Peace will find most of these soldiers with three or four times their number employed as accessories to the army, discharged without vocation, and, perhaps, 100 million expatriated citizens, poor, helpless and starving men, women and children, wandering on the face of the earth. All these several hundred millions must be provided for in food, shelter and raiment. How to do it will be the greatest problem mankind has ever faced.
The bonded indebtedness of the world is, perhaps, today 100 billions, and after flags of truce are flying, it will necessitate, perhaps, one or two years to compose a satisfactory peace among the many nations at war; so, that before it will be practicable to disarm and free these hundreds of millions of unemployed, the bonded indebtedness will probably increase to 200 billions. If it be attempted to enforce the punitive doctrine that "to the victors belong the spoils," it is obvious that it would be wholly impossible for the victors to maintain these bonds and maintain their national armies necessary to enforce reparations and indemnities, and the world would be compelled to face at least a partial repudiation. It would take hundreds of years for the vanquished to indemnify and repair, and hundreds of billions to support the necessary armies to enforce the penalties. Whereas, if the individual nations could be relieved of the support of armies and navies, they could readily indemnify and restore themselves in twenty years, and advantageously charge the expense to "Profit and Loss."
To palliate and partially remedy this distressing situation, three courses may be presented to the American people:
First. An alliance with the victorious nations claiming new-found democratic emperors by Divine right, (hereditary royal families, lords and nobles), for the future preservation of the peace of the world. Such an alliance could hardly prove more successful in the future than similar alliances have proven in the past, and would only engender and breed similar opposing alliances in a comparatively short space of time, probably embracing the yellow races, which would produce a similar world war, besides which it would make "scraps of paper" of our Constitution framed by Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, and Lincoln's government "of the people, by the people and for the people."
Second. Apparently a better remedy: a policy of isolation carried out by building ships for coast defense only, by girding our seacoast and our international borders with a broad gauge national railway, capable of carrying the heaviest ordnance and transporting strong armies rapidly; by building emplacements, magazines and trenches, and manufacturing and storing at strategic points heavy artillery, small arms, ammunition and equipment for at least two million men; forming a regular army of several hundred thousand men with pay equal to, or even greater, than that of other government employees, to serve but one short enlistment. When thoroughly trained and disciplined, they would be returned to civil life subject to call in an emergency. This in a few years would provide several million efficient soldiers. With the present airplane scouts the approach of any foe could be detected and announced so as to assemble an army either on the land or seashore that would destroy any possible force that could approach us. America is better situated for such isolation than any other quarter of the globe that nature has given to a homogeneous people, because we produce all the necessities of life. The rest of the world would be obliged to make terms with us for the necessities they can not live without, of which fact this war is a perfect exemplification.
Third. Certainly the most promising and feasible course, if the tyranny of the world's custom can be overcome as it has been in personal trial by combat, is to federate all the nations of the world under a constitution similar to the constitution of the original thirteen States, now the greatest nation in the world, and that of the Swiss cantons, now the oldest fundamentally unchanged government in the world.
This plan ought to be offered at the coming peace table with the United States a controlling factor in its accomplishment. We will be stronger, less impoverished, less distressed and less bitterly antagonistic than any of the other warring nations, with a President capable of leading his people, known to be in sympathy with control of the world's peace.
A spontaneous call from the peace societies of America is suggested for a convention of all the nations of the earth having a population of three million or more, with a democratic or republican government with powers derived from the consent of the governed, to consider a confederacy of the world's nations, to which all should be invited to enter by "knocking at the door," and subscribing to the constitution then to be formed.
That the nations so confederated should take over all the seas, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, those at Dover and Calais, those between Japan and Korea and the Panama Canal, together with adequate adjacent lands, and build tunnels thereunder and maintain them free to the passage of persons and property of all nations save those who may fail to confederate.
That this confederacy should have as its main feature the establishment of an itinerant arbitral government with, perhaps, five capitals, say, at these straits so taken over.