma the
Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the
DestrojT^er. Each aspect of the Godhead
was worshipped alike, each was equally ten-
der and loving to the children of men, and
each equally merciful. Siva, the Destroyer,
was not the destroyer of souls, but the de-
stroyer of bodies; he who laid to rest the
worn-out bodies of men when life's useful
harvest was over, that the soul of the man

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might re-appear in another vesture for an-
other career of usefulness and effort. For
remember that though John Brown's body
lies a-mould'ring in the grave his soul goes
marching on ! And so true is this, so literally
true, that the whole philosophy of life — its
creation of forms, its temporary preserva-
tion of forms, and the merciful destruction
of forms — all this, I say, upon a little study
and reflection, "jumps to the eyes," to use
a familiar French idiom, and we begin to see
and to understand. Thus fortified we shall
have naught but a friendly smile for kindly
death when our last hour comes and the
"earth that nourished us shall claim our
growth, to be resolved to earth again." Read
Bryant's "Thanatopsis," you who fear death,
and be at peace.

About 750 years ago there was born in a
tent on the eastern boundaries of what is now

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known as Manchuria a child who was named
Teenuchin. His father was chieftain of a
Mongolian tribe of considerable importance
but by no means of paramount importance
in that region. When the child was only 13
years old his father died and he was called
upon to ascend his father's throne and to rule
as unruly a tribe as can well be imagined.
For 31 years this young man waged inces-
sant war with neighboring tribes and king-
doms, until he was 44 years old. Practically
all China, Tartary, Thibet, Korea, and in-
deed nearly all of Eastern Asia came under
his sway, a territory more than twice the area
of the United States. He then proclaimed
himself Emperor and became known to pos-
terity as Jenghiz Khan — which means "Per-
fect Warrior." It is interesting to compare
the soldiers' equipment of today with that
of Jenghiz Khan's troops. Each man car-

ried a bow with 30 arrows in a quiver, a
shield, and a sword. The army was mounted,
and to each two men was given a spare horse.
A tent was provided for each ten men and
with this was supplied two spades, a pickax,
a sickle, a saw, an ax, an awl, 100 needles,
S'A pounds of cord, an ox's hide, and a
strong pan. The horses were of the light
wiry mustang breed, capable of great endur-
ance.

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II.

OR reasons not necessary to
enlarge upon the Chinese
Emperor's conquests led
him still further afield.
We find him starting from
Karakorum on a most
astounding series of cam-
f)aigns. He conquered
Persia, Turkestan, and Afghanistan; then
he invaded Russia, and his victorious armies
halted not imtil the banks of the Dnieper
had been reached. Imagine, if you can, a
territory nearly 10,000 miles from east to
west, stretching from Budapest to Hong-

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kong, all under the sway of one man ; imagine
the distance of his armies from their home
base of Supplies, a distance more than
twice that from San Francisco to New York,
and this distance traversed not only by no
railroad but not even by anything in the sem-
blance of an ordinary wagon-road. And the
terror inspired by his armies was so great
and the fear of his vengeance so abject that
the people of a whole village are known to
have allowed themselves to be destroyed by
a single Mongol warrior*

In one battle 160,000 men were killed. At
Nishapoor in Persia, the garrison fought
desperately for four days, but was finally
overpowered, and not one inhabitant, man,
woman, or child, was left alive. Upon the
surrender of the city of Herat, which was
besieged for some act of disobedience, the
Mongols killed and burned for seven days

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and 1,600,000 persons were massacred within
its walls. No wonder that Jenghiz Khan
was called the Scourge of God!

And yet after recounting these terrors of
destruction, I invite your attention to the
blessings of war.

How do we treat our mother earth? Do
we not tear her bosom with the cruel iron of
the plow? Do we not harrow her face ? Do
we not dig and cut and roll and ditch and
drain? And does she not laugh in our faces
with her flowers and perfume, with her fruits
and her harvests?

"And they shall beat their swords into
plowshares, and their spears into pruning-
hooks." But remember: the plowshares were
swords first, and the pruning-hooks had first
their duty to perform as spears! And so it
is with the harvest of nations. Before the
blessings of peace can be enjoyed, mankind

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must pass through the purgative discipline
of war. For what does peace mean if not
that which is not war, that which is not strife?
Every enjoyment of peace is the direct re-
sult of either our own individual strife or the
struggles and strivings of others on our be-
half. Hence it is not only our bounden duty
but our very grateful pleasure to do honor
and to express our thankfulness to the brave
men whose unselfishness and valor in times
gone by have made possible the peace and
plenty that we have enjoyed.

