Each civilized nation protects itself from war by being ready at any moment to fight any other nation. Each other nation is supposed to be charged with the spirit of aggression, and it is supposed that that spirit can be allayed only by steadily increasing the risks involved in attack.
The modern War System has grown up unconsciously, by way of using war as a protection against war. The principle is that of fighting the devil with fire. As each nation, Great Britain beginning it, has increased its fighting material so as to assure its superiority over all rivals, so has each rival doubled its own armament with the same impossible ambition. All this has increased until the greatest security against war lies in the absolutely ruinous cost with which war is prosecuted.
The average man in England, France and Germany still believes, with more or less insistence, that patriotism goes with armor plate. The fact that there exists no enemy who wishes to attack, or cares to attack, or hopes to attack, or could afford to attack, or would gain anything whatever by attack, counts for little in this discussion. It is always best to be on the safe side, and the money it costs is cheap insurance against burning seaports and plundered banks. The enemy will strike when he dares, but not against an odds of 2 to 1 or even 5 to 3. As the enemy swells his equipment to correspond, each nation is therefore certainly in immediate and imminent danger; its safety lies in more armed men and armored ships; and in each nation all resources of borrowing, taxation, and conscription must be strained, that the enemy may continue to realize that the odds are still against him.
To the observer on the outside, all this rests on a series of chimeras, the product for the most part of men financially interested in the war system itself. The war scares, the wars of talk but not of action, which sweep over Europe, would be ridiculous but for their baleful consequences.
And now we come to the secret springs of all this. The elements of the War System are not only armies and navies, but also war traders, armament builders, money lenders, the recipients of special privileges, the corrupt portion of the press, and all others drawn into its service by choice, by interest, or by necessity.
About war scares and war equipment, matters inherent in the War System, centre the grossest exhibitions of human greed. Those who scent from afar "the cadaverous odor of lucre" have for the most part furnished war's dominant motive.
The cost of it all, the war and the War System, is spread over the whole world. It is felt by you and by me and by everyone, in the rising price of all articles of necessity. The world, to the degree in which it is civilized, has become an economic unit. Whatever wastes its substance here or there, robs your pocket and mine.
It is among officers of the army and navy, especially those retired from active service, that we find the most ardent apologists for war. To this end they are trained, and in Europe alone they find justification for particular wars, as well as arguments for war in general as a means of securing peace. They can be counted on for scares or warnings in every case when petty differences arise.
Nowhere does the military class seem to have any thought or care for ways or means. Economic preparations, the saving of money, or even the ability to borrow it, counts for nothing with the militarist, to whom the need to avert war by war outweighs all other considerations.