THE MODERN PEACE MOVEMENT.

BY ALFRED H. LOVE, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSAL PEACE UNION.

A

S magnetism and electricity may be considered by scientists the coming forces, the problem being their application, so the divinity and spirituality of God's creation, as found in man, may be regarded as the undeveloped dynamics of practical and universal peace.

The marvelous advance made in science calls for commensurate progress in morals. With a higher civilization comes the demand for a clearer recognition of true religious principles, which some may call Christian, but which all will recognize as the revelations of truth within every human being.

The more knowledge we have of each other, the more we discover there is a magnetic influence among mankind; we suffer the same pains and rejoice in the same joys; and common sympathy and brotherhood awaken the strongest force of our nature, the very electricity of peace.

In this spirit of an inspired and vitalized manhood and womanhood, the common sense of the day has declared for the removal of mere profession, and demands the application of reason and affection, with which to realize our ideals and professions.

WHAT IS PEACE?

The highest thought of the age is that peace is the sum of all virtues, and the boldest and bravest position of the peacemaker is that the right is always possible. The Creator would not endow us with power to conceive a condition better than that in which we live, without giving us ability to attain it.

The teaching of the philosopher, the song of the muse, the prayer of the preacher, long ago paid all homage to peace. Peace was regarded alone of the angels and for some fancied

millennium.

It had been cozened with sickly sentimentality and almost killed with kindness. In the utilitarianism of the nineteenth century, there comes a downright positive demand to be what we approve, and if peace be the ideal of perfection, we must harness the common sense of the period and employ the actual agencies that we possess, for its realization.

The modern peace movement therefore says: The Utopias of yesterday are the actualities of to-day and the possibilities of tomorrow. Our ideals are our choicest treasures, and, when invested with reason and tact, bear compound interest. The modern peace movement saw in the testimonies of the religious Society of Friends, announced over two hundred years ago, the awakening of conscience to the necessity of peace principles.

ORGANIZATION OF PEACE SOCIETIES.

The first peace society was organized in America by William Ellery Channing and Noah Worcester in 1814, and soon after the English Peace Society was formed by William Allen and Joseph Tregelles Price; a direct result of a declaration of independence that comprehended an independence of ideas, that William Penn had already announced, when he placed in the Bill of Rights of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: "No human authority can in any case whatsoever control or interfere with the rights of conscience." These were followed by the treaty of peace signed in Paris, 1815, and by peace societies in New York and Ohio in 1815, Massachusetts in 1816, Rhode Island and Maine in 1817, which societies united in 1828 as the American Peace Society, of which Benjamin F. Trueblood is now the faithful secretary.

In 1816 a peace society was formed in Philadelphia, of which Thomas Jefferson was a vice president. In all these a sentiment was created which was needed as a forerunner of that bolder enunciation of principle, whose advocates were regarded as non-resistants and among whom were found William Lloyd Garrison, Etihu Burritt, Lydia Maria Child, Henry C. Wright, Adin Ballou, William Ladd, and Lucretia Mott, and which gave birth to peace societies in different parts of the United States.

While this was going on in America there was on the continent

of Europe a corresponding awakening to the new civilization. In France "La Société de Morale Chietienne" was organized with the Duc de Rochefoucauld-Liancourt as its president, with Lamartine, Guizot, Carnot, Duchâtel, and others as supporters. In Brussels, Paris, and Frankfort, Peace Congresses were held. Daniel O'Connell and Richard Cobden were declaring for peace principles and the work was carried on by Henry Richard, M. P., of England, who visited in behalf of peace and arbitration the cities of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Pesth, Dresden, Leipsic, Munich, Frankfort, Brussels, Antwerp, Bremen, Cologne, The Hague, Amsterdam, Genoa, Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Turin, etc.

PEACE PROFESSION TESTED.

All this peace sentiment was to be tested. With the Civil War in the United States came a trial. While there was no hesitation as to the right, as between North and South, and no disposition to undervalue the devotion and sacrifice of those who took up the sword in vindication of what they considered to be their duty, there was higher ground presented to those minds that had been educated in the school that peace was the wisest, cheapest, purest, and surest method of success; that it was within the province of the intelligence of man, as it was universally admitted to be the will of God.