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III.

7 HAVE instanced the Mon-
golian invasion of Europe
because on first considera-
tion it appears so purpose-
less, so cruel, so wanton.
But nothing is purpose-
less, and all things work
for good. The Mongolian
dominion, so far as Europe was con-
cerned, soon passed away; but it was
the means of awakening Europe to the
fulfillment of her destiny! You know
that it is the will of God that man-
kind should spread over the earth and that

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the earth should be possessed by those of
God's children (and all mankind are His
children) who will make the best use of it.
The history of nations is the parable of the
ten talents over and over again. Those who
make the best use of their opportunities are
they to whom dominion is given. That is
the real reason why God has taken away the
dominion of these broad lands from the Red
Men and entrusted it to us. So with Eu-
rope 800 years ago. The capacity to govern
and to administer wisely was latent in Euro-
pean races but was not then developed.
They needed a spur, an incentive, and above
all a knowledge that beyond the confines of
their own native states and principalities
there lay a whole world of possibilities. And
this knowledge and these opportunities the
Mongolian invasion brought home to them.
Soon after Europe was thus harshly made

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to realize that there were other lands and
other peoples on the globe, trade routes were
established overland to Asia, and commerce
began to thrive. The merchants of Genoa
and Venice in particular became enormously
wealthy, and so thoroughly were the advan-
tages of Asiatic trade exploited that we find
some four centuries later a certain Genoese
known to us as Christopher Columbus set-
ting forth, not to discover America, not to
found New York nor to lay out the town-site
of Chicago, but to find a quick way of reach-
ing Asia, the land of the terrible Jenghiz
Khan, the Scourge of God. You see, after
all, there is a link between the apparently
purposeless destruction of Jenghiz Khan
and the occupation and civilization of our
own country.

A striking example of the blessings of war
is cited by the historian Ridpath, in referr-

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ing to the war between France and England
for the possession of North America which
was terminated by the treaty of Paris in
1763: "Thus closed the French and Indian
war, one of the most important in the history
of mankind. By this conflict it was decided
that the decaying institutions of the middle
ages should not prevail in the West, and that
the powerful language and the laws and lib-
erties of the English race should be planted
forever in the vast domains of the new
world."

Shall I remind you of what the historian
meant when he spoke of the "decaying insti-
tutions of the middle ages?" See how the
German people, for example, by docile sub-
mission to "Authority," relict of absolute au-
tocracy, have plunged themselves into mis-
ery; and imagine how intolerable would be
our lot if "the decaying institutions of the

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middle ages had been allowed to take fresh
growth in our country."
V It was through war that America was
saved in the beginning from old-world des-
potism; it was by war that we achieved our
liberty and our independence; it was war,
the fiercest and bloodiest war in modern his-
tory, that saved the Republic and made
North and South one. Today there is no
North, no South, no East, no West; for the
nation is united in upholding a single ideal
— the ideal of democracy — that it may not
perish from the earth. \

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IV.

T is no vain boast to allude
to America as "God's
Country," since to us is
given this task and the
power and will to do it.
Was not the land of
Canaan "God's country"
at one time, when He
chose that land as the theater for the
development of monotheism from out the
degradation of Egyptian idolatry? Did
He not appoint a great leader, Moses,
and a great general, Joshua, to take
forth from Egyptian slums a few tribes of

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Assyrian and Mesopotamian degenerates?
Did He not by His all-wise selection of
judges and prophets gradually train and
shape and educate these people, now called
Israelites, until they became a great and
powerful nation? Not great and powerful
as we today speak of power and greatness,
as measjured by extent of dominion or magni-
tude of armies and navies, but infinitely
greater in ideas, in an idea, a conviction, a
certainty ; namely, the power and presence of
of the one true God. That was the real
greatness of the Jewish evolution, and so
broad and so deep and so sound was the
foundation of faith laid by those Jews, that
upon it was raised the superstructure of
Christianity, yes of Mohammedanism also.
The very spirit and soul of all noble deeds,
of all self-sacrifice, and of all true effort on
one half of this planet for over 2,000 years,

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flowered from that planting. You see,
therefore, that Palestine was God's country
3,500 years ago because He selected that
portion of the globe's surface at that partic-
ular time for certain of His divine purposes.

