The Peace Advocates give no guarantee against war.
The Militarists believe war inevitable.
Neither insures peace and neither is prepared against war.
The people are between the upper and the nether millstone.
We cannot be certain of peace.
We are undefended in case of war.
The situation is illustrated by the old darkey's coon trap that would "catch 'em either comin', or gwine."
The frank belief of the Militarists that war must be regarded as inevitable is well expressed in the following quotation from a recent editorial in "The Navy," a journal published at Washington, D.C.
"Since the beginning of the war in Europe, the assertion has been repeatedly made that this is the last great war; that the peoples of the world will be so impressed with the wanton destruction of life and property, that there will be organized some form of international arbitration that will prevent future wars. Not so. The war now raging between the nations of Europe is much more probably but the first of a series of tremendous world-wide conflicts that will be fought by the inhabitants of the earth for national supremacy, until the supremacy is obtained by a single people, or possibly by an amalgamated race, the ingredients of which are just now being thrown into the melting pot.
"The wars of the past will sink into comparative insignificance when future historians compile statistics of coming conflicts among the nations of the earth."