Sentence Examples:
Now these "pacifists" we have just been considering had merely a sentimental fondness for peace; they were friendly towards peace, just as they were friendly towards ideas of social equality, towards philanthropy, towards the abolition of capital punishment.
This delectable symphony of human and canine psychology, of love of nature and of pensive humor, struck the true note of universality, a document packed with greater potencies in this direction than the deliberate, idealistic manifestos of the pacifists.
The facts here related are important because they show that these socialists, playing upon the pacifist sentiment in a large body of sincere persons, were able to organize their energies and capitalize their prestige for the spread of their doctrines.
Their powers appeared in every crisis of the Great War, when a small group of pacifists and internationalists, a microscopic minority in every country, were yet constantly figuring as diplomatists and intermediaries and men on whose attitude great issues might depend.
The real "pacifists," so far as it is possible to ascertain their views, unable, consciously or not, to see any difference in the respective responsibilities of the belligerents in opening the war, consider that they are equally guilty in not closing it.
This indeed takes us to the very center of our problem; for at last the controversy between the militarist and the pacifist, the protectionist and the free-trader, the authoritarian and the libertarian, springs from differing conceptions of the good life.
The first two paragraphs of the first chapter forecast the likelihood of an Anglo-German explosion; that chapter goes on to declare that the pacifist effort then current was evidently making no headway at all against the tendencies towards rivalry and conflict.
They did not hesitate to vent their indignation; and when this pacifist secretary gave orders about conscientious objectors which were based upon sentimentalism and theory, the army machine took the liberty of interpreting these orders and trimming the nonsense out of them.
Without losing sight of the main issue, or wanting to forget the tragic gravity of it all, it would be ridiculous to behave like pessimists and pacifists, and with distorted faces of gloom and pain, to shudder at the notion of finding anything to smile at.
Gladstone, a pacifist like his friend Grey, and favoring an understanding with Germany, he treated all questions with the cheery calm and assurance of an experienced man of business, whose good health and excellent nerves were steeled by devotion to the game of golf.
That it was the result of well-arranged collaboration between clerical organizers of treachery, inspired by Austria, German agents, with unlimited financial backing, who had sympathizers in high place, and honest and dishonest fanatics of the pacifist persuasion, does not admit of question.
It was only when they came to define that policy with a view to its application that their unanimity was broken up, and they split into two camps, the pacifists and the militarists, or the democrats and imperialists, as they have been roughly labeled.
It was equally essential that the blow should be so swift and heavy that it would crush the French before they could equip and organize their great reserves, for whom, thanks to legislative folly and pacifist agitation, there was lacking equipment and arms.
At this point the Prussian professor and the pacifist apostle, who turned their backs upon one another so angrily at the beginning, and started off, as it seemed, in opposite directions, are confronting one another unexpectedly at the other side of the circle of human endeavor.
Jimmie read that the submarine which had sunk the transport had been shattered by a depth-charge, and the sea all strewn with the wreckage of it; and strange and terrible as it might seem, Jimmie, the pacifist, the Socialist, experienced a thrill of satisfaction!
On the other hand, many pacifists do in fact hold the position that John Lewis is attacking, and base their acceptance of pacifism entirely on the fact that it is the best means of obtaining the sort of social or economic or political order that they desire.
Of course, there were religious pacifists and Socialists who opposed the war and denounced it, as they would have denounced any other war, on general principles, no matter what the issues involved might be, but their number and their influence were small and quite unimportant.
Woods' investigation will be found useful even by those who are by no means anxious to throw cold water over the too facile optimism of some pacifists, and this little book suggests lines of thought which may prove fruitful in various directions, not always foreseen by the authors.
How would these persons treat a young contemporary who, not content with being a literary innovator, should use his talent to assault religion and the established order, should blaspheme against plutocracy and patriotism, should proclaim himself a Bolshevik, an internationalist, a pacifist, a conscientious objector?
Doubtless the pacifist will emphasize the line, "The zeal of Jehovah of Hosts will perform this," taking here the view of the Pharisees, who in contrast with the fanatical nationalism of the Zealots opposed the aggressive militarism of the later Maccabees with a doctrine of quietism.
About here, the reader may conclude that I am just as inconsistent in advocating armaments to preserve peace, which, I hold, tends to foster degeneracy and decay, as are the pacifists who, by advocating disarmament, promote war, which, they hold, is most potential in fostering the same thing.
Crazy pacifists, like myself, may find it almost unbearably bitter to think that on each side of various frontiers young men were being trained to sing themselves to death, in a struggle which was hideously impersonal, a struggle of machinery, in which the only winners were the armament manufacturers.
Men who once were pacifists, men of chivalry and kindness, men whose life has been devoted to philanthropy and reform, scholars and statesmen, whose very atmosphere is compassion and magnanimity towards the poor and weak, are now uttering sentiments that four years ago would have been astounding beyond compare.
