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EDUCATION FOR PEACE

B. F. PITTENGER

[Year after year our educational associations in convention assembled unanimously pass the resolutions of their committees for the outlawry of war. Day after day our public schools promote the gospel of peace on earth, good will to men. Major Pittenger's encouragement is definite, corrective, and practical: eradicate jingoism from the history and literature of the schools: put stress upon our dependence upon the nations of Europe for our comfort and necessities: cultivate a sympathetic study of the peoples of the world: promote the better means of settling the disputes. The author, on leaving the army, returned to the teaching of educational administration and has recently been elected Dean of the school of education in the University of Texas.]

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RIEFLY, the theme of this paper is that more and better popular education is necessary to any movement looking toward more lasting peace. Thus, baldly stated, it may appear almost indefensibly trite and platitudinous. But we must remember that the most ancient themes are frequently rejuvenated by new knowledge. While, to my mind, the unremitting urgency of the peace question is sufficient excuse for its consideration, I hope also to show, in the course of these pages, that there is a little new light that may still be thrown upon it.

Before getting involved too deeply in this discussion, I wish to offer two preliminary statements. First, this paper should not be considered as a brief for the ideal of everlasting peace. I do not know that the objective of the slogan, "All peace and no war," is either practicable or desirable. To my way of thinking, a better slogan for the present is "More peace and less war." Perhaps some day, when we have learned to keep our war-making propensities under more rational control, we shall be in a position to consider their complete elimination. But while I have tried to escape the possible delusion of extravagant expectations, I am none the less serious in my plea. The forces that make for war are about us everywhere. Merely to preserve a rational balance, the forces of peace must have the support of every social-minded citizen.

Again, since I am free to speak in platitudes, let me say that I have not put all of

my peace eggs into this educational basket. For the rational control of war there is no single instrument. War springs from many causes, and there must be as many preventive approaches. tive approaches. Each of these approaches must be undertaken by itself, and all must be coördinated into a consistent movement if there is to be an effective program. In this paper we can deal only incidentally, if at all, with most of these preventive measures. Our theme is not the elimination of war, but the advancement of peace through the medium of public education.

This ending our digression, let us return to our theme; that better education, and more of it, is indispensable if there is to be less war and more peace. As the first step in its defense, let us examine some of the principal reasons for man's frequent resort to military action, as set forth in standard writings on the subject. These reasons are: The so-called "dollar diplomacy," which, in the conduct of international affairs, puts wealth ahead of life-property above humanity. A phase of this diplomacy results from the pressure exerted by the "big business" of every large nation, to control the world's markets and raw materials.

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recent years, but secrecy and even deception continue to be practised, not only toward other nations, but also toward the general public of the nations actually involved. There are cases on record where a nation's department of foreign affairs has misled other governmental departments of the same nation with respect to that nation's international obligations.

3. An ideal of "patriotism" which puts a nation's sovereignty and prestige above every other human consideration. A corollary of this is the subordination of the ideal of comity between nations; of mutual, international, world interests which are superior to national self-interests; of rights of peoples which other peoples are bound to respect.

4. A widespread popular ignorance of and disinterest in international affairs in days of peace. Yet it is from the misdirection of these affairs that war emerges. The converse of this reason is found in the propaganda of the military party, which is everlastingly preaching from the text: "In time of peace, prepare for war."

5. The contention that prolonged peace is demoralizing to a nation, and that war is a necessary purgative. This contention is not so much a specific cause of war as a continued impediment to the growth of peace ideals. 6. The theory that man is a "fighting animal," whose combative instincts toward his kind must periodically express themselves. Civilization, it is said, is the thinnest of veneers; a hollow crust through which man's original nature is bound to break. The sensible thing is to be prepared. Here again we confront a principal argument of the military party, rather than an immediate cause for military action.

A little thinking will discover, in most of these six reasons, very definite arguments for education. At least four of them are based fundamentally upon popular apathy and ignorance. Subterranean diplomacy, dollardirected and misleading, cannot always represent the will of intelligent and awakened peoples. Education in righteous political relationships will surely confirm the words of Roosevelt, that "true patriotism carries with

it not hostility to other nations, but a quickened sense of responsible good-will toward other nations, a good-will of acts and not merely of words." And the narrow-visioned self-involvement of nations today, obscuring their perception of incipient difficulties until war springs from them, will have to yield to popular enlightenment. Thus, these allegations for the prevalence of war are really arguments for the promotion of education.

But what shall we say of the doctrine that too much peace makes nations sick; and that (to quote Treitschke) "the living God will take care that the terrible physic of war shall be administered to humanity again and again"? Here is a doctrine, with prominent and eloquent defenders, which seems to stand squarely across the pathway of our argument. It will be well to hear a few of its advocates before we assume an attitude toward it.

