THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
ON THE TRAIL
OF THE PEACEMAKERS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS
ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO.. LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
HIS HOLINESS MELETIOS
The Greek Patriarch, Constantinople. President World Alliance
of Churches for International Friendship.
ON THE TRAIL
OF THE PEACEMAKERS
BY
FRED B. SMITH
got*
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ComucHT, igaa,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1922.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER AGB
I. AN EXPLANATION i
II. Is MODERN CIVILIZATION DOOMED? . . 5
III. IN THE HEART OF AMERICA .... 20
IV. HONOLULU 27
(Part One , . 34
V. JAPAN. -{
I Part Two 40
VI. CHINA. -I
f Part One 49
Part Two 59
VII. SINGAPORE 70
VIII. INDIA 77
IX. EGYPT . . . 88
X. PALESTINE 103
XI. CONSTANTINOPLE 121
XII. CONTINENTAL EUROPE 139
XIII. GREAT BRITAIN 162
XIV. AMERICA 176
XV. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 198
XVI. THE CLOUD BEHIND THE CLOUDS . . . 217
XVII. CONCLUSIONS . 221
M317201
ON THE TRAIL OF THE
PEACEMAKERS
CHAPTER I
AN EXPLANATION
WHATEVER of value there may be to the
reader of the following chapters or to the
cause represented, will be very much aug-
mented by the privilege of a few personal comments by
the author.
In the first place, it is well to know that most of the
articles were written before there was any thought of
their taking permanent form and were the record of
incidents and impressions at the time of the visits to
each of the nations referred to. When it was thought
important to have them appear in the present form the
purpose was to rewrite or at least so to reedit that there
would be more of continuous logic and of sequence in
the whole. But several intensely interested persons of
literary ability strongly advised against any essential
change and they therefore appear practically as written
en route.
In the second place, those who read must also keep
in mind that many themes of particular interest, espe-
cially of a political Character, are not dealt with be-
2 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PEACEMAKERS
cause they did not come within the scope of the com-
mission under which the work was done. The first
chapter reveals the fundamental issue of the book and
of the tour. Are we to have a world of more war or
peace, of hate or brotherhood, of jealousy or friend-
ship, of despair or hope? This was the central issue
and a desire to help a little, if possible, in realizing the
first alternative, was the objective.
The last chapter is the summary of it all and gives
the conclusions, so far as they are correct, upon which
the Christian Church and all peace-loving people must
go forward. All that is found between must be re-
garded as so much evidence to be accepted for what it
is worth, sifted out and used only where it helps one to
understand the real situation, makes known the
methods, and inspires continued effort.
The complete facts must be valued not as coming
from the mind of a technical expert, for the writer is
not an authority upon Internationalism, but more as the
honest record of what capable witnesses testified to,
concerning the signs of the times in many lands.
I was invited to go forth as a messenger of the
"World Alliance for International Friendship through
the Churches" and under the joint auspices of that or-
ganization and the "Federal Council of the .Churches
of Christ in America" and also advantaged by the un-
official commendation of the following allied Christian
societies : The World Alliance of the Young Men's
Christian Association ; The International Committee of
Young Men's Christian Associations; The World's
Committee of the Young Women's Christian Associa-
tion; The World's Sunday School Association; The
World's Christian Endeavor Union.
AN EXPLANATION, 3
Particular reference ought to be made to the good
offices, so freely extended by the officials of the Young
Men's Christian Association in every nation and in
every city ; very much less would have been possible of
accomplishment in many places but for this assistance.
Of all the contributing elements no single one was so
significant as the fact that upon the day before my leav-
ing for the West, President Harding invited to the
White House over one hundred Christian leaders and
public men and said a few words of hearty, earnest
farewell and appreciation of the purpose of the tour.
Among other things he said:
"Bishop McDowell and Ladies and Gentlemen: I am
very glad to welcome you here to-day, not only because
of the organizations you represent, but because of the
peculiar interest you have in the great problems of
international friendship involved in the tour which
Mr. Smith is to undertake.
