World peace and the college: the presidential address

Liberal Education, Summer, 2004 by Guy E. Snavely

In 1930, the World War of 1914-1918 was only twelve years past. The methods of modern warfare that shocked all participants included use of chemicals and airplanes as weapons, dramatically changing how war was fought. Reprinted from the Bulletin, 1930.

Im Westen nichts Neues. This might have been a military dispatch from General Von Hindenburgh to Kaiser Wilhelm in the summer of 1918. In reality it is the title of an epochal book. The English translation is having a remarkable sale under the title of All Quiet on the Western Front.

Remarque, the author, recounts in a most vivid manner the life of a German common soldier during the World War. The American doughboy, the British tommy, the French poilu, as well as privates in the Russian, Italian, and other armies, could parallel the harrowing and maddening experiences of Remarque. If every chauvinistic diplomat, or greedy munitions' manufacturer, or editor of scare-headlines propensity should be guaranteed an experience of horror portrayed in Remarque's history, there would be no more war.

The horror of war is vividly portrayed by a number of other recent books. These books are from the pens of soldiers who have the journalistic ability to relate realistically their trench experiences. The English poet, Robert Graves, in his Goodbye to All That, expresses the thoughts of all who were jarred from their complacent mode of living by the declaration of war on August 1, 1914, when he joined the Royal Welsh Fusilliers with the notion that the matter would be settled by the end of the summer vacation. I, too, had the same feeling when caught in Paris on that memorable date with my wife and three small sons. We had gone on a sabbatical leave for study, which was so definitely interrupted. So far, the same opportunity has never again been offered. Robert Graves did complete his Oxford course about ten years later than he anticipated.

Even when we were refugeed into London, we could not realize that civilized nations would, in our day and time, enter the most gruesome contest of killing not only innocent women and children, but also innocent men who were obliged to bear arms. The common soldier, who really bears the brunt of battle, and risks his life every minute he is on the front, is about as innocent as the non-combatants at home. The private soldier is just like the ox driven into the slaughter pen.

From some foreign travel and considerable reading of world politics since the Armistice, I am as prone to believe that war is imminent as I was loath to admit it even on August 4, 1914, when I was a visitor in the British House of Commons. From what I could sense a few months ago on a visit to European capitals and the leading cities of the Near East, there is much tensity of feeling among Nationals. Unrest is more or less evident. The recent disturbances in Jerusalem and vicinity are exactly what I felt was threatening.

According to my limited capacity for observation of international affairs, peace does not seem to be permanent in Cairo. I felt the situation even more distinctly in Damascus. The unusual number of soldiers in Rome and other leading cities of Italy does not indicate pacific intentions. Recent reports from India are of the same sort.

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The political unrest beneath the surface, just indicated, certainly shows that peace has not yet come to stay. The continuous outbreaks for some years in China, the comparatively minor clashes elsewhere, as in Manchuria and Turkey, are more definite symptoms of the situation to which I have just referred.

To ponder but briefly upon recent military events and present possibilities of world conflict would make anyone shudder for the suffering of mankind and the future prospects of an abiding civilization. During the World War, there was such an advance in inventions of methods of destruction that we can readily believe the next war will develop weapons of destruction that will work much more rapidly and with greater wholesale results. The air service was in its merest infancy in 1914. The slowest imagination will easily be dazzled by meditating upon the possibility of wholesale death by the spread of poisonous gases through a swift fleet of airplanes and Zeppelins. I have been told upon authority that the leading chemists of our colleges, and other chemists in industry, trained in the colleges, were about to announce the discovery of a most deadly gas just as the World War came to a close. It is natural to assume that even if experiments in this field languished for awhile, they would immediately revive if hostilities on a large scale should reopen. Inventive progress in the field of high explosives will doubtless match the advance in gas and airplane warfare. A visit some few summers ago to the "Big Bertha" hidden in the woods of northern Belgium convinces me of the possibility of other long-distance deadly warfare. This gun, you will recall, wreaked considerable destructive havoc in the city of Dunkirk, some seventy-five miles away.