The destiny of nations is largely a ques-
tion of opportunity, chance, fortune — call it
what you will. I prefer to think of it as the
offering of the ten talents, but we will call it
fortune. Fortune, I say, knocks at the doors
of nations no less than at the doors of indi-
viduals. What have nations done with their
chances? We are familiar with Grecian his-
tory, its Spartan virtues, its Athenian decay.
We remember Rome, its rise, the glory of
its great empire, its decline and fall. Spain,
too, had her chance. Let us see what she
did with it.

Any lover of natural history will notice
how all the wild creatures of the woods and

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prairies seek or create a safe place for the
upbringing of their young. So it is with
nations. The providence that marks the
sparrow's fall fails not to provide for bud-
ding nations. The nursery ground selected
by the guardian of the race is generally an
island or peninsula having a mountainous
range on its landward side. England's was
an island, Japan's a group of islands, Rome's
a peninsula. The "Isles of Greece" is a
familiar line, although the mainland of
Greece, deeply indented as it is by great arms
of the sea, is almost a peninsula. Spain is a
peninsula protected on the north by the
Pyraneean mountains. Into this favored
land poured a wonderful tide of old-world
civilization. Spain was at one time the ex-
treme west of civilization ; in fact, the pillars
of Hercules at the mouth of the Mediter-
ranean were considered the end of the world.

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Spain was to the Levant what America now
is to Europe, and into her lap flowed the
philosophy of Greece, the arts of Arabia,
the commerce of Syria, and the rich civiliza-
tion of Egypt. The world still marvels at
the glories of Old Spain.

For three-hundred years Spain gained in
strength, and then fortune knocked at her
door. Her opportunity came. By the dis-
coveries of Christopher Columbus and his
followers, the new world was laid at her feet.
How did she acquit herself of her responsi-
bilities? Did she try to do her duty to the
weaker nations committed to her care, as we
have tried to do our duty to Cuba, as we are
trying now to do our duty to the Filipinos,
as England has striven and is now striving
to do her duty in the stupendous task allotted
to her in India. Spain ground her Ameri-
can subject races into the dust; she obliter-

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ated the ancient civilization of this continent.
And all for what? For greed, the insensate
greed of gold.

This is the great stumbling-block of all
humanity. This is the crucial point of de-
veloping nationalities, as it is of developing
individuals. It is not that money is the root
of all evil ; it is that the love of money is the
root of all evil. And this applies to nations
as unerringly as it applies to individuals.
This is the test that God is now applying to
the United States. How shall we stand the
test? When I first went to the Sandwich
Islands, then an independent monarchy, I
was struck by their national motto, which
was "The breath of the land is established in
Righteousness." Paraphrased this might be
expressed: The breath, or the life, the very
existence, of the country, is established in
the "square deal" to all men.

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And here lies the strength of our Presi-
dent. His is the voice of the Hebrew
prophet, in all matters of serious national
import calling the people to right thought, to
right action ; or in the forceful vernacular of
the present day, to the "square deal." Be-
cause, remember, righteousness in its primal
meaning does not of necessity imply piety or
holiness; still less does it imply sanctimon-
iousness. It signifies primarily the doing of
that which is right, in other words, a "Square
deal" to your neighbor.

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V.

OU have seen that the
curse of Spain was the
senseless greed for gold.
Does it need any telling
that the greatest menace
to our own country at this
very moment is this very
same greed? Do not the
revelations in each succeeding daily news-
paper proclaim that very fact? It is
by no means, thank God, that the virus
of greed has spread over all the land;
but how shall we, the "common people,"
the yeomen of America, stem the tide

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of infection. First and foremost, by right
thinking and then by translating right
thought into right action. The breath of the
land is established in right action and noth-
ing else.

It is in the cause of righteousness that
America has entered the war against Ger-
many. It is in this cause that the allies have
been spending their blood and treasure. All
right-thinking men know that democracy is
the very foundation of civilization, and that
civilization in its ultimate expression is only
the practice of righteousness among nations
as among individuals, fwho dares to say
that no blessings can cokie from a war for
democracy — for the right ? We are not pre-
paring to suffer hardships, privation, pain,
sorrow, and death, for amusement. We are
not entering the war "to make a Roman hol-
iday." The sacrifice we make is not even

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for our good alone, but for the freedom and
future happiness of all mankind. "Greater
love hath no man than this, that a man lay
down his life for his friend."

