Article March 14, 1901 Issue

The World's Outlook for Peace

Benjamin F. Trueblood

Christian Register

What has been Accomplished During the Past Century.

It is not safe to judge of any great movements by short views. Superficially, the present condition of international politics is not encouraging to lovers of peace. The great armies and rapidly growing navies of the world, if one look no further, half incline one to believe that war is to be eternal, and that civilization is to be finally crushed out under the ponderous wheel of the juggernaut of militarism. But a comparison of certain conditions existing at the opening of the nineteenth century with those found at the beginning of the twentieth makes it impossible to hold any such pessimistic opinion.

1. At the commencement of the nineteenth century war was practically universal and unceasing in Western Europe, or what was considered the civilized world. Of duelling there was no intermission. The campaigns of Napoleon,—from 1796 to 1815,—which cost Europe between five and six millions of men, are sufficient proof of the former statement: the latter needs none. At the opening of the twentieth century duels are unknown in a large part of the civilized world; and Western Europe has had not a single battle for thirty years. Wars are now not only much more infrequent, but also much shorter than they were a century

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