The American Army and Navy Journal thinks that militarism will not be dead no matter who wins in the great war. It prophesies that when the conflict does end “everything points to a continuance of the military systems as they existed before the war, strengthened and expanded in accordance with the lessons learned from the conflict now raging.” The only thing that can save the world from such a calamity is the establishment of a World Court for Judicial Settlement by the agreement of the majority of the great nations.
Speaking of the talk of war with Germany over the Lusitania tragedy, Cryus Northrop, President of the Minnesota Peace Society, and President Emeritus of the Minnesota University, said in an address to the students: “It is easy to talk of drastic measures, but what could we do in the event of war? Could we send our Navy over there? Where are the 48 British Dreadnaughts? We cannot suppose any different treatment would be accorded our fleet if we went over there. And could we send our army over there to be killed under ground? The idea is preposterous.”
The most prominent person who has called ex-Secretary Bryan a traitor is Colonel Henry Watterson, the most distinguished Democratic Editor in the country. He said in his paper, the Louisville Courier Journal, under the caption, “Treachery Unspeakable.” “The President’s note (to Germany) contains nothing which should jostle the Imperial sensibilities, but the actions and utterances of Mr. Bryan cannot be so dismissed. Men have been shot and beheaded, even hanged, drawn and quartered, for treason less heinous. The recent Secretary of State commits not merely treason to the country at a critical moment, but treachery to his party and its official head.”
H. G. Wells, the famous British author, in a recent letter to the London Times, severely criticised his government for lack of efficiency in carrying on the war. He says: “Throughout almost the entire range of our belligerent activities we are conservative, imitative and amateurish, when victory can fall only to the most vigorous employment of the best scientific of all conceivable needs and material. Unless our politicians can perform the crowning service of organizing science in war more thoroughly, I do not see any great hope of a really glorious and satisfactory triumph for us in this monstrous struggle.”
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, in an address at the Commencement Exercises of Union College, said it would be as futile to abolish armaments as it would be to abolish knives because knives often inflict wounds. The reason of war, in his opinion, lies far deeper than armaments—it is the desire to use armaments wrongly for aggression. A general reduction of armaments should be sought with earnestness, “but for one nation to disarm and leave itself defenseless in an armed world is a direct incentive and an invitation to war.”