DEFENSELESS AMERICA

BY

HUDSON MAXIM

"The quick-firing gun is the greatest life-saving instrument ever invented."

Page 83.

HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO. NEW YORK

Copyright, 1915, by
Hearst's International Library Co., Inc.

All rights reserved, including that of translation into the
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian

FOREWORD

THIS BOOK IS PRESENTED WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE AUTHOR

To a Few Selected Leaders of American Thought and Shapers of Public Opinion

Dear Reader:

I send you this book in the hope that if not already convinced, you will be convinced by it of the defenseless state of this country—convinced that our danger is as great as our weakness. I hope that you may be moved to use your influence that this country may, by adequate preparation against war, safeguard the property, honor and lives of its people and the sanctity of the American home from violation by a foreign foe.

If you are already convinced of our great need then the reading of this book may still strengthen your conviction and stimulate your efforts in the cause of national defense.

After you have read the book, kindly lend it to your friends, that they also may read it.

Defenseless America was published a year ago at two dollars per copy. Several editions of the book have already been printed and sold.

Soon after the publication of the work I presented ten thousand copies, with my compliments, to students graduating in American universities. This has given many persons the impression that Defenseless America is a book for free distribution.

To correct such an impression, let me say most emphatically that this book is not free, except to a few persons whom I have selected, and to whom I have sent it free at my own personal expense, for the good of the cause of national defense.

The book has exerted so marked an influence in rousing the people of this country to their needs for defense against the red hell of war, that the publishers, through patriotic duty, have placed the good it is doing above all considerations of profit to themselves, and have supplied me copies of this edition of the work absolutely at cost.

The publishers have also put an edition of the book on sale, of which this copy is a specimen, at only fifty cents a copy. In order to enable them to do this, I have cut out all royalties on sales which they may make.

This edition of the book may be bought of or ordered through any book store at fifty cents a copy, or from the publishers, Hearst's International Library Company, 119 West 40th Street, New York, N. Y., who will send single copies of the book to any address on receipt of sixty cents, or they will send ten copies of the book, in a single package, to any address on receipt of five dollars—fifty cents a copy.

Copies of the regular library edition, printed on superior paper and bound in extra cloth, gold stamping, may be obtained from booksellers or direct from the publishers at two dollars a copy.

Many of the readers of this book have already seen that wonderful motion picture play, "The Battle Cry of Peace," founded upon it.

Commodore J. Stuart Blackton, President of the Vitagraph Company of America, who wrote the scenario of "The Battle Cry of Peace", has this to say about Defenseless America:—

"To the fearless patriotism of Hudson Maxim and the plain, practical, straightforward truths in his book, 'Defenseless America,' I owe the inspiration and impetus which caused me to conceive and write the scenario of 'The Battle Cry of Peace.'

"The object of both book and picture is to arouse in the heart of every American citizen a sense of his strict accountability to his government in time of need, and to bring to the notice of the greatest number of people in the shortest possible time the fact that there is a way to insure that peace for which we all so earnestly pray."

Commodore Blackton, being a staunch patriot and a man with phenomenal vision and breadth of understanding, and being one of the largest producers of motion pictures in the world, saw at once, as soon as he read Defenseless America, that the best way to impress the American people with the message of the book, as he had himself been impressed by reading it, was to visualize that message in a great motion picture. Then the people would be able to see, with their own eyes, those terrible things happening in our country and in our very homes, which are happening abroad and which are surely going to happen to us if we do not prepare, and immediately and adequately prepare to save the country.

Faithfully yours,
HUDSON MAXIM.
MAXIM PARK,
Landing P.O.,
NEW JERSEY,
1916

PREFACE

The main object of this book is to present a phalanx of facts upon the subject of the defenseless condition of this country, and to show what must be done, and done quickly, in order to avert the most dire calamity that can fall upon a people—that of merciless invasion by a foreign foe, with the horrors of which no pestilence can be compared.

We should bring a lesser calamity upon ourselves by abolishing our quarantine system against the importation of deadly disease and inviting a visitation like the great London Plague, or by letting in the Black Death to sweep our country as it swept Europe in the Middle Ages, than by neglecting our quarantine against war, as we are neglecting it, thereby inviting the pestilence of invasion.

Self-preservation is the first law of Nature, and this law applies to nations exactly as it applies to individuals. Our American Republic cannot survive unless it obeys the law of survival, which all individuals must obey, which all nations must obey, and which all other nations are obeying. No individual, and no nation, has ever disobeyed that law for long and lived; and it is too big a task for the United States of America.

It is the aim of this work to discover truth to the reader, unvarnished and unembellished, and, at the same time, as far as possible, to avoid personalities. Wherever practicable, philosophic generalizations have been tied down to actualities, based upon experiential knowledge and innate common-sense of the eternal fitness of things.

The strong appeal of Lord Roberts for the British nation to prepare for the Armageddon that is now on, which he knew was coming, did not awaken England, but served rather to rouse Germany.

Admiral Mahan pleaded long with his country for an adequate navy. All the Great Powers of the world except America were stimulated by his logic to strengthen their navies. The beautiful, imaginative, logical language of General Homer Lea, on America's military weakness, in his "Valor of Ignorance" and "The Day of the Saxon," has caused many a gun to be made, many a battalion of troops to be enlisted, and many a warship to be built—in foreign countries.

The eloquent words of wisdom of Lord Roberts, Admiral Mahan, Homer Lea, and all real friends of peace and advocates of the only way of maintaining peace—by being prepared against war—have fallen on a deaf America. I am well aware of the fact that nothing I can say will rouse the people of my country to the reality and magnitude of their danger, and to a true appreciation of the imperative necessity for immediate preparation against war.

Possibly this book may lessen a little the effect of the pernicious propagandism of the pacifists—may somewhat help Congressional appropriations for defense—may place a few more men and a few more guns on the firing-line, and thereby save the lives of a few of our people—may save a few homes from the torch—may lessen the area of devastation—may, by adding a little power to our resistance, help to get slightly better terms from the conquerors for our liberation.

Pacifism has ringed the nose of the American people and is leading them, blind and unknowing, to the slaughter. War is inevitable. It matters not that, if this country could be roused, it might be saved. When it is impossible to vitalize the impulse necessary to the accomplishment of a thing, that thing is impossible. So, I say, war is inevitable and imminent.

The American people could not now be roused sufficiently to avert the impending calamity even by a call that would rift the sky and shake down the stars from heaven!

Fate has decreed that our pride shall be humbled, and that we shall be bowed to the dirt. We must first put on sackcloth, ashed in the embers of our burning homes. Perhaps, when we build anew on the fire-blackened desolation, our mood may be receptive of the knowledge that we must shield our homes with blood and brawn and iron.

