Paxomaniacs: or Pacifists Run Mad I

          What is a Paxomaniac? There is no use in looking in a dictionary for the word. You will not find it. It is a brand new word -- just brought to birth by Necessity, the mother of invention.

          But so is the word "pacifist", a new word; so new that is appears neither in the New Standard Dictionary of 1913 nor the Century Dictionary of 1914. Presumably the word is a product of belligerent (not to say contentious, controversial, enraged, exasperated, exasperating, fighting, furious, harsh, hateful, hostile, irritated, irritating, provoking, quarrelsome, stormy, tumultuous, turbulent, warlike) peace propaganda now being waged in England and the United States. It would not be fair to say the smell of powder started this propaganda, but that the fresh smell of it has greatly accelerated the speed of our peace-makers goes without saying. However that may be, the word "pacifist" seems to have been coined -- certainly it has appropriated -- by the two-forty-on-the-shell-road (not to say typhoonish, tornadoish, whirlwindish) peace propagandist as a pleasing description of himself as a super-apostle (I had almost said, a super messiah) of peace in these rambunctious times.

          Ask a self confessed, simon-pure "pacifist" to define this word, -- which when you look at it appears innocent enough, and such a word as might be fairly descriptive of your own attitude towards your fellowmen -- and (presto! change!) he skins up a short dizzy pole to a dizzy height, stands on the tip of it, improvises a halo about his head, spins around like a dancing dervish, stops suddenly, points a scornful finger at some such calm, tranquil, conciliatlory, gentle, meek, mild, peaceable, neighborly gentleman as (say) William Howard Taft, and with a withering look upon his face, cries, "Do you see that bold, bad, brutal, blood-thirsty, militaristic monster? Thank God I am not what he is! I AM A PACIFIST!! My motto is: Peace at any price. My belief is that the use of force is absolutely diabolical; so absolutely diabolical that it is a waste of time to attempt to differentiate between the use of force by the Kaiser in the invasion of Belgium and the use of force by Jesus Christ in the cleansing of the Temple. I suspect, however, the scene in the Temple has been incorrectly reported by witnesses with militaristic preconceptions. Any way, force is fiendish. Peace is the be-all, the do-all, the end-all of mandkind. Peace is the one and only panacea." Here a look of alarm comes into his face. Like a flash of greased lightning he descends from his top-lofty perch, and darts off the instant he hits the common earth. "Whither so fast away, I passionate pilgrim of peace?" you cry. Back comes the answer like a ball tossed over the head: "I have a daughter at home whose safety I fear in these times when so many lustful brutes are abroad!" Or, perhaps, the answer is: "My night watchman is sick abed. I must myself keep watch over my wife and children, my cattle, chicks, and chattles, tonight!" If the answer had been a twelve-pound shot and struck you in the solar plexus, it could hardly have knocked the wind more completely out of you. To say that you are dumbfounded is to put it mildly. You are flabbergasted in the last degree. When you come to your pacifist friend has disappeared. You stand gazing in the direction in which he went, and then, if you happen to know it, the story of the old country fellow who met a camel face to face for the first time at a circus comes into your mind, and you say, with a feeling of relief, "Gosh! there ain't no sich!"

          But you are wrong -- just as wrong as old Reuben. There are people at large in England and America who talk and behave just about as preposterously as the sweet gentleman who called forth your explosive remark. And those people call themselves "Pacifists." That's the word they have invented or appropriated by which to call themselves. But they really are Paxomaniacs.

          (The reader is referred to "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There" -- especially the chapters on Tweedledum and Tweedledee, in which the poem on The Walrus and the Carpenter appears, and the Chapter called "It's My Own Invention," in which the story of the Red and White Knights is given -- if he would understand the "pacifist" mind, or rather, let me say, if her would not be altogether obfuscated in his effort to understand it.)

          I am sure the word "paxomaniac" is a better word to describe the sort of person I have in mind than is the word "pacifist"; and I cannot but feel that it is fairer to the English language and to the large number fo normal-minded persons of pacific temperament who speak it to designate this sort of person as a paxomaniac rather than a pacifist. Every well-disposed person is, or certainly humbly hopes to be, a pacifist;-- unless you give the word a strained, artificial, pathological meaning. To accuse all of the English-speaking race except the pitiful little flock of people who call themselves pacifists of being haters or traitors to peace, is to write oneself down as either a fool or a fanatic of the most hopeless kind, and to slash to pieces with one's tongue both the Ninth Commandment and the Golden Rule. "The times have been," says Macbeth, "That, when the brains were out, the man would die." If these were such times as those, to think of making such an accusation would be positively suicidal.

          Now these vociferous peace-at-any-price people who call themselves pacifists are not mere pacifists. They are pacifists run mad. They are pacifists who have "gone juramentado" -- as we used to say about the fanatical Moro in the Philippines who took an oath to die killing Christians -- and are running amuck. They are peace blinded pacifists. There is a saying among Mohammedans, "See Mecca and die," a variant of which is "See Mecca and see no more." Abd it is said that certain devout Moslems literally obey these words by gazing at white-hot bricks after beholding the Prophet's tomb until their sight is destroyed, so that what they are pleased to call the "supreme vision" shall be their last earthly sight. These English and American pacifists who have peeped at Peace through a key-hole or a rifle-barrel or gazed at the big toe or the back of Peace, until they are peace-blinded -- blind to everything else but peace, and who have but a partial and distorted vision of peace -- are the spirtitual kith and kin of these frenzied Moslem zealots. Psychologically, yes, and pathologically, they belong in the same category. Each is the victim of a religious craze. The peace-at-any-price pacifist is peace-crazy. He is no longer a mere pacifist. He is a paxomaniac. Mentally, he is a martyr to Peace, somewhat though not on the same plane as the Irish woman who said she was a martyr to drink.