Consider the blessings that have accrued
thus far from the present war. Already the
German Kaiser and the Junkerism he rep-
resents appear to have served, like Jenghiz
Kahn, as "the blind scourge of God." The
war they so wantonly started is acting as a
scourge indeed. Russia, scourged to the
quick, has thrown off her sloth, swept out her
despots and bureaucrats and the corruption
and filth that they breed, and is emerging a
triumphant democracy in which men may be
free to be righteous. Who can doubt that
the spiritual awakening of Russia no less
than her political revolution will permeate
the world? In fact, the first tremors of the
Russian upheaval had hardly subsided when

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the reaction was discernible in Austria, in
Hungary, even in Germany itself. No more
than Jenghiz Kahn realized that he was
opening the world for commerce and civili-
zation by his monstrous atrocities did the
German Kaiser dream what would follow
when he launched his cruel blow for a "place
in the sun."

Those Belgians, those Frenchmen, those
Russians, Britons, and Serbs who stood in
the way, they died that others might live —
that the peoples of the earth might live for-
ever after without the shadow of a mailed
fist over them. And what a blessing has the
noble spectacle of their struggle been to us!
Its reaction has been such that today we are
preparing to suffer and to die if need be, not
to get something for ourselves that only we
may enjoy, but to save democracy for the
happiness and security of all humanity. For

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the first time in history a nation of one-
hundred-million souls goes to war with no
thought of material gain, but with only the
noblest of purposes.

It is often difficult, however, to separate
material gains from spiritual. While our
material purposes are now submerged in a
great desire to serve humanity at whatever
cost, the war is cleansing our system and
forcing us to increase our efficiency and our
productivity. From this quickening of out
national consciousness much material gain is
certain to result.

Already vast opportunities for the in-
crease of our wealth and the extension of our
influence have been opened by the war, and
in order to seize them we have begun to cor-
rect pernicious errors, change obsolete
methods, and fill long-standing omissions.
Jenghiz Kahn was the indirect cause of the

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extension of commerce between Europe and
Asia ; and Kaiser Wilhelm with his thirst for
world-dominion is the indirect cause of a new
development of commerce in which America
may be expected to take a leading part.

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VI.

OMMERCE is the vehicle
of civilization. It was the
adventurous trader seek-
ing new resources to ex-
ploit or new markets to
conquer who first brought
the message of civilization
to every new land. It
is through commercial intercourse that na-
tions first learn to understand each other.
America has a message of democracy,
and little by little this message will be
carried to other people by the means that

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we are creating to enable us to seize the
trade opportunities that have been opened
by the war. Every ship that sails from our
shores, although primarily carrying a cargo
of our products to a nation that needs them,
carries also some part of America's message
of democracy.

For half a century America has permitted
her shipping to decline. Our goods were
carried overseas more and more by the ships
of other countries, and there was no room in
those bottoms for excess cargo in the form of
American traditions and principles. It is no
wonder that the rest of the world has re-
garded America as a provincial nation living
within itself and uninterested in the life and
feelings of other nations. It is little wonder
that the peoples of the South and of the East
regarded our protestations of humanitarian-
ism and democracy with suspicion and a fear

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that some day we meant to "gobble them
up." They simply did not know.

When the storm of war broke we were
without ships with which to serve the needs
of nations whose sources of supply had been
cut off by the military exigencies of the bel-
ligerent countries. In the lack of ships
many of our exporters lost whatever foreign
business they had developed, and all suffered
from excessive freight rates and in many
cases unfair discrimination in favor of for-
eign competitors.

The war has largely foiled us to change
this condition. With all our available re-
sources we are building ships, and at last it
seems that the American merchant marine
will soon be re-established. With the means
of controlling the overseas transportation of
our products, the manufactiu'ing industries,
dependent as they are for their growth and

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stability upon the development of export
trade, will employ more and more labor and
produce more and more wealth. But above
all, with our own ships we shall then be able
to convey the true meaning of America's
purpose to the people of other lands.