Hudson Maxim.
Maxim Park,
Landing P.O.,
New Jersey.
March, 1915.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

OUR GREAT OBSESSION

Success in every human pursuit depends upon ability to discern the truth and to utilize it. Facts, though they may be stern, are our best friends, and we should always welcome them with an open mind.

Napoleon said that with good news there is never any hurry, but with bad news not a moment is to be lost. Consequently, those who discover to us certain facts of serious concern are our friends, even though it may be bad news. It is every man's duty, not only to himself, but also to those dear to him, to know the truth about anything which may menace his and their welfare, in order that he and they may become awakened to the danger and prepare for it accordingly.

Those who deceive us by warning us of danger when there is no danger may not do us any harm; in fact, they may even do us good by cultivating our alertness and awareness. The hare may jump at a thousand false alarms to every one of actual danger; but it is the false alarms that have given him the alertness to save himself when real danger comes. On the other hand, those who convince us that there is no danger when there is great danger are the worst of enemies; they expose us, naked of defense, to the armed and armored enemy.

Among the great deceivers with whom the human race has to contend is the confidence man, for he plays upon the fears, vanity, and credulity of his victim with the skill of a Kubelik upon the violin. He enlists his victim with him, and they work together to the same end. No man is greatly deceived by another except through his own co-operation. Every one has his pet egoistic illusion always under the spotlight of self-view; to him, his own importance is a veritable obsession.

A nation is only a compound of individuals, and what is true of an individual also holds true of any aggregation of individuals.

We, the people of the United States of America, are at this moment, and have been for many years, afflicted with a dominating egoistic obsession concerning our greatness, our importance, and our power, while we correspondingly underrate the greatness, the importance, and the power of other nations and races. Our accomplishments have indeed been marvelous, and we have not neglected to award them all the marveling that is their due.

There is no denying the fact that in many competitive pursuits requiring intellectual acuteness for the greatening of material welfare we have outstripped the rest of the world. But the rest of the world has been busy, too, and though we may possibly deserve more credit for our accomplishments in the aggregate than any other people, still, others have far outdone us in many important respects.

Our hitherto isolated and unassailable geographical position has enabled us to utilize our unequaled resources to become the greatest industrial and the wealthiest people in the world.

We have not been obliged to concern ourselves very much thus far with measures for national security, and having at home all the land we needed, we have acquired the habit of looking upon national armaments in the light of frills, which we must maintain merely for national respectability. Many of us look upon our Navy as dress-parade paraphernalia, to be worn on gala occasions.

Our response to the advocacy of a sufficient navy, of coast fortifications, and of a standing army adequate to our needs, has been that we have no use for either army or navy, and that coast fortifications would be a useless expense.

Our enormous wealth and inexhaustible resources have been and still are pointed out as reasons why we require no armaments, although, as a matter of fact, they are the strongest possible reasons for armaments of a magnitude proportionate to that wealth and those resources.

In America, we pride ourselves upon our so-called free institutions, blindly believing that they are free, and that, therefore, every man being an aristocrat, we, by consequence, have no aristocracy, entirely oblivious to the fact that we have merely substituted the esteem of wealth, and the power and the privilege which it represents, for the esteem of family worth and family name, and the power and the privilege which they represent.

Isolation and wealth beget vanity and arrogance; and vanity, resting upon the laurels of past accomplishments, rapidly fosters decadence and weakness; so that the very pride of strength and virility begets weakness and effeminacy.

It has been said that usually there are but three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves. The old man trades upon the name made in the days of his younger strength, and the son, seldom possessing the strength of the father, trades on the father's name, while the third generation generally gets back to shirt-sleeves again. Although this statement is not a general truth, it has truth enough to excuse it.

The main reason why luxury and opulence lead to degeneracy, weakness, and effeminacy, is that those who live on Easy Street, being relieved of the intense strife necessary to gain a livelihood and to climb to positions of opulence and power, suffer from weakness and decay, and finally find their way down to shirt-sleeves, at the foot of the economic and social ladder, either to be submerged in hoboism, or to make the climb of old progenitors over again.

What is true of individuals and families in this respect holds true also of nations, only it takes a little longer time, starting from shirt-sleeves, to get back to shirt-sleeves again.

We Americans were taught by the promoters of the American Revolution—in short, by the fathers of our country—that all men are created equal in respect to privilege, and that no class distinction and no class privilege were worthy of honor unless earned. By consequence, the symbol and the badge of our class distinction became the dollar.

Taught to despise aristocracy, we immediately created for ourselves a new aristocracy in the shape of a plutocracy. This aristocracy of wealth was fast becoming as tyrannical and unbearable and as much a menace to the freedom of the people as the old aristocracy which it had replaced. The old aristocracy had been established by the right of the sword; the new aristocracy had been established by the purchasing power of the dollar, and the people learned that combinations of wealth were a compelling power as great as the combination of armies, and that a government dominated by the dollar might become as intolerable as any form of absolutism.

Then there came another American revolution, led by the labor unions, which proved that it is only necessary for the people to organize, in order to conquer with the short-sword of the ballot as effectually as with the sword of steel.

Unhappily, just as intolerance and avarice have always led conquerors to be overgrasping and tyrannical, so have intolerance and avarice made prosecutions under the Sherman Law veritable persecutions. Now that the common people have found their power, nothing under heaven can halt them, or prevent them from abusing that power, except a higher education of the common people and their leaders, compelling them to understand the great truth that the people of a nation must co-operate with a patriotism that shall emulate the spirit of the hive of bees so admirably interpreted by Maeterlinck.

Nevertheless, we must remember that, while we may with advantage imitate the bee in this respect, the bee does not progress. There has been no enlightenment in bee-life for a hundred thousand years, for the very reason that the bees are dominated by that beautiful spirit of the hive.

We owe our ability to progress and to become more and more highly intelligent and enlightened, to the existence of that instability and heterogeneity which stimulate and develop us by causing us to strive for stability and homogeneity.

Life is a series of reactions between the individual and environing stimuli. For this reason, stern and exacting stimuli are required to develop a man to the full. In all the ages during which the race has been developing there have existed formative influences of the sternest and most exacting kind; so that, just as our ears are constituted to hear only a certain character of sounds, and sounds of a limited pitch, duration, and loudness, and are deaf to all other sounds, so are we constituted to react only to certain environing stimuli, and to react with each stimulus in a certain definite measure, and only in a certain definite measure. It is impossible for us to react supremely, or to be developed supremely, by mediocre stimuli, but we must have supreme stimuli, and in order to get those stimuli, there must be a prompting to activity that demands of a man every ounce of his strength; and everything that is dear to him must be staked to bring out and develop all the latent, larger energies that are in him.

