There was a despairing consciousness at times that in every heart some unextinguishable hatred was nourished. There were the hatreds against those who did not believe with you. You began to see growing in Paris among Americans what we have seen growing here at home since the war—the revival of that old, old hate of England. What hope is there of the world, one felt sometimes like asking, when some man or woman who literally had given his life to good works or good causes poured a vial of vitriol on the English nation? It took you back to the Civil War, and the delivery up to England, by the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln, of the Confederate commissioners. Owen Lovejoy, lifelong friend of human freedom, enemy of human slavery, rose in the Congress of the United States then and swore, so that all the country heard, his own undying hatred of England.
What was the world problem, after all, but to extinguish hatred?
Unless that hymn of hate could be silenced, what hope was there of peace, order, or the forms of order? And yet the advocates of peace fed the fires in their own hearts and did their best to enkindle them in others.
And it was not alone American hatred of England, French hatred of Germany, or English hatred of Germany that you heard of, but new hates. They ran about like fire maniacs, pouring oil on old factional, national and international troubles,—the Egyptian against the English, the Greek against the Turk—the Pole against the Russian.
There used to stand in Brittany one of those frank, realistic shrines that the Gallic—honest with the ways of his own heart—so often sets up, a statue to Notre Dame des Haines-Our Lady of the Hates. A mob from all over the earth flocked to Paris, carrying under their arms big or little replicas of Notre Dame des Haines—intent on rearing them at the doors of the Conference.
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. They wanted the protest of blood against what? As nearly as one could see, it was against the only organized widespread effort then making in the tormented world to bring the peace and justice which they had made it their professional business to preach.