It is well to observe that a very large percentage of the injuries and deaths in the United States in times of peace, noted by Dr. Strong, are due to preventable causes, and one of the best remedies is a military training. In Germany, the number of persons per capita of population killed and injured by accidents in time of peace is not half as great as it is in the United States.
These losses are part of the high price that this country pays for inefficiency. They could be very largely remedied by military training, which quickens awareness and alertness. Many an accident resulting in severe wounding or death is due to undeveloped and untrained powers of mind, and to lack of physical co-ordination. In the works of the National Cash Register Company, at Dayton, Ohio, where all employees are given the equivalent of military training in care and efficiency, personal injury through accidents is almost entirely eliminated.
A man who has been taught to play football and to box and wrestle in his youth is not nearly so likely in after years to fall and injure himself, or to be hit by a trolley car, or automobile, as one who has not had that training. Similarly, a man who, in his youth, has had his mind developed to quick alertness, and every muscle of his body brought under the domination of the will by military training, is far less likely to be injured by accident than one who has not had a military training. Consequently, many of the ills of peace may be cured by the practice of the very medicine that is the best remedy for war.
William James, in an article entitled, "The Moral Equivalent of War," starts out with the remark, "The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party." He adds that, "There is something highly paradoxical in the modern man's relation to war."
He continues:
"Ask all our millions north and south whether they would vote now to have our war for the Union expunged from history, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time substituted for that of its marches and battles, and, probably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes.
"Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing in cold blood to stand another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not one man or woman would vote for the proposition."
Let us suppose that the same Southern states that then seceded were to secede again today, capture all the negroes there and all men and women whose skins are tinted by negro blood, enslave them, and establish anew the auction block at the slave market: then let us ask the people of the North Mr. James's second question.