Few would expect to find a defender of spoliation and bloodshed in the aestheticminded Ruskin. Yet, in his Crown of Wild Olive, he thus describes some results of his historical researches:

The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together, I found to be wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning, of peace and plenty, of peace and civilization; but I found that these were not the words that the Muse of History coupled together; that, on her lips, the words were-peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and death. I found, in brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word, and strength of thought, in war: that they were nourished in war, and wasted by peace; taught by war, and deceived by peace; trained by war, and betrayed by peace-in a word, that they were born in war, and expired in

peace.

This doctrine is most often connected in our minds with the militaristic régime in Germany. Nowhere else, perhaps, has it been so unequivocally expressed; or made so intimate a part of a political philosophy. Thus, in 1893, Max Jahns wrote: "War regenerates corrupted peoples, it awakens dormant nations, it rouses self-forgetful, self

abandoned races from their moral languor. In all times, war has been an essential factor in civilization." Said the notorious Nietzsche: "It is a mere illusion and pretty sentiment to expect much (even anything at all) from mankind if it forgets to make war." And we must not omit this dictum from Bernhardi: "War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with, since without it an unhealthy development will follow, which excludes every advancement of the race, and therefore all real civilization."

Here is the Bismarckian doctrine of "blood and iron" in all of its gruesome nakedness. It is so brutally antithetical to our pet beliefs and dogmas that we can hardly credit the sanity of its authors. But we must not forget that so sane a thinker as William James once raised this very question seriously, and proposed enforced manual labor as a possible equivalent of war, to stimulate virility, endurance, courage, resourcefulness, self-sacrifice, decision of character, and devotion both to present duty and to ultimate ideals. Other writers, approaching the matter from other viewpoints, have made different proposals looking to the same end. For myself, I am bound to say that, if the case for war is so strong as James appears to think it is, then neither his nor any one else's proposed substitute seems to me adequate to its purpose.

But while we are contemplating this doctrine, let us also recall the character of modern warfare, with its unprecedented destructive possibilities. A recent article from the pen of Winston Churchill pictures warfare under modern conditions as the potential exterminator of the human race. He describes in detail the methods of destruction which were being perfected during the last year of the war, ready for employment the ensuing summer. Compared with this contemplated attack, he states, all that had happened during the four years preceding was "only a prelude." Airplanes by thousands, high-powered cannon by scores of thousands, "poisonous gases of incredible malignity,"

would have "stifled resistance and paralyzed all life on the hostile front subject to attack."

When the Great War ended, these materials and the accumulation of knowledge underlying their development were stored away in the war archives of the different countries, and have been studied and added to until now "should war come again to the world, it is not with the weapons and agencies prepared for 1919 that it will be fought, but with developments and extensions of these which will be incomparably more formidable." This new war would witness attacks upon the civilian populations of the nations involved, as well as upon their military forces, and would include the deliberate spread of epidemic diseases as one of its agencies. Churchill concludes by saying:

Mankind has never been in this position before. Without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, it has got into its hands for the first time tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination. That is the point in human destinies to which all the glories and toils of men have at last led them. They would do well to pause and ponder upon their new responsibilities. Death stands at attention, obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear away the peoples en masse: ready, if called on, to pulverize, without hope of repair, what is left of civilization.

Surely a blacker picture of the future has never been painted in the history of man! Yet it hardly seems to be exaggerated. But see where it leads us. War, we have been told, is the savior of virtue. Now we are told that it threatens to exterminate the race. Have we, then, at last arrived at this appalling contradiction; that man, to preserve his virtue, must destroy himself?

Superficially, this dismal alternative seems quite possible. There is much to confirm the impression that a long-continued peace brings dissension into the internal politics of a nation, corruption and discord into its economic life, and physical if not moral deterioration to its people. When we recall the changes that swept this country at the outbreak of the late war—the crumbling

of party alignments, the welding of public opinion, the almost unanimous sacrificing of luxuries and comforts, and the promoting of organized charity on an unprecedented scale -we are forced to give at least respect to this favorite tenet of militarism. On the surface of things, at any rate, it would seem that the late war really helped us to regain our moral health. But, on the other hand, it is equally true that the same war nearly blasted civilization.

But when one examines more closely into the thesis that war is a necessary moral purgative for nations, he becomes less certain of its truth. Some very unfortunate aftereffects of the late war come to mind. One is reminded of the war-time profiteers, of the League fiasco in the Senate, of Teapot Dome, of the scandal in the Veteran's Bureau, and of the recent recrudescence of racial oppression and religious bigotry. He begins to wonder if the degeneracy charged to a long peace is any worse than that incident to a short war. Or, granting that war is an antidote for certain of the poisons of peace, he wonders whether the evils consequent to war are not more serious than those which war eradicates. From this, it is but a step to a search for the conditions involved in peace which are responsible for its unhappy corollaries: and following upon this search for conditions comes another search for the means of removing them.