"I do not need any spur to arouse my interest in
this question, and I am quite sure America wishes
to have only most cordial relations with all the nations,
and seeks only good for every one of them. I have
never been known as an extreme pacifist, but I am in
this hour anxious for the preservation of the peace of
the world. Personally I have been preaching the gospel
of understanding, in the belief that if all the people of
the world may come to understand each other better,
that doctrine will eventually produce a tranquil world.
America's attitude upon these questions is best ex-
plained perhaps by the approaching conference upon the
limitation of armaments which we have called to-
gether, and in the success of which all of our citizens
are so deeply concerned.
"I wish you all success in your undertaking, and you,
4 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PEACEMAKERS
Mr. Smith, in the tour you are now to carry out, and
express the hope that it will result in great good to the
lasting friendship of the nations you are to visit."
In view of the constant indictment of war, as a way
by which peoples may hope to adjust their differences,
which will be found in every chapter, I wish to make
clearly apparent that I am not arguing for an unpoliced
world. I was in Boston one evening when I could look
out of one window of my room in the hotel and see the
majestic spire of Trinity Church, where the great
Bishop Phillips Brooks presided with such dignity and
preached such a high type of Christianity. From an-
other window I could see the domes of Harvard Uni-
versity, one of the highest spots of Western culture.
But when I wished to go out for a short distance to call
upon a friend, the porter at the door stopped me and
said, "You are not permitted to go out ; it is not prudent
to be on the streets of Boston to-night, for the police-
men are on strike."
Churches and universities combined had not carried
society to a point where police protection was unnec-
essary. The lawless and the violent of earth can be
answered only by force and they will doubtless be found
among men to the end of time. But this book is writ-
ten in the conviction that police protection against these
and armed force for aggression, or for adjusting in-*
ternational questions, are two entirely different prin-
ciples. It is presented in the further conviction that
war as such an implement can be and must be elimi-
nated from the scene of human struggle.
CHAPTER II
IS MODERN CIVILIZATION DOOMED?
Where All the Prophets Have Failed
"TIT THAT follows in succeeding chapters is the re-
\\l suit of a sudden awakening which came to the
* author and seemed to be shared by millions of
people, not in one part of the world or of any one race
or tongue, but by all kinds in every part of the world.
Up to 1914 for a considerable number of years hu-
manity had been moving along rather complacently.
People were fairly prosperous and the methods of wel-
fare and uplift for the needy were being worked upon
a pretty satisfactory basis, at least enough to grant a
measure of consolation to the benevolently minded and
to give them the delightful prestige of being "gener-
ous."
Eleemosynary societies were springing up every-
where, with romantic prophecies of good, followed by
"reports of great progress."
The representatives of Western Christianity, who
had gone out to the non-Christians, were telling thrill-
ing tales of how these of other less promising faiths
were "crowding around, hungry and eager for Chris-
tian direction."
The universities and colleges had been saying for
more than a generation that they were turning out
5
6 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PEACEMAKERS
graduates with such altruistic, socially inclined pur-
poses that every wrong in the world was going to be
righted.
The printing presses had been running overtime is-
suing papers and magazines filled with brotherhood
talk and plans for a world so harmonious that every-
thing would be lovely.
The parliaments, congresses, and legislatures had
been going through a change of function, so the people
were told, that had put economics in a second place and
had made the weal of human folks the supreme ques-
tion. They had legislated about everything from pre-
natal protection, to childhood, to maturity, to old age
and proper death surroundings.
Every day newspapers told a new story of the
"treaties" being signed by the nations, looking to clear
understandings and cooperation. It seemed as though
the goodness of God was being worked out upon a
constructive plan that would guarantee security for
the highest good of everybody.
Then, as though the devil got into action, the clouds
of July, 1914, gathered and the guns began firing,
rather quietly at first, across the Danube River. But
the momentum gathered and the great World War
broke with its fury, to last for more than four terrible
years. But even so amid this conflict people generally
said, "Well, it is just another war." Worse, true, than
others, but after all just war.