How to secure and maintain it became the question. Great purposes involve profound thought and profounder determination. Neither was wanting. There was the inspiration of the right on the one hand and courage unto martyrdom on the other. The latter half of the nineteenth century witnesses the putting in force certain agencies which may be called the Modern Peace Movement.

The demand for soldiers by the Union and Confederate forces developed the fact that there were some who would not take up carnal weapons under any circumstances whatever; who would die rather than kill, and suffer rather than cause suffering. In North Carolina, Friends were conscripted into the army and dragged to the battlefields, but they refused to fight, and were found at Gettysburg and cared for in Philadelphia. In the New

England states, in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and other states, there were numerous instances of the refusal to take up arms or to comply with military law. True there had been the testimonies against war of the religious Societies of Friends, Shakers, Seventh-day Baptists, Mennonites, Bible Christians, and a few other religious bodies of limited membership; and there had been the confiscation of property, because of a refusal to pay militia fines, all of which were needed to prepare the moral resistance to the behests of the military power. The London Peace Society and the American Peace Society were in existence, but they failed to meet the issue. The latter defined the Civil War as the North using a great national police in putting down a rebellion, and hence for the time suspended its meetings.

Too much credit cannot be given to those who had stood forth firmly in the past. It was the inspiration of the present, and enabled me to say when drafted and during my three days of trial, and when threatened to be shot as a deserter: "I will not serve; I will not pay the $300 commutation fee; I will not accept a substitute; I will not put in the plea of physical disability; but I am ready to submit to the penalties for my conscientious convictions."

It was at this time that the United States government showed its supreme greatness. The question of what to do with men who refused to obey military law because of conscience became an important one. President Lincoln said: "Get rid of it the best way you can. Don't take the lives of these our best citizens." Secretary Stanton said: "My grandfather was a Quaker, and when he put his foot down he would not budge. These men will die before they will serve." Congress speedily passed an act excusing such persons if they would care for sick and wounded soldiers or aid the freedmen. All of which was cheerfully accepted. Some of us were already doing this. For myself, I may say, I was going from hospital to hospital caring for sick and wounded soldiers, irrespective of the part they had taken in the war.. And as for the freedman, I had a large room fitted up for the reception and forwarding of supplies for the freedmen.

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNIVERSAL PEACE UNION.

The war over, a call was issued for a convention of the radical friends of peace. It was held in Boston and there were present Adin Ballou, Henry C. Wright, Samuel May, Hon. Amasa Walker, Joshua P. Blanchard, Thomas Haskell, Levi K. Joslin, Elizabeth B. Chase, E. H. Heywood, myself, and others. There was no wasting of time. Garrison opened his Liberator to the appeal, and it resulted, in 1866, in the organization of the Universal Peace Union, with the following preamble:

"Whereas, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are natural, inalienable rights, subject to no human governments, but superior to all; and, whereas, whatever is absolutely wrong can never be practically right or be innocently encouraged, neither can persons perform collectively what is unlawful for individuals, nor serve self and country to the injury of mankind; and, whereas, peace is self-control, and the abnegation of carnal weapons; and the recognition of all the principles of love, justice, charity and purity make for peace; communities and states permanently unite by attraction and consent, never through coercive violence; and the sword is not an essential element of our social system, but like dueling and slavery, a relic of barbarous times, and owes its prevalence to popular delusion; and, whereas, wise advocates of truth, believing in God, believe also in man, overcome evil with good, choosing to die rather than kill; and, whereas, war destroys life, invades liberty, subverts good morals and the spirit and teachings of Jesus Christ, retards and defeats rather than insures progress and the common welfare, and is a standing reproach to human nature."

It has been chartered, and has over thirty branches in the United States, with a larger number in Europe as corresponding societies.

New life was now infused into the other peace societies, and into such religious bodies as had openly avowed peace, as part of their testimonies. In 1867 the tocsin cry went forth through Europe for peace, and the Universal Peace Union embodying in its name the desire for universal peace and unity, has been in harmony with every well-devised plan. The principle that animated the founders of the Peace Union was that the sentiment of the age must be utilized into a living reality; that if there be a profession of peace in the church, in the schoolhouse, in the home teaching, by at least the mothers of our race, in the laws of the land and in human consciences, then there should be