World peace and the college: the presidential address.

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.

A well-known humorist, whose tabloid observations appear in many metropolitan dailies, made recently a very wise observation. Like him, I think the great nations of the world in the Disarmament Conferences are making but a feeble gesture when they talk about the limitation of the size of the navies and standing armies, but most carefully avoid referring to the departments of death-dealing war engines, such as high explosives, airplanes, and poisonous gases. The war engines they are talking about are becoming more or less obsolete. Then, too, what assurance is given that the disarmament pacts will not be made, in a crisis, "scraps of paper," as was the case in the World War when treaties between nations were abrogated at the convenience of military strategists?

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The aftermath of war is practically as destructive, horrible, and gruesome as war itself. Epidemics, such as the influenza epidemic which came at the close of the World War, follow in the war god's train. Then, too, international conflicts are always followed by a disruption of society, and a great moral let-down, with indulgence in excesses that lead to despondency and despair. The world's civilization since the World War seems still to be reeling like a drunken man trying to turn a street corner.

Surely there is a way to peace. A world peace that will abide. The way to peace is the will to peace.

There are some notable gestures to inculcate the "will to peace." General approval by all the nations of the world seems now to be given to the World Court. The League of Nations, though not approved officially by our own nation, is generally admitted as approaching the ideal of its originator, the Commander-in-Chief of our own forces during the World War. Barriers of international prejudices that tend to international conflict are doubtless being broken down by the interchange of students and professors, fostered by the Institute of International Education and other great foundations of this country and abroad. Further progress toward world peace is a result of the Locarno Treaties. The greatest forward movement of all is the consummation of the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact.

A way out, doubtless the best solution, is through the world's leaders in religion and education. In other words, the opportunity is for the church and the school....

The opportunity, nay, the burden for training leaders in the arts of permanent peace, must, then, rest upon the college. The group here assembled, and doubtless almost everyone else, will concede that nearly all our leaders are trained in the college. To the colleges credit can be given surely for the training of the leaders in the development of war engines. They trained the chemists and engineers who have improved the most destructive weapons in all modern warfare. They can be accused, also, and doubtless desire to be accused of developing the ideals that permeate the world's leaders....

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If the college faculties feel the responsibility of training students to the idea of settling differences through courts rather than by use of arms, of forgetting the greed of profit to be had in the sale of war materials, food, and other supplies, the war dogs will not again be unleashed. May I put it stronger by stating that I feel it is the solemn obligation of the colleges to train their students in every way to have a "will to peace." Then we can send the dispatch, Im Westen viel Neues.

RELATED ARTICLE: 1930

People

Mohandas K. Gandhi is named Time's "Man of the Year."

Haile Selassie becomes emperor of Ethiopia.

Program for Communists of Indo China by Ho Chi Minh is published.

Leon Trotsky publishes The History of the Russian Revolution.

Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Shirley Temple movies dominate the entertainment world.

Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan the Invincible appears.

Born in 1930

James A. Baker III

Sandra Day O'Connor 

Arlen Specter

Neil Armstrong

Lorraine Hansberry

Harold Pinter

Events

AAC's Annual Meeting theme: Intellectual Life in the Colleges.

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The Chrysler Building is completed.

The Empire State Building is begun.

Astronomers discover Pluto.

Start of the Great Depression.

President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, deepening the economic depression.

All Quiet on the Western Front wins the Academy Award.

The National Socialist Party becomes the second largest political party in Germany, with 107 deputies elected to the Reichstag.

The Veterans Administration is founded.

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GUY E. SNAVELY was president of Birmingham-Southern College. He served as AAC president from 1937 to 1954.