Like most things in human joy or sorrow, the fight-
ing did come to an end. Then the traditional peace
conference was held and the papers were signed. The
victors were about like other victors. They had only
the past records to go by and so in their deliberations
IS MODERN CIVILIZATION DOOMED? 7
they followed ancient precedents. They readjusted
geography to their own pleasure. Then they tried to
make out a bill of damage to the losers and new troubles
arose. No statisticians had figures enough to put the
claim down on paper. No appraisers could be found
who had wisdom enough to compute the loss. No
mathematicians were or are available to figure out
even the interest charges, to say nothing of the prin-
cipal. Slowly it has dawned upon everybody that
what had been acclaimed as a great victory has de-
veloped into a confusion so complete that in 1922 there
is a doubt about who the final historians will say really
won in 1918.
Four years of fighting and four years of struggling
to find the platform of peace were necessary for the
horror of the thing to begin to sink into the conscious-
ness of humanity. Now the world is being flooded with
statements from great people, saying this present civi-
lization is wrecked and that the whole thing will go to
the refuse heap and slowly some new methods of gov-
ernment, education, religion, and business will have to
be evolved. Not foolish men or crazy people, but those
whose manner of life and training command respect, are
saying things like this. They rest their conclusions
upon the theory, not of inability to see some adjust-
ment discovered for the present muddle, bad as it is, but
upon the conclusion that war is a fixture in the emer-
gencies of national and international grievances that
war always has been and always will be ; that with the
progress of science and improved methods of equip-
ment and transportation and organization it will grow
more severe, more destructive with each generation.
Therefore, that the civilization of the boasted twentieth
8 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PEACEMAKERS
century is a failure and is doomed, is their solemn de-
cision. By every law of evidence and testimony, if
they are correct in their first theory concerning the per-
manence of war as a method, then they are correct in
the second.
There remains, therefore, just one all-important
question before the world ; namely to find some plan by
which the principles of arbitration, of conference, and
of reference to some kind of a High World Court, may
be substituted for armed conflict, war, and slaughter of
human beings when nations differ one with another.
Everything else is incidental, secondary. Nothing else
matters much. If this question can be satisfactorily
answered and a better way of life, national and inter-
national, found, other problems will seem compara-
tively easy. If this attempt is a failure and wars and
more wars come, everything held of value will be de-
stroyed sooner or later.
In this connection it is tremendously important to
shake the complacent and easygoing out of the soft rea-
soning, which, without any foundation, seems willing
to drift along in a kind of gambler's hope that, if the
thing comes again, it may not be so bad as it was last
time. It would be a great boon if all students in
schools, all church members, and all voters could be
required to read Will Irwin's, 'The Next War."
Reading past history is not sufficient education upon
the terror of future war. One more upon a worldwide
scale and the wreck so nearly complete now will be
finished.
The awful shock, the terrible awakening is to the
realization that the common expressions heard and the
views quite generally held about war were false. If I
IS MODERN CIVILIZATION DOOMED? 9
may speak for myself at this point, in the belief that
the experience referred to is one in common with mul-
titudes, the statement will be made in the form of a con-
fession. Reared in a life where wars had been not in-
frequent, and the tales of their heroism had been hearth-
stone stories, they had become to me a sort of a natural
occurrence to be expected about every so often. Even
when the older maturer years came, with something of
a dread for this process, they produced no violent reac-
tion.
But 1914 came and 1915 and 1916 followed. Bel-
gium was invaded, and the Lusitania ruthlessly sunk
and a state of war acknowledged. I then took my part
in every form in assisting my own country in that
struggle. Through the cities and in the military camps
and on to France and the battlefields by every method
I sought to do my share in prosecuting to success that
conflict. The tragedy is that, as did many others, I
said that there were large beneficial by-products of war
which would in total compensate for the losses. It was
the kind of argument with which the very air seemed
filled. The memories of history corroborated that view
and patriotism demanded it. The years have passed,
the terrible facts are being slowly made known. Two
visits to Europe and the battle scenes since 1918 and
one tour around the world studying the conditions, have
led to the calm, profound conviction that there are no
"beneficial by-products of war." I now believe war to
be a total loss, from the time the first shot is fired till
the last starved baby lies down dead by the roadside.