In his groping for means to offset the demoralizing tendencies of peace, is it remarkable that man should turn to education? Is it not rather his most natural recourse in such an emergency? The degeneracy of peace-there is some, probably-would appear to be the product of a mis-educating process, unplanned and informal, which springs spontaneously up within the social system. For this process there seem to be only two possible correctives. One is the alternation of peace and war, as recommended by the militarists. The other plan is to offset the informal mis-education which develops during peace with a corrective formal education. The adoption of this latter plan involves a careful survey of the

anti-social tendencies involved in a prolonged peace, as a background for devising an adequate preventive or corrective program.

When, however, we seriously propose to educate mankind away from war, we invite another argument on the score that man is naturally a fighting animal, with specific instincts for physical combat that cannot be altered or suppressed. Civilization, we are told, is but a shell, beneath whose painted surface sits the "old Adam" of the fundamentalists or the "old ape" of the modernist party. Again we have raised the ancient question of heredity versus environment, with a large admixture of very debatable psychology.

Once more it must be admitted that there is something to be said for the militarists' contention. On the empirical side, we observe mankind relapsing into war about every second or third generation. The suggestion is strong that we must be dealing with an inherent trait of human nature. From a more scientific standpoint, psychologists have talked vehemently about the pertinacity of instincts. The recent Freudian movement has persuaded many followers that instincts can be thwarted only at great peril, and that their redirection is a matter for expert attention, rather than for the "mass-production" sort of treatment that it is likely to receive in our schools. The psychologists have also given direct comfort to the militarists by accepting "pugnacity" and other associated instincts into good and regular standing in their order.

Of course it does not follow that pugnacity and its associates must always find their ultimate expression in organized war. Psychology has itself described a way for the sublimation of instincts; i. e., for working off their energies in activities that may bear little resemblance to their traditional expression. Thus the sex instinct may be sublimated in creative activities of many sorts. But, as has been said, this sublimating process is a delicate procedure; and its accomplishment on a racial scale calls for a staff of expert workers now far beyond our reach.

We find in this fact at least a hint of what a serious effort to educate mankind away from war would really mean.

I find hope for progress toward extended peace in the criticisms of the time-honored psychology of instincts that have recently come from the "behaviourists." These writers insist that our established instinct theories are products of the philosopherpsychologists, or at best, of the introspectionists; and that the term has been pretty generally used to describe phenomena which could not readily be traced to individual experience. They have begun an attack on the problem by experimental methods, with the intention of admitting to the category of instincts only such behavior as can be proved to be inborn, rather than such as cannot be proved to be acquired. Present results of their investigations promise a great reduction in the number of accepted instincts, and seem also to show that even behavior which has a demonstrable instinctive core, in its specific details is very largely determined by experience. This latter point may be stated differently by saying that instincts are much more generalized conditions of behavior than was formerly supposed.

This interpretation of the matter fits so smugly into our present argument that one is tempted to make statements that are better warranted by his hopes than by established facts. Perhaps no psychological development of recent years has opened up more sweeping possibilities for education and for every other line of human reconstruction. It promises to bury the ancient bugaboo of the "original nature of man," which up to now has been flaunted on the banner of every reactionary partizan. But we must keep our temperature down, remembering that the matter is hardly more than an hypothesis, in the scientific sense, at present. Nevertheless, it does not seem to me overhazardous to try to explain tentatively, from this point of view, the constant recurrence of war. It is only necessary to remember that our picture is drawn upon the background of an hypothesis, not of an established principle.

This is the picture: Man is, perhaps, inherently combative; that is to say, he naturally rises up and opposes whatever gets in his way, or whatever tries to displace him. In times past, frequently it was other men that got in his way, or he who got in the way of other men. Under these circumstances, the natural expression of his inherent combativeness was war. But man also appears to be inherently vainglorious, and prowess in war, both personal and tribal, was the earliest road to fame among his fellows. This peculiar expression of his inherent combativeness thus became established in his traditions, and became an outstanding part of the psychological environment that received each succeeding generation. Every child was born and bred in an atmosphere of war, which became, to use a non-technical phrase, a "second nature" so pronounced that it was thought to be instinctive. Our point is simple. Combativeness only was inherited. The spirit of war was acquired; but it was acquired so early in life by every individual, and the pressure to sustain it was so enerous and continuous thereafter, that it became as intimate a part of human behavior as eating or procreation.

This same picture, with very little alteration, can be made to portray present-day conditions. From this standpoint, the recurrence of war in modern life is explainable, not as the result of a specific instinct or instinct group, but of rearing every generation of children in an environment that deifies war. The child's chief knowledge of his country's history is of the battles it has won; the heroes that are held up for him to emulate wore epaulets and waved the sword. Nearly every monument that he sees commemorates some military triumph or honors some military leader. Even his holidays are generally inflamed with a martial spirit. Is it, I wonder, a meaningless accident that Christmas day and the Fourth of July are as far apart in point of time as the calendar could let them be? Certainly the spirit of the two events could not be more drastically dissimilar.

Another way to express the theory before

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