The Ukraine crisis evokes frightening parallels to the wars of the past century, especially the images of young soldiers and helpless civilians doomed to die or be maimed in a conflict that never needed to happen.
Perhaps no one has expressed the tragedy of war better than America’s great humanitarian and advocate for world peace, Jane Addams, in her address to a packed Carnegie Hall on July 9, 1915. Speaking as chair of the International Women’s Peace Congress just concluded at The Hague, Addams offered three truisms that still apply today: 1) Wars are started by old men and waged by the young; 2) War feeds on itself — the horrors of combat provide the rationale for continuing to fight; and 3) “Militarist forces” inevitably dominate “civil forces” during wartime, making it harder for the latter to “resuscitate” after a conflict.
Jane Addams at age 55 was world-famous as a humanitarian, writer, speaker, and director of the Hull House “settlement” that she co-founded in Chicago in 1889 and expanded into a 13-building cornucopia of social services to the poor, political advocacy and cultural enrichment. By 1912, “Saint Jane” was so popular that Theodore Roosevelt invited her to second his nomination for president at the Progressive Party convention that year (even though as a woman she could not yet vote!). According to journalist William Allen White, “Not even the Colonel [TR] got more rousing cheers than Jane Addams, when she rose to second his nomination.”
Three years later however, Addams would herself be a victim of the third point in her Carnegie Hall address. In that speech, Addams described a mediation proposal to end the war developed by the Hague Peace Conference. While conveying the proposal to leaders of the warring countries, Addams and her companions spoke with wounded soldiers from all sides who made “similar statements in regard to the necessity for the use of stimulants before men would engage in certain bayonet charges … They all have to give them the ‘dope’ before the bayonet charge is possible.”
The militarist reaction erupted with a letter to The New York Times (July 13, 1915) from war correspondent and Roosevelt confidant Richard Harding Davis: “If we are to believe her, the Canadians at Ypres, the Australians in the Dardanelles, the English and the French on the Aisne made no supreme sacrifice, but were killed in a drunken brawl. … But against this insult, flung by a complacent and self-satisfied woman at men who gave their lives for men, I protest.”
Roosevelt himself dismissed his former ally and friend as “one of the shrieking sisterhood” and a “Bull Mouse.” In her 1930 memoir, Addams wrote: “The journalistic attack continued for week after week in every sort of newspaper throughout the country. … It also brought me an enormous number of letters, most of them abusive.” Nevertheless, Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
A half-century later, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., also a Nobel Laureate, would endure a similar fall from grace at the hands of militarists after his epic protest against the Vietnam War at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. To the outrage of war supporters and some civil rights leaders, King denounced the disproportionate burdens of the war on poor and non-white Americans, as well as Vietnamese casualties on either side.
The reaction began with a patronizing New York Times editorial (“Dr. King’s Error,” April 7, 1967) that faulted his “fusing of two public problems that are distinct and separate [the war and civil rights]. By drawing them together, Dr. King has done a disservice to both.”
Both Addams and King were right of course: wars impose horrifically unequal burdens within societies determined by the divides of age and race — to which inequality in wealth must be added. The invasion of Ukraine has been launched by an aging, insecure, and wealthy autocrat, Vladimir Putin, with no concern for the youthful combatants slogging in the cold and mud, or the civilians trapped in the war’s path.
Fortunately, the U.S and NATO allies so far are pursuing non-combat options, but there is no knowing where this will lead. It is time for today’s spiritual successors to Jane Addams and Martin Luther King Jr. — and Northampton’s beloved Frances Crowe — from all countries to step forward and speak truth to power, no matter what the personal consequences.
Rutherford Platt lives in Florence.