It is a total loss to the vanquished and to the victors, as
judged by long years.
I do not by this indict all those who were in authority
io ON THE TRAIL OF THE PEACEMAKERS
in 1914 or in 1917. I do not say I would put my judg-
ment against all those who might be in authority in my
own country if some such crisis should arise again.
But the contention is that as a method war is not only
futile but is anti-Christian and unscientific, and belongs
to a lower order than the sons of God. The belief is
held that the hour has fully come when this method
ought to be forever abolished and peaceful ones adopted
for adjusting grievances.
One thing is certain : never again under any circum-
stances can I say the things about war which were ex-
pressed many times during the years of 1916 to 1918.
Instead of those beneficial, ennobling dreams there re-
mains the horror of the wreckage and ruins which baf-
fle the whole human race in its attempt to rebuild and
start again the God-intended life.
Leaving out ancient and older history with its doubt-
ful records, there are some present facts which are un-
answerable except upon the theory that war is a menace
and ought to be outlawed.
I. War Is an Enemy of All Human Progress
I think I am an evolutionist, but cannot help feeling
a degree of uncertainty about it, in view of the many
wide differences in definition. If by evolution is meant
what I think ought to be meant, then that theory is
accepted heartily as being historical, scientific, practical,
and Biblical. God surely intends the human race to
climb its way up by sources of earnest effort in the
realm of culture, education, and religion, till it shall find
that perfect life it had in the beginning before sin had
broken the ideals. The Creator has indelibly stamped
IS MODERN CIVILIZATION DOOMED? 11
this desire, this passion, this purpose in the human
heart. A study of the various races of men in their
lowest state will establish this universal impulse. The
untutored, the uncivilized, and the wild men will re-
spond to a higher hope when brought in contact with
schools and churches. This is one of the marks of the
divine and immortal in man. The lower animals do
not so develop.
God's plan for His own image is progress. War is
the exact opposite. Its results are always debasing.
One of the books worth reading often is that by
David Starr Jordan entitled "The Biological Results
of War," in which the great educator reveals this crime
against the human family in its struggle to rise. War
as now conducted makes its first call upon youth. As
at present conceived, it reaps its first harvest of death
from youth. In the Great War 50,000,000 of earth's
noblest youth were torn from natural normal life and
hurled into the holocaust of butchery, and 11,000,000
of these were killed in battle. They were the purest of
blood, the finest of muscle, the bravest of heart. The
battle claims first those of dauntless, daring courage.
The cowards usually find shelter. From 1914 to 1918
there were sacrificed in death by battle 11,000,000 of
the best breeders of the world young men out of
whose loins ought to have gone reproduction in kind
to carry on the upward climb of the race.
Millions more shell-shocked, wounded, crippled, and
diseased have been scattered over the earth, to produce
in many cases offspring far below the standard which
might have been but for war legacies. The whole world
was more or less brutalized by the process. A genera-
tion was trained to read without a tremor of 10,000 or
12 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PEACEMAKERS
20,000 killed in one day of men being buried alive on
bayonet hill at Verdun of thousands gassed, writhing,
shrieking in agony of a death worse than Dante knew
or wrote about, and of thousands more every day who
were caught, like rats in a trap, on ships which were
submarined and went to the bottom of the sea. War
demands that participants shall be taught to glory, hold
celebrations, and have victory festivals, in measure
comparable to the dead in the enemy country. War
kills us off at the top. It is like cutting off all the buds
from the fruit trees and the gardens in the spring time.