Nothing that can be said and done by all the friends of national defense will make this country take adequate measures for its defense. Nothing but a disastrous war will supply the necessary stimulus. In all the history of the world, this truth has been made manifest—that no nation can be made adequately to prepare against war, no matter what the menace may be, without either suffering actual defeat, or being so embroiled in war as to realize the necessity for preparedness.

This country must first be whipped in order to prepare sufficiently to prevent being whipped. Therefore, our business at the present time is to pick our conquerors. I choose England. I would much rather see the red-coat in the streets of New York than the spiked helmet. I would much rather see the genial face of the British Tommy Atkins than the stern mystery of the Japanese face.

If England does not give us a good, timely whipping, we are going to be whipped by Germany or Japan, and the humiliation will be more than is really needed to stimulate us for adequate preparation.

When the present war is over, the precipitation of a war with England may not depend on what England will choose to do, but it may depend on what we shall choose to do. We have been a lamb rampant for a long time in a jungle alive with lions, and we have owed our security to the fact that the lions have been watching one another, and have not dared to avert their eyes long enough to devour us. If we did not have a grandiose sense of our importance and power, we should not need a whipping in order to prepare against war, but so long as we believe that we can beat all creation without any preparation, we are going to act just as though it were true, and England, although she may be friendly, may be forced, by our inconsiderate bluff and arrogance, to declare war on us. Much better England than any other country. England now has no territorial aspirations that would make her want to annex some of our land. She would be satisfied with a good big indemnity, which we could well afford to pay for the benefit we should gain from the war. If England will merely come over seas, and whip us, and tax us for the trouble, and thereby lead us to prepare adequately to defend ourselves against less friendly nations, she will do us the greatest possible good.

We are living and working not alone for ourselves, but also for those who are our own, and for all others insomuch as their interests and their welfare are in common with our own.

Our welfare is part and parcel of the aggregate welfare of all those for whom we are working, and our welfare and their welfare are not only a condition of the present, but are also a condition of the future. The welfare of our children and our children's children, and of those whose interests will be in common with theirs, is part and parcel of our own present welfare. This is the true philosophy by which we who are sane and conscientious are guided. Upon such philosophy are based all economics and all prudence.

The false philosophy of the selfish and the sensual, the spendthrift and the debauchee, is the philosophy of such as they whose acts of omission and commission brought on the French Revolution, and who said, "Après nous le déluge"; but such should not be our philosophy.

Therefore, if now there be a calamity in the making, which we are able to foresee must surely descend upon the heads of our children, even if it does not come soon enough to fall upon our own heads, it is a thing that should awaken our concern and stimulate our inquiry, and lead us to seek ways and means for averting it.

It is a fact, which I absolutely know as certainly as anything can be known in human affairs, that we, and all of those who are near and dear to us, are sitting today on a powder magazine with the train lighted, and it is only a question of the slowness, or quickness, of the fuse when the time shall arrive for the explosion.

The laws that govern human events are as mathematically accurate and as immutable as the laws that govern the motions of the heavenly bodies; the laws that govern human reactions—the reactions between men and men, communities and communities, nations and nations—are as immutable and are governed as exactly by the laws of cause and effect as are chemical reactions. Nothing can happen without a cause, and there can be no cause that does not make something happen. Every event is the child of its parents—cause and effect.

Now let us look at the parentage of the cause and effect whose progeny are soon to bring upon us the great red peril of war, and, finding us unprepared, will treat us as Germany has treated Belgium. We are rich—our country from one end to the other possesses a vast wealth of enticements to the invasion of a foreign foe—and we are defenseless. These conditions are the parents of vast impending calamities.

Europe, today, is involved in the greatest war in the history of mankind, and—in spite of all the saving grace of our so-called modern civilization, in spite of all the mercifulness of the Christian religion, in spite of all the charitable kindness of the Red Cross—the sum of brutality, savagery, and misery of this war is certainly not much less than it has been at any other time in the history of a striving world, every page of which has been written with blood.

We have arrived at a time when we must decide whether or not our safety can be better secured and peace maintained with armaments or without armaments.

DEFENSELESS AMERICA

DEFENSELESS AMERICA

CHAPTER I

DANGEROUS PREACHMENTS

"There will be no war in the future, for it has become impossible now that it is clear that war means suicide."

I. S. Bloch, "The Future of War," 1899.

"What shall we say of the Great War of Europe ever threatening, ever impending, and which never comes? We shall say that it will never come. Humanly speaking, it is impossible."

Dr. David Starr Jordan, "War and Waste," 1913.

They who are loudest in their vociferations about the calamities that the warring nations of Europe have brought upon themselves are those peace-palavering persons who have been telling us all along, during the past twenty-five years, that human nature had improved so much lately, and the spirit of international brotherhood had become so dominant, that the fighting spirit was nearly dead in the souls of men.

The peace praters have assured us from time to time that the last great war of the world had been fought; they have told us that no great nations would dare to go to war any more, because war between any of the Great Powers would now mean bankruptcy and national suicide; they have assured us that all international differences would hereafter be settled by jurisprudential procedure, and that law would be substituted for war.

About fifteen years ago, a M. de Bloch "proved" in his book, entitled "The Future of War. Is War Now Possible?" that war had become so deadly and destructive, and, above all, so expensive, as to be impossible. So impressed was the Czar of Russia with de Bloch's arguments that he called a conference of the nations to consider disarmament. Since that time a thousand different persons have, in a thousand different ways, "proved" to us that war on a large scale was not only impossible, but also absolutely unthinkable. Droll, isn't it, that the nations keep right on fighting? We are consoled, however, by the insistence of the peace prophets that this war is truly the last great war. We are assured that this war will be the death of militarism, and then the lamb can safely cuddle up to the lion. Consequently, we have been told that, war on a large scale being now impossible, the United States needs no army and no navy, and that it would be folly to waste the taxpayers' money on such useless things.

Many believe that this country should set the other nations of the world a great moral example by pulling the teeth of our dogs of war, making them lambs, and inviting the lions to lie down with them, unheedful of the lesson of all ages that when the lion does lie down with the lamb, the lamb is always inside the lion.

Furthermore, we have been assured that the mere possession of armaments leads a nation to wage war, because being able to fight makes one want to fight; and that, obviously, the best way to avoid a fight is to be unable to fight.

I quote the following from Theodore Roosevelt's book, "America and the World War":—

"These peace people have persistently and resolutely blinked facts. One of the peace congresses sat in New York at the very time that the feeling in California about the Japanese question gravely threatened the good relations between ourselves and the great empire of Japan. The only thing which at the moment could practically be done for the cause of peace was to secure some proper solution of the question at issue between ourselves and Japan. But this represented real effort, real thought. The peace congress paid not the slightest serious attention to the matter and instead devoted itself to listening to speeches which favored the abolition of the United States navy and even in one case the prohibiting the use of tin soldiers in nurseries because of the militaristic effect on the minds of the little boys and girls who played with them!"

When the prophet Isaiah told the Jews that there were big troubles brewing for them in the East, he spoke to unhearing ears, because unwilling ears. There were in those days, as in our day, the false prophets of peace who said that Isaiah was wrong; that there was no cause for worry about the indignation of Jehovah; that even at the worst His wrath could be appeased at any time, as necessity might arise, by a few burnt offerings and sacrificial mumblings. Their assurances were more pleasing than the warnings of Isaiah, so the Jews listened to the false prophets instead of to Isaiah, and they paid the penalty in Babylonian bondage.

The Isaiahs of true prophecy have long warned the people of this country that there is big trouble brewing for us in the East and in the Far East, and that we need armaments and men trained to arms to safeguard us against that trouble. These Isaiahs have told us that we cannot safeguard ourselves by any sacrifices made upon the altar of international brotherhood, or forefend ourselves against the great red peril of war by a few mumblings written down in arbitration treaties; but that we must have guns and men behind the guns. The Isaiahs who have been telling us these things are our true peace-advocates.

Those self-styled peace-men who are telling us that the best way to avoid war is to be unable to defend ourselves are not peace-men, but war-breeders. Though they emulate the dove in their cooing, they are far from being doves of peace. They ought to be styled dubs of peace. Their intentions may be good, yet they are enemies of peace, and betrayers of their country. Those who prevent the building of coast fortifications, which are our modern city gates, by advising against them, betray their country as actually as those who opened the gates of Rome to the hordes of Alaric.

Those who are trying to defeat our Congressional appropriations for a larger navy, for an adequate army, and for sufficient coast fortifications, although they may mean well, are as truly enemies of their country as if they should, in war, contribute to the armament and fighting force of an enemy, for the effect in both cases is identical.

Again I quote from Mr. Roosevelt:

"We object to the actions of those who do most talking about the necessity of peace because we think they are really a menace to the just and honorable peace which alone this country will in the long run support. We object to their actions because we believe they represent a course of conduct which may at any time produce a war in which we and not they would labor and suffer.

"In such a war the prime fact to be remembered is that the men really responsible for it would not be those who would pay the penalty. The ultra-pacifists are rarely men who go to battle. Their fault or their folly would be expiated by the blood of countless thousands of plain and decent American citizens of the stamp of those, North and South alike, who in the Civil War laid down all they had, including life itself, in battling for the right as it was given to them to see the right."

But the false prophets of peace have assured us all along that there is no danger whatever of war between the United States and any other country. They tell us further that our armaments are a menace to other nations; that they evidence suspicion of other nations, and thereby place us under suspicion. According to such philosophy, the college man who becomes an athlete is a trouble-breeder, for the reason that the mere possession of muscle makes him a menace to other men.

Now, if we are in any danger of war, we ought to do the right thing to secure the safety of our country, of our homes and our families, and all things that are dear to us.

If it be true that the possession of armaments is an inducement for those who have them to use them, and if it be true that armaments fret the fighting spirit of other nations as a red rag frets a bull, and thereby lead to war, then, surely, we do not need more armaments, but less. Instead of arming ourselves any more, we should disarm until we are defenseless enough to be perfectly safe. On the other hand, if there be any likelihood that this country may be invaded by a foreign foe, we should be prepared to meet the invaders in the right way, and with the right spirit.

If it be the proper way to go and meet them as the inhabitants of Jerusalem went out to meet Alexander, with the keys to our gates, and with presents and sacrificial offerings, then we should adopt that way of preparing to pave their path with flowers and make them drunk on grape-juice and the milk of human kindness.

Dr. David Starr Jordan believes in disarmament. He further believes that armor-plate, guns, battleships, and ammunition should not be made by private manufacturers, but that, on the contrary, these things should be made exclusively by the government, for he is of the opinion that manufacturers of war materials foment disorder and promote war in order to bring themselves more business.

Long association with the manufacturers of war materials, especially of explosive materials, has enabled me to know whereof I speak, and I do know that such a belief is the utterest nonsense. The manufacturers of war materials with whom I am acquainted are among the staunchest of peace men, and they would no more be guilty of promoting war to bring themselves business than a reputable surgeon would be likely to string a cord across the street to trip up pedestrians and break their limbs in order to bring himself business.

In the treatment of human physical ailments, we should deem it folly to confound remedy with disease, and to hold the physician responsible for pestilence. No one would think of looking upon our science of sanitation and our quarantine system as breeders and harbingers of pestilence, and no one would think that our laws against crime and our system of police protection tend to foster crime. Yet such is the attitude of many well-intentioned but overzealous persons with respect to our naval and military system and armaments. They consider them breeders and harbingers of war.

An army and navy are merely a mighty quarantine system against the pestilence of war. We must fortify our shores, police our seas with armor-clads, and be prepared to patrol the skies with aëroplanes around our entire national horizon when the need may come.

But it is urged that the people are overburdened with the cost of maintaining armies and navies. Assuming that the burden is great, was it ever less? Was it ever so small as it is now, compared with the numbers and wealth of the people? Again, cannot we well afford to bear a considerable burden of armaments as an insurance against war, and as a further insurance that if war comes, it will be far less deadly than it would be without them?

If Dr. Jordan were better acquainted with the manufacture of war materials, he would know that they can be made more cheaply, with equal excellence, by private concerns, than by the government. Furthermore, he would know that big manufacturers of war materials are obliged to employ a very large force of skilled labor, and that this labor has to be supplied employment when there are no government orders for war materials. For example, the manufacture of armor-plate by the United States Steel Corporation is only a small part of that company's business. The manufacture of guns and armor-plate by the Bethlehem Steel Company does not keep it constantly occupied, and it has to furnish other employment for its men when government orders are not forthcoming. Consequently, it is obliged to make things besides armor-plate and guns and war materials.

The du Pont explosives companies do a far larger business in high explosives and smokeless powders for commercial purposes than they do for government purposes.

Therefore, if the manufacture of war materials were to be confined entirely to government shops, then the government would truly have to promote war to keep its employees busy. At any rate, the government would have to maintain a large labor force, making war materials alone, for the government could not devote itself to the manufacture of automobiles, chairs, cloth, artificial leather, dynamite, sporting powder, and the like, for commercial purposes, as private manufacturers do.

There is another reason why the private manufacturers of war materials should be encouraged by the government, and it is that, in the event of war, the government would find the large capital and plants of the wealthy Steel Trust, the Bethlehem Steel Company, and the du Ponts available for the purpose of national defense in addition to the government's own resources. This is very important.

The battle of Lake Erie was quite as much a du Pont victory as a Perry victory; for the resources, energy, and generalship of the du Pont Powder Company overcame inconceivable difficulties, carted the powder from Wilmington, Delaware, all the way overland to Lake Erie, and got it there on time.

It is unfortunate that a person's confidence in his knowledge of a subject is often directly proportionate to his ignorance of the subject. It is a psychological truth that ignorance may be taught, just like anything else, and a person may become very erudite in things which are not true, just as he may in things which are true.

Dr. Jordan, in recent public utterances, has said that he would rather the United States should lose its Pacific possessions than that we should go to war; and he has remarked that now, while the world is drunk with war, is a bad time to lay in more liquor. This is an ingenious metaphor, and well designed to trip the intelligence of the unwary. As a matter of fact, when the world is drunk with war, and rapine, murder, and plunder are rife, it is exactly the time to lay in more ammunition.

Had Dr. Jordan been in the position of Captain John Smith in the Virginia colony, when the Indians were on the war-path, he would have advised the settlers to disarm and destroy their stockades and forts. The Indians at that time went on the war-path and got drunk for war because they had a grievance.

When the present war is over and international commerce is re-established, we are destined to give some other nation a grievance, for the same reason that we then gave those Indians a grievance, and that other nation will go on the war-path, just as those Indians did, and that other nation when it takes up the torch and the sword and gets a taste of blood, is going to be as savage as the men engaged in the present European conflict.

There are two kinds of true prophets: The one kind, like Isaiah, who is directly inspired of God; and the other kind, who judges the future by the lessons of the past. The scientist is a true prophet; but he is not one of the inspired kind. The way he does his predicting is the way of the astronomer, who uses a base line the width of the earth's orbit in order to triangulate the parallax of a star. So the scientific prophet triangulates the parallax of future events from a base line compassing all human history.

There is no one lesson which history teaches us more plainly than that the possession of wealth by a defenseless nation is a standing casus belli to other nations, and that always there has been the nation standing ready to attack and plunder any other nation when there was likely to be sufficient profit in the enterprise to pay for the trouble. Never have we seen any treaty stand for long in the way of such practices between nations. Treaties have always been mere scraps of paper, which, like the cobweb, ensnare the weak, while they let the strong break through.

It is strange that those who recommend that this country try the experiment of disarmament to secure peace by setting other nations a great moral example, should not have read history to see whether or not the experiment were a new one; and whether or not, judging by past experiments, it were likely to prove a success or a failure. Should these men look back through history, they would find that ancient Egypt tried the experiment, and went down under the sword and torch of fierce invaders from over the desert. They would learn that the Greeks tried the experiment and found it a failure. They would learn that India and China have bled through the ages because of their peaceableness. They would learn that the fall of Carthage was due not so much to the superior military power of Rome, or to the reiterations of Cato that Carthage must be destroyed, as it was to the peace talk of Hanno, which withheld the necessary support of Hannibal in Italy. They would learn that when old Rome lost her vigor and neglected her defenses, she was hewn to pieces by fierce barbarians. They would learn that the fathers of our own country, after the Revolution, tried the same old experiment, with the result that the city of Washington was captured and burned by the British in the war of 1812. They would learn, furthermore, that all prophets who have said that the nations will war no more, have been false prophets.

Four years before the Russo-Japanese war, I wrote an article for a New York magazine, in which I prophesied that war, and predicted Japanese victory. I predicted also at the same time that there would be in the near future a general European conflict. It has come.

The following quotations from that article may be of interest:

"By far the greatest probability of imminent war lies in the Far East, between Russia and Japan. Japan feels the sting of the Russian whip that made her drop Port Arthur and withdraw from the continent of Asia, thus relinquishing the chief advantages gained by her victory over China. The whole sum paid Japan by China as a war indemnity has been expended on her navy and on armaments. In the East, in both naval and military strength, she is superior to Russia.

"Whether or not we shall soon have war will depend on whether Japan will quietly wait until Russia shall have finished the Trans-Siberian Railway, secured Korea, intrenched and fortified herself along the Asiatic coast, and built a fleet of sufficient strength entirely to overawe the little empire. It is doubtful if Japan will wait for the time when Russia shall be ready to strangle her. She may strike and drive Russia from Korea and secure, as well, a fair share of Chinese territory; or, what amounts to the same thing, a lease of a portion of the Celestial Empire. She will thereafter be better able to protect her interests in Chinese trade and opportunities. Should she strike soon, and she and Russia be left to themselves, Japan ought to win, for she is close at hand and will be able to bring to bear upon the points of collision a much greater force than Russia. She will also be able to act with correspondingly greater celerity.

"If we would essay to predict future events, we must draw the lines of divination in the direction that we see the nations grow, and these lines must be parallel with those of great commercial interests—be parallel with those of national self-interests. We then have but one more question to consider, on which to base à priori judgment. It is the question of might—of national resources and blood and iron.

"What was true on a small scale, with primitive tribes of men, is also true on a large scale, with the great world powers of today. In early times, like the ebb and flow of the tides of the sea, conquest and re-conquest, victory and defeat, followed one another. Then destruction succeeded growth and growth destruction.

"As the great banyan tree constantly encroaches upon the territory of surrounding flora, to overtop and blight and kill all upon which its shadow falls, so do and so must nations in their growth encroach upon their neighbors.

"In recent times, the tremendous strides made in the arts and sciences, and the birth of new industries, and the enormous growth of all, have provided room and occupation for the earth's great dominating peoples. Vast land areas have been reclaimed, and boundless resources developed. Thus far the overflow has been upon the lands of the tameless American Indian—of the lazy African—of the docile Hindoo, and the simple savage of the southern seas. Now it is China's turn, and the wolves of greed, in the guise of trade, are already howling at her gates.

"Growth is proceeding with constantly accelerating rapidity, and soon the overflow must be on lands already filled to overflowing—not then with simple savages. It will then be Greek to Greek, over fortresses that frown along the whole frontier. Then there will be a clash. It is coming. Where the storm will first break, and when, is a question. That a great conflict will come, and at no distant date, is certain."—"The Home Magazine," July, 1900.

At the first annual banquet of the Aëronautical Society four years ago, I predicted exactly the use of the aëroplane in war that it has had since that time. President Taft was one of the speakers, and his subject was his pet peace and arbitration treaties. He said that there were not likely to be the requisite wars for testing out the aëroplane, as predicted. He said that there was going to be a shortage of wars.

Since that time, we have had the revolution in China, the Italian war with Tripoli, the Balkan wars, a continuous revolutionary performance in Mexico, and finally, we have the present great European War. Not much of a shortage in wars, truly!

The following quotation from Dr. David Starr Jordan's "War and Waste" is an excellent illustration of the prophetic wisdom that is keeping the United States of America unprepared against war:

"What shall we say of the Great War of Europe, ever threatening, ever impending, and which never comes? We shall say that it will never come. Humanly speaking, it is impossible.

"Not in the physical sense, of course, for with weak, reckless, and godless men nothing evil is impossible. It may be, of course, that some half-crazed archduke or some harassed minister of state shall half-knowing give the signal for Europe's conflagration. In fact, the agreed signal has been given more than once within the last few months. The tinder is well dried and laid in such a way as to make the worst of this catastrophe. All Europe cherishes is ready for the burning. Yet Europe recoils and will recoil even in the dread stress of spoil-division of the Balkan war....

"But accident aside, the Triple Entente lined up against the Triple Alliance, we shall expect no war....

"The bankers will not find the money for such a fight, the industries of Europe will not maintain it, the statesmen cannot. So whatever the bluster or apparent provocation, it comes to the same thing at the end. There will be no general war until the masters direct the fighters to fight. The masters have much to gain, but vastly more to lose, and their signal will not be given."

Eight years ago, when the great Peace Conference was held at Carnegie Hall, New York, to discuss the limitation and abolishment of armaments, the most notable of the pacifists represented were invited by the Economic Club of Boston to attend a banquet in that city for the free hot-airing of their views.

There was much sophistical palaver about destroying our old battle-flags and leveling our soldiers' monuments and all landmarks and reminders of war. William T. Stead, however, was more rational, and he was annoyed by the silly impracticable nonsense of some of the dubs of peace. Stead's better sense was evidenced by the fact that the following winter he recommended to the British Parliament that England build two battleships to every one built by Germany.

Invited to speak in defense of armaments, I held that we must arm for peace, and not disarm for it. I began my remarks by telling them this story:

In a small paragraph in an obscure place upon the back page of a leading Boston paper, I once saw the announcement that Herbert Spencer, the great philosopher, was very ill, and not expected to live. On the front page of the same paper, under bold headlines, was a three-column article on the physical condition of John L. Sullivan.

John L. Sullivan was a fighter, while Herbert Spencer was only a philosopher; hence the difference in public interest.

John L. Sullivan, in his time, standing on the corner, would deplete the hall and break up any peace meeting in the world, and block the street with massed humanity for a square, jostling for a sight of him.

Several years ago, a reverend gentleman by the name of Charles Edward Jefferson elicited much applause by his public utterances on the blessings and advantages of non-resistance and meekness mild. He made it as clear as the day dawn of June, to the unreasoning, that it is all a mistake to build guns, warships, and coast fortifications; that our war colleges are not institutions of actual learning at all, but are institutions for teaching ignorance. He declared that militarism is squandering the taxpayers' money by the hundreds of millions, and all because the advocates of militarism and the friends of militarism are perverse and wilfully wot not what they do, though wisdom radiant as the rainbow stares them in the face; and because our military men, who have been educated at government expense and who, we have thought, were devoting their lives to the country's service in studying its needs and fighting its battles, are desirous merely of promotion and of widening the sphere of their activities.

According to Dr. Jefferson, these men are not what we have supposed them—a bulwark against trouble, but are trouble-makers, ignorant of the primary essential of their profession, namely militant meekness; and instead of being guardians of peace and an assurance against war, they are actual war-breeders. He seems to think that there is a real conspiracy to squander the taxpayers' money in the interest of a military clique.

A man may be wrong, and yet be honest. Prejudice is honest. Dr. Jefferson is doubtless honest, and if it should be that he is right, then his doctrine is practicable. If he is right, our military men are wrong. If our army and navy officers, who have been educated at the public expense and in the school of experience, do not know and understand better this country's needs in the respects and particulars for which they have been educated than does this good ecclesiastic, then it is proved that the church is a better military school than Annapolis or West Point. Theology, and not military science, should hereafter be taught in those institutions. The military parade should be called in from the campus and be replaced by knee drill in the chapel, and hereafter, at Annapolis, at West Point, and along the firing-line, the command should be Shoulder Psalms, instead of Shoulder Arms.

Let us lay down our arms and spike our guns, disband the military parade from the campus, as the sentimentalists desire us to do, and we shall very soon, with Kubla Khan, hear "ancestral voices [George Washington's among them] prophesying war."

CHAPTER II

CAN LAW BE SUBSTITUTED FOR WAR?

I am a peace advocate—that is to say, I am one who advocates an active campaign in the cause of peace, employing the best means and instruments for the accomplishment of practical results.

Unfortunately, a wide difference of opinion exists in the ranks of those who style themselves peace advocates as to how the war against war can best be fought. That difference of opinion is as to whether we should arm for the fray, or disarm for it. Shall we go into the fight with sword and buckler, and with armor on, prepared to return blow with stronger blow; or shall we go into the fight with bared breasts, and, when we receive a blow upon one cheek turn the other cheek also, and let both our eyes be blackened and our nose be skinned in order to shame our antagonist, by giving him an object lesson of the horrors of war?

Ernst Haeckel has said there is nothing constant but change. He might have said also that there is a no more consistent thing in its constancy than human inconsistency.

That other great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, declared that, as he grew older, the more and more he realized the extent to which mankind is governed by irrationality.

Josh Billings said, "It is not so much the ignorance of men that makes them ridiculous as what they know that is not so."

The complex problems of ethics, eugenics, economics, and human dynamics, which enter into all questions and problems of peace and war, are like so many Chinese puzzles to the ordinary mind.

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of minds—the ratiocinative and the irrational; in other words, the logical and the illogical. The logical mind proceeds scientifically from sure premises to just conclusions, taking no direction and traveling no faster and no farther in any direction than warranted and justified by ascertained fact. The irrational or illogical mind, on the contrary, is unable to discriminate between belief and knowledge, between facts and fancies. Consequently, this type of mind proceeds from guess to conclusion, with the result that final judgment is necessarily distorted, warped, and swerved from truth just in proportion as the basic guess is incorrect or false.

There is a no more momentous problem before the world today than that of international jurisprudence, especially with respect to the maintenance of peace where practicable, and the control of wars, when wars are inevitable or necessary; and there is no subject of such moment more fruitful of irrationalism.

In the light of practical common-sense, there is nothing funnier in the writings of Mark Twain than the inconsistent prating of our peace sophists. It is as though they let not their right-hand brain know what their left-hand brain is doing. They are usually brimmed and primed with sacrificial sentimentality and over-soul. Their delicatessen natures shrink from contact with the stern, man-making realities of life. They are the disciples of soft stuff. The mush and moonshine of maudlin sentimentalism are their element. They possess no powers of discrimination between the actual and the erroneous. The guise of fact is no recommendation to them unless it fits into their scheme. An error is far more welcome if it comes in a garmenture that conforms with their ideals. They put their union label on what we receive by the grace of God, but they fail to recognize and appreciate that they cannot comprehend the infinite; that what to them seems disorder and confusion in the world may be the most perfect order in the eye of God. They cannot understand how infinite wisdom, infinite justice, and infinite mercy should have created a warring world; consequently, they have set themselves the task of repairing the faults of creation and of recreating the world to suit their own ideas as to what infinite wisdom and mercy ought to be.

When one of these peace sophists gets into a fight, however, he promptly prays to God to help him whip the other fellow. The pacific sentimentalist is usually a most arrant coward. In time of war, the cowardly sentimental pacifists are the loudest in appeals to Almighty God to fight on their side and to lead their army to victory—that same army which in time of peace they have done everything in their power to disarm and disband.

Recently, when speaking at a church, I was asked the question, "How long is it going to take to make might right?" I asked my interrogator this question: "If, at the creation, you had been consulted and your advice asked as to whether or not a world should be made in which all life should feed on other life, and half of the animal creation should be made prey for the other half; whether everything should be made tooth and nail, claw and scale, hunter and hunted, terror and blood, strife and war; whether or not the cat should train for the hunt by torturing the little bird—how would you have replied to God?" My querist did not answer me, but went home to think it over.

I do not purpose to make any apology for Infinite Wisdom. My pacifist friends are doing that constantly. It is my humble opinion that the Creator did the best He could for us, and that we ought to be thankful and grateful.

I believe with Pope, that:

"Spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear—whatever is, is right."

I realize that the most perfect order is confusion to the mind that is not constituted to comprehend it.

I know that the macrocosmic mechanism moves with mathematical exactitude, and that we, in comparison, are mighty only in our arrogance; that, in fact, we are but microscopic specks in the drift of worlds.

Nature seems to care little for individuals, but very much for races and species; little indeed for a person, very much for a people.

The terms right and wrong, good and bad, are entirely relative. Right for an individual may not be so for a large aggregation of individuals. The welfare of a nation or a people may not be the welfare of the world, and God has His eye on the world.

The wrong are weak, the right are strong.
This mean the two terms right and wrong;
And truth sought out to any length,
Finds all wrong weakness, all right strength.

Formative Strife

Primeval man found himself thrust into an environment where all animal life fed on other life, and half the animal creation was prey for the other half. He was one of the hunted. Yet, with less strength but greater cunning, he was destined to master all. Man's supremacy has been developed by warfare of wit, craft, and cunning, versus brute force.

Primitive man found himself "up a tree" in both the actual and the metaphoric sense. His teeth and claws were no match for those of the leopard and the sabre-toothed tiger. He had no recourse but flight until stern necessity taught him to wield a club.

Then he climbed down from his abode in trees, and began the conquest of the earth. The club made man a traveler. His forays with that weapon taught him to walk and fight upon his hind legs, and gave him his erect carriage. But he had to travel a long and thorny pathway indeed, armed only with a club, before he invented the stone hatchet and spear of sharpened flint or bone. It was a far-flung span across the gulf of time from the tree-home to the cave in the hill, his new abiding-place.

The bow and arrow, which enabled him to kill at long range, were his next weapon, and were the greatest invention of all time.

The protection of the heart with the left arm and shield, with the right arm free to wield the sword or hurl the javelin, made man right-handed.

Armed with the bow and arrow, spear and shield, man was equipped still better for travel; and ever since travel has been widening out the sky and broadening man's mental horizon.

The fighting spirit widened the acquaintance of different peoples, and the terrible menace of some savage common enemy forced different tribes to unite and build up nations. Union against danger is the best instructor of self-government, and the best guarantee of internal good behavior.

It is generally recognized that man is a product of his environment; that he is in body and mind the sum of his own and ancestral experiences; that he is omnivorous; that he drinks water and breathes air; and yet, many persons fail to recognize the inevitable concomitant conclusion that he is also of necessity a warring animal, and that the formative influences of the fierce struggle for existence have made him what he is. His life is a series of reactions to environing stimuli; and he is actuated and shaped by those stimuli, and just as those stimuli have been necessary to his growth, so they are still necessary to his continued growth, and even to his very existence. In other words, the formative influences that have made and sustained man are still necessary to his maintenance. The character of the strife may be changed, and is already largely changed, from war to business. But the intensity of the struggle cannot be alleviated one whit, because it is impossible, in the nature of things, to maintain man's strength of character in any other way. He could live a little longer without strife than without food or air or water, but the absence of strife would be as fatal to him in the end as would be the absence of food, air, or water.

The struggle for existence has always been a business proposition with man, and business today is a struggle for existence as intense and merciless as the struggle in war.

In olden times, piracy and war for plunder were the principal business of mankind. Today, business is a warfare, and though it may be law-abiding, still the weak go down under it and suffer and die under it as surely as they did in old-time wars. The relation of strength to weakness remains unchanged, and the reward for strength and the penalty for weakness are as great as they ever were.

There now exists, as always, the same intensity of incentive of all classes to strive for something more and something better than they have. Though the condition of all classes has improved, the struggle of individual with individual is as great, the strife of class with class is as intense as ever.

The ownership of one's earnings, with freedom to apply and enjoy them, was the greatest prize ever offered to stimulate the working genius of this world, and the results during the past hundred and fifty years have been phenomenal.

The world has progressed more within that time in those things which tend to complete living than it had previously progressed in all the ages that had dragged their slow length along since the world thawed out of the ancient ice.

But human agencies, like all agencies in nature, are essentially rhythmical. In order to accumulate the necessary energy and enthusiasm to go far enough in the right direction, we inevitably go too far, and, when the pendulum returns, it swings to the other extreme.

It is important to realize the great truth that freedom ends when it aims beyond the spirit which strives for the greatest good to the greatest number.

According to Herbert Spencer, the criminal classes are composed of those who have been pushed out of the race in the struggle for existence under modern conditions. They were normal components of society in the past, when all men were soldiers and all soldiers were bandits, and the principal business of mankind was piracy and war for plunder.

There being no longer the ever-present opportunity to join in an inter-tribal or an international war for robbery, the soldier-bandit now makes war upon society.

All of the Huns and Vandals in our midst are today armed with the short-sword of the ballot. How important it is then that they should be taught to know and to understand that in the use of this weapon their work should be formative and not deformative; that it should be constructive and not destructive!

Substitution of Law for War

The poet's words, "The parliament of man, the federation of the world," have become a very familiar quotation in recent years. Anciently all wisdom was taught in poesy, and we have never yet quite freed ourselves from the age-long habitude of receiving as unimpeachable wisdom whatever may be said in verse.

To the common mind, a statement in didactic verse has the proselyting power of Holy Writ. Now, this line of Tennyson, "The parliament of man, the federation of the world," points us toward a Utopia, without hope of actual attainment.

There is at the present time a growing good intention to put an end to wars by international conciliation and arbitration; in short, to substitute law for war. We must, however, keep strongly in mind the interdependence of law and force, and the consequent interdependence of international law and armaments. Conciliation must not be confounded with arbitration, and persuasion must not be confounded with law.

Law has been aptly designated "codified custom." Actually, law is an attempt to construct experience into prophecy. We are able to judge of the sufficiency of new laws only by the sufficiency of laws in past practice.

The error is very common, to confound as having the same meaning terms of quite opposite meanings—for example, it is a very common error to confound society with government, and civilization with enlightenment. Society is an order of things by virtue of which we are able to co-operate with one another and to enjoy mutuality of possessions which gives them their only value; while government is an order of things for the purpose of protecting society.

The world has arrived at great enlightenment, and has attained some degree of civilization. Self-interest is becoming more and more altruistic, and altruism is becoming more and more profitable. We are not so barbarous as we used to be, but we still slaughter one another to adjust international differences. This cannot be esteemed civil procedure. Enlightenment may be very uncivil, and civility may not be enlightenment.

The great problem yet remains of uniting under practical laws the nations of the earth into a family of nations.

This is not a work for dreamers or sentimentalists; but is purely a business proposition, which can be effected only to the extent that the best interests of all the contracting parties are thereby secured.

When will arbitration be able to realize the Utopian dreams of the pacifists? General Homer Lea answers the question once for all in the following expressive terms:

"Only when arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations. Thence will International Arbitration come of its own accord as the natural outgrowth of national evolution through the individual. As nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the basis of individual impulse, so long will they control the acts of nations.

"When, therefore, the merchant arbitrates with the customer he is about to cheat; when trusts arbitrate with the people they are about to fleece; when the bulls and bears arbitrate with the lambs they are about to shear; when the thief arbitrates with the man he is about to rob, or the murderer with his victim, and so on throughout the category of crime, then will communities be able to dispense with laws, and international thievery and deception, shearing and murder, resort to arbitration."

The men who control our city and state politics and make and enforce our city and state laws all over the country are not always honest, but, on the contrary, they are often notoriously corrupt, notwithstanding the fact that they have much stronger incentives to be honest here than they would have in dealing with foreign nations and strange peoples. What, therefore, are we to expect of their integrity and their honesty in the settlement of international disputes and in the enactment and execution of international laws?

What an enormous field for graft it will be when some weaker nation tries to get its rights at the coming international tribunal!

Our laws are now notoriously inadequate with respect to theft, burglary, highway robbery, and municipal-government graft. The amount of money loss to the people of this country through the failure of our laws to suppress these iniquities is enough to support a standing army of half a million men, build four battleships a year, and place us on such a defensive footing as absolutely to preclude all danger of war with any foreign power.

Has human nature improved so much lately that special privilege will no longer result from special power? Has the human race progressed so much lately that privilege and oppression will not follow power; wealth and luxury follow privilege; and degeneracy and disorganization follow wealth and luxury?

The race has certainly not so altered that men do not grow old and die; and nations, like men, have their youth, their middle age, their decrepitude and death.

Periodically, some religio-pathological sect will announce the conclusion of an understanding with the Great Reaper, whereby, through certain incantations or breathing exercises, death may be indefinitely postponed; but they, like other mortals, keep on dying.

Those good men who are the leaders in the present peace movement must realize the fact that the carrying out of their project will devolve, not upon them—not upon the philanthropist, the sentimentalist, and the humanitarian—but upon the politician.

The actual procedure of the Hague congresses enables us to forecast exactly this result. The judicial bench of that court was a bargain-counter, over which political advantage was bartered for political advantage. It was no real love of peace that dominated those tribunals: only the powerful nations spoke or were heard. No protection was suggested for the weaker nations, who, presumably, would be most benefited by international arbitration. They were quite out of the running.

International arbitration will ultimately become a political machine. Nothing can prevent it, and there is no reason to believe that those politicians who will have control of the international arbitration machine will be any more honest than other machine politicians.

All Law Must Be Backed by Force

It is a popular belief that when the paradoxical conciliatory legal persuasion in the form of arbitration goes into effect, we shall no longer require any armaments, but may forge our swords into plow-shares and spears into pruning-hooks, disband our armies, and return the soldiers to the shops and farms.

We are prone to forget that law is as much a representative of the requisite power behind it for its enforcement as a paper dollar is a representative of the requisite gold available for its redemption. A well-known orator came very near becoming President through a popular misconception as to the interdependence of gold and paper money, and he failed to get the Presidency because of a public awakening to the error.

We are prone to forget, furthermore, that it is the respect for power behind law that makes possible its enforcement. Any law to adjust international differences by arbitration will simply be an embodiment of the collective wisdom of allied Powers in the exercise of force, and a force that is representative of their banded armies and navies.

International law is static military force. War is the dynamic form of the same force. I believe in international arbitration for all it is worth. It is a good thing to push along. It will unquestionably lessen the frequency of wars, but many wars are sure to come in spite of it, and because of it.

Non-Justiciable Differences

There are ills of national bodies politic that can be cured only by the sword. Insurmountable differences between various nations and races of men are always sure to arise, as impossible to arbitrate as the differences between the herbivora and the carnivora.

The existence of the carnivora depends upon the sacrifice of the herbivora. Their interests are, from their very nature, antagonistic, and their differences are, by consequence, insurmountable, and not justiciable. The harmony of nature depends upon inharmony between the meat-eaters and the vegetable-eaters, and the harmony of modern progress has likewise depended in large measure upon formative inharmony between peoples.

Such radical differences and such concomitant radical diversity of interests exist among the various races of men that the task of harmonizing their interests, aims, and activities will be about as great as would be that of bleaching their skins to a uniform color.

It is a practical impossibility to enact international laws that will make the welfare of each nation the concern of all, with no subordination of any one to the welfare of another. Will arbitration be able to place all peoples upon a plane of equality? Will it be able to secure