So it seems that all the effects of war are
not bad. In his wanton way the German
Kaiser, like Jenghiz Khan, has given the
world a scourging likely to result very
largely in good. When the scourging is
over, it will remain for the democratic peo-
ples of the world — and among these America
is chief — to see to it that the improvements
forced upon us by war do not decay and
make another scourging necessary. Prus-
sianism, like a cancer whose fibrous growths
reach out in every direction, has festered in
the heart of the world, spreading its poison
through the nerves and arteries of commerce

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until like all forms of evil it destroys itself.
How are we going to prevent the growth of
some new evil?

Formerly men trusted Government to
protect the nation from infection, either from
without or from within. Surely the men
who suffer and die have the right to expect
this. Just as a father, having labored all his
life, having denied himself rest and comfort,
and devoted his energy to the upbringing of
his son, has the right to expect from the son
a clean and honorable career in justification
of the father's strivings, so have the men
and women who made the sacrifices of war
the right to demand of the government they
preserved a policy of cleanliness and honor.
But things have changed. In the compara-
tively brief interval of peace since the Napo-
leonic wars, for example, there has been a
tremendous development of education and

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of the means of disseminating information.
People have learned that no government
which is not of and by the people is to be
trusted. Witness Russia! They have
learned to put their trust only in democracy,
which means government of and by the
people.

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VII.

MERICA seeks to uphold
democracy, to spread it
widely over the world, that
eventually, in the ultimate
development of civiliza-
tion, every member of the
human family may in fact
as well as in theory enjoy
the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. It is no small task that we Ameri-
cans have assumed; it will call for much
preparation, much striving, much sacrifice
both as individuals and as a nation. We
must be efficient to do it; we must prepare

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ourselves for service — some in the army,
some in the navy, some in commerce, some in
the industries, some on the farms, some in
the homes, and so on. One of the greatest
blessings of this war, it seems to me, is the
awakening of America to its mission of de-
mocracy, and to the realization that we must
have not only the will but the means to carry
our mission forward.

You younger men may think this rather a
tame call to arms, devoid of "pep," emotion-
alism, "Old-Glory stuff," and the like. It is
purposely so. You remember the story of
the crashing timbers, the dazzling lightnings,
the burning fiery bush, and finally the still
small voice — where God was. That's where
the real "punch" lies; and it's in you, too.
We all have some "God-within-us." You
have. You won't disclose Plim by rolling
your eyes, foaming at the mouth, swearing

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Uncle Sam can lick his weight in wildcats,
and all that sort of talk.

No, not that way. The God of Battle
will be glimpsed by a certain steely glitter
in your eye, by the steadfast set of your chin,
by the grim closure of your lips. These are
the few visible signs. Of audible tokens
there are less. A barking dog won't bite ; a
biting dog should not bark.

Don't bark. It's biting-time now.

Your real Godhead is within you, in your
heart and in your brain ; and the greater your
intelligence, the greater will be your love for
all your country stands for, the greater your
need for the discipline that will co-ordinate
your individual power with that of your fel-
low countrymen.

Disciplined docility is good, as I have said ;
but disciplined intelligence is absolutely re-
sistless.

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Never in the annals of time, nor in the
history of any nation in all the wide, wide
world, has such an opportunity presented it-
self as is now offered to the heart, brain, and
musele of young America.

To refuse his enlistment in some form a
man must be either a coward, a fool, or one
so wrapped up in ignorant self-conceit as to
be beyond the power of words to damn. For-
tunately there are very few such men in
America. Most of us are clear-headed and
simple and direct in our thoughts.

And thus face to face with my friend,
the clear-eyed, clear-headed, clean-hearted
young American, I repeat :

Don't be afraid of Death of the Body;
there's nothing to it and you know it; it's
death of the Soul that counts.

Don't let any one tell you it's a "disgrace

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to be selected for conscription"; it is an
honor, a compliment to be thus selected as
one upon whose strength and manhood the
nation leans.

Forestall all waste of words by voluntary
surrender to discipline.

When God called Samuel, the little fellow
said: "Here am 1, for thou didst call me."
Not once or twice but three times did the
boy respond to that call.

Humanity, righteousness, all that is de-
cent and proper, all that is worth living for,
worth dying for, is calling you, is calling
through our own "Uncle Samuel."

What can you, dear fellow, what can ycu
do, but leap from your bed of ease, like little
Samuel of old, and reply:

"Here am I, for thou didst call me!"

Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process.
Neutralizing agent^gneslum Qwwte
Treatment Date: 5tr

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