No prophets live who dare attempt even to hint at
what those 1 1 ,000,000 prematurely dead youths might
have meant to future history if they could have been
saved to live the natural life God meant for them. The
prophet has not appeared who is farseeing enough to
suggest how long it will take the average people of the
whole world to climb their way back to where they
were in 1914. As an ordinary traveler, a layman with
no scientific ambitions, one who has circled the world
completely four times, I unhesitatingly say that I be-
lieve it will take a hundred years to heal the wounds
and put the program of human progress back where
it was in the pre-war years.
God is the friend of peace, good will, and progress
for humanity. The devil is the champion of war, hate,
and defeat for humanity's hope of a better existence.
No friend of God can be an advocate of war.
2. War Is an Enemy of Sound Economics and
Prosperity
I am one of those who strongly believe that God
never meant any human being to starve to death.
IS MODERN CIVILIZATION DOOMED? 13
Wherever those of His creation perish for want of
food, the cause can be found in somebody's greed.
The divine solicitude is so great for human need that
in all time the rains have been enough, the sunshine
sufficient, and the soil so fertile, that the earth has
produced such a yield that all could eat and none be
hungry. Famine has been the work of greedy men,
who for gain will block distribution and juggle with
prices.
During the two recent terrible famines, one in Rus-
sia and the other in China, while at the same time
countless numbers were perishing by cold and freezing,
in the southern part of the United States the people
were burning up cotton, to brace up the market. In the
northwest the ranchmen were letting the sheep go un-
sheared and the wool was permitted to drop off to waste,
to brace up the market. In the central west, they were
using beautiful corn for fuel, rather than the trade,
to brace up the market.
God's provision has been continuous and abundant.
Men's greed sometimes causes famines in parts of the
world. But of all the famine-producing, God-defying
methods which history records, no other has ever ap-
proached war as a dispenser of starvation, famine, and
pestilence. If the data could be assembled covering the
dead by hunger toll of all the generations, I am sure the
proportion charged to war would be more than that
assigned to all other causes combined in human experi-
ence. Drought, insects, storms, floods, and fires may
have called thousands to death before their natural
time, but war has claimed its tens of thousands by
hunger and practically all of them innocent women,
children, and the infirm. But it has done more it has
14 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PEACEMAKERS
upset the legitimate natural processes of the economic
order. The world is best off when all the people are
having a fair chance in the commercial world and the
many are reasonably prosperous. The war has played
havoc with the business world. Millions are left with-
out a penny or a method to go forward. But, ten
thousand times worse, it has left the vulgar "profiteer,"
who trafficked in the most sacred things of human life
and love. He lives on, a curse to everything he touches,
more contaminating to the economic world than a leper
is to the physical. The starving in the war-ridden areas
are worthy of pity, but a war profiteer who gained gold
out of those scenes and kept it for his own sensual life
is an object of pity and contempt combined.
The economic order is as vital as breath to good
human existence. The war has wrecked it for many
years yet to be,
5. W.ar Is an Enemy of the Kingdom of God
If I should be asked to give one single answer to
cover what seems to be the most serious result of the
Great War, I would not speak of the deaths in actual
battle, terrible as they were ; reference would not be di-
rected to the financial losses, although the wiping out
of three hundred and fifty billion dollars of actual
values, to say nothing of the indirect losses, has left the
world a legacy of poverty and left nations bankrupt,
some of whom will never rise again. Neither would
attention be centered upon an attempt to appraise the
horrors of disease, plague, pestilence, and disturbed
mental conditions throughout the world, inexplicably
terrible as they are. If only one word was permitted
IS MODERN CIVILIZATION DOOMED? 15
in an appraisement of the whole result, it would be
HATE.
No one intelligent about the facts can doubt that
generation after generation will have to pass before
these hitherto unequaled passions of revenge, jealousy,
and hate are quieted. The economic world will suffer
fearfully from this fact because sound, normal commer-
cial enterprises do not prosper in the world amid the
scenes of hate which now exist. Even the physical
problems, as represented by disease, will remain un-
solved so long as this lack of friendship exists, but be-