He admitted that it was, and went on to say:
"After this war, the Englishman will look at his books, he will take his pencil in his hand and he will begin figuring. He will get up a balance sheet, and he will find that war does not pay. England is rational to excess. For years she has been the political clearing house of the world. She could in this way rule five hundred million people as long as these people were not striving for nationalism. But Germany attains its conscious nationalism, and asks herself, Why should I allow the thirty-eight million people of Great Britain, through their political clearing house, to have such a dominate influence on the affairs of the world? Wherefore in the last analysis, this war was caused by the thorough gaining of national consciousness that English diplomacy has no longer been able to retard. And under the industrial system of to-day, things are not done with papers passing through a clearing house, but with blood.
"I regard this war as an expression of the solidarity of the world on the minus side. It is an underground solidarity, but is having, for the moment, a negative influence because commerce is stopped. The United States is feeling it, it is holding up your country. It is holding up China which cannot get money for necessary improvements. But all this is working towards the conscious solidarity of the future, which will be expressed in a positive war; when fighting will be done not with cannons but with contracts; when not blood but ink will be wasted."
"You believe then, Professor," I asked, "that the day will come when there will be no war, when fighting actually will be done with ink? Suppose that day comes, will it be a good thing? Do you consider international peace a friend or an enemy to robust normal manhood? Do you think that war cleans out degenerate tendencies of peaceful civilization?"
Deciding that this was a metaphysical question, Professor Stein preferred not to answer it. He did though say this:
"In the Bible it says that the holy fire must be kept burning on the altar. It is a good thing for the world that there are idealists to keep the fire going. Men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and the puritan and quaker elements, they do their service to the world in this way. The world must have ideals. International peace is an ideal. It is like the point of a compass, the north star that the mariner sees, or the star of the desert. It points the way for those who want to go toward a certain goal. I say, that as an ideal, it is impossible of achievement, because the very way to it shows the people where they really want to go."
"But, Professor," I suggested, "if a nation has only ideals, it is going to get into trouble. I have heard it expressed that the peace movement has done the United States more harm than good. Will you, as one of its hardest workers, give some message to the people of America, on the status of international peace to-day and in the future?"
"Your country," he said, "has not yet attained its nationalism, but it is most wonderful, because it is not formed like Austria, of half civilized, uncultured races held together by the monarchical system, but because it is welding itself together from material, a large part of which was composed of the scum of Europe. I wonder that it has been able to make the strides towards nationalism, that it already has. No state in the world has progressed so far by comparison towards national consciousness as has America in so short a time. Up to now, America has been the student of Europe, but from now on, America will be the teacher. To-day doubly so; with the Panama Canal you are the forepost of the white race against the yellow. The geographical and moral position that your country holds, imposes upon it a great duty. It is to hold back the East. Your country cannot step aside from the yellow races. You must be prepared to cope with them."
"What, Professor! You are suggesting armament for the United States. Why! that is against every teaching of the peace propagandist in our country."
"If the people of the United States," stated Professor Stein deliberately, "believe that the peace movement is bound to save them from war, they have either totally misconstrued it, or they have been grossly misinformed. A nation must be prepared for war. If the rulers of a nation leave their country unprepared, they are guilty of criminal neglect. In China its four hundred millions of people are unprepared, and are therefore at the mercy of a few million Japanese who are prepared. That is because in this generation might is right, and all that we workers for peace can do, without injuring our states, is to face the facts of this generation, be prepared for war, if war there is to be, and keep on working for our ideal. Anything else is a dream."