Recently the Government itself has given public and official warning against this type of pacifistic propaganda; and there is only too much reason to believe that (quite without the intention or knowledge of its authors) those eminent pacifists, the Potsdam conspirators, have made large financial contributions to its success.
The government like all other governments of that day was ignorant of economic laws, and the people had suffered under inequalities in rank and privilege, and an antiquated and inadequate financial system; but the king and the nobility were pacifist, and in the main humanitarian and inclined to liberal measures.
Before-the-war pacifists will all come out of their holes, and be found at their posts, with touching demonstrations of joy, while their old leaders who have been beating the drum in the rear for over five years will reappear with olive branches in their hands, smiling and talking of brotherly love.
Moreover, it is clear to the dynamic pacifist that certain classes by the fact of their position in society are more bellicose than others, that classes grow at unequal rates and exert a varying influence, and that certain classes may have a direct and obvious interest in throwing their nation into war.
Some lamb-like pacifists and "conscientious objectors" to war may be content with such a place of residence; but physically and morally red-blooded and self-respecting men and nations not only prefer, but feel it a moral obligation to maintain the individual and national self against an unscrupulous and barbarous aggressor and destroyer.
Though clever writers sometimes speak of the Kaiser's romantic proclivities, his earnest searching of the Scriptures has brought him to such a sober way of thinking that he has steered clear of all Utopias, and has not allowed himself to be led astray by the empty dreams of pacifist enthusiasm.
Until quite recently, most peace advocacy being based on moral, not material grounds, pacifists were generally criticized as unduly idealistic, sentimental, oblivious to the hard necessities of men in a hard world of struggle, and disposed to ask too much of human nature in the way of altruistic self-sacrifice on behalf of an idealistic dogma.
And crazy pacifists might draw a very sharp line indeed between the songs which celebrated real personal struggles in the tiny wars of the past, and the songs which were merely the prelude to thousands of puzzled young men suddenly finding themselves choking in chlorine gas, in the wars of the present.
His contempt for his past dreams of a field-marshal's baton was as nothing to his contempt for those further past dreams wherein fact was dispelled by a theory; and he had, in his own words, "no use for" a pacifist party which had never, as he had, made confession of its fundamental error.
The pacifists who do so, refuse to inflict injury on their fellows not because this is itself their highest value, but because they believe other less objectionable methods are more effective for achieving their highest purposes, or because they accept the argument that the means they use must be consistent with the ends they seek.
Nor was I altogether faithless in these preparations for at times I felt that my first duty might be thus to aid in the further provisioning of the imprisoned race, for how was I to know that I would be able to end the state of war that had prevailed in spite of the generations of pacifist efforts?
Pessimistic observers, with a pacifist turn of mind, who regard all war as a hideous barbarism and refuse to see that anything good can come out of it, are apt in these days to make our flesh creep by telling us that war will inevitably leave Europe so exhausted and impoverished that its financial future is a prospect of unmitigated gloom.
I myself being something of a pacifist, and doing what I can, in my corner, to bring about the Peace of the World, the Peace of the World triumphant and armed against every disturber, could the more readily sympathize with the passive school of Pacifists if its proposals involved the idea that England should keep to England and Germany to Germany.
It is perhaps the most powerful single interest of all those that will fight against the systematic minimization and abolition of war, and rather than lose his end it may be necessary for the pacifist to buy out all these concerns, to insist upon the various States that have sheltered them taking them over, lock, stock, and barrel, as going businesses.
It is very edifying that American pacifists are exerting themselves against the current of militarism which appears to spread in their country; but wouldn't it be better still, more to the purpose and certainly practically more urgent, to insist upon a truly neutral attitude of the great republic, to protest against her feeding the war by providing one belligerent side with its implements?
That is the meaning of the stirring and startling incident at the gates of the Temple, when the tables were hurled like lumber down the steps, and the rich merchants driven forth with bodily blows; the incident that must be at least as much of a puzzle to the pacifists as any paradox about non-resistance can be to any of the militarists.
Thus, while one may perchance drop a tear or two upon the Socialists jailed by a sort of lynch law for trying to exercise their plain constitutional rights, and upon the pacifists tarred and feathered by mobs led by government agents, and upon the conscientious objectors starved and clubbed to death in military dungeons, it must still be plain that such barbarous penalties were essentially necessary.
The same day came the news of the fall of the Italian Government, which had been attacked during the fortnight by a strange combination of the advanced wing of the pro-war party who considered that the ministry was not displaying enough firmness in its conduct of the campaign, with the pacifist socialist party who denounced the Government for infringing the constitutional rights of the people in the interests of militarism.
Savage instincts came to the top, and no contradiction, in all this sea of contradiction, stared at you more hatefully than that of announced pacifists lending all their efforts to a May Day riot, almost panting to see blood run, and perching themselves on possible vantage points, to cheer on any possible disorder at a time when tormented authorities had ordered the public to stay indoors, and had taken taxis and omnibuses from the streets.