PEACE ON EARTH

For a generation that knew the World War as only a faint glimmering on the edge of infant horizons, it is hard to tell the difference between Armistice Day and any other holiday that breaks up class-room routine. The parades, the athletic events, and the glorification of the stars and stripes are as typical of Navy Day or the nineteenth of April as the holiday just past. But unlike the jingoistic sensations that Patriots' Day arouses, the first Armistice Day marked not just the celebration of victory but also the coming of a new spirit of idealism for a war-weary world.

Today, at the end of the post-war era, these first pleasant dreams of permanent peace have been shattered in the chill dawn of reality. For with Spain in flames and the rest of Europe an armed camp, the ideals for which America fought have been dashed to the ground, and the question in men's minds is not of celebration of conquest, but of keeping out of another catastrophe.

How to keep out of war is at best a complicated problem. Economic rivalry, racial and class hatred, propaganda of powerful interests, and the shibboleth of "national honor", all combine to warp the individual's judgment, especially in times of tension. The effect a single person can exercise in molding public opinion is pitifully small, so that the wish a person may have to be a force for peace is hampered by lack of knowledge of how to go about it, and by a feeling of futility in not getting very much done. Yet the most effective method of keeping the peace that has been devised so far, is to educate people not in the horrors of war, but in the opportunities that are available for definite peace activity.

It was in this spirit of opening the road to peace that Professor Wild addressed the Peace Institute group in Phillips Brooks House yesterday. For a clean and intelligent study of the problem is far more effective than bloody revolutions on Widener steps or Memorial delta. The discussion of the influences that work for war, and the part the individual can play in fighting them, such as by political pressure, peace propaganda, and continuous self-education in the field of international events, is the most successful handling of the subject that Harvard has seen in many years. And a sober and clear-headed approach to the problem of keeping peace is not only our best insurance for the future; it is also the finest tribute we can pay to the daring and ideals of the men who fought and died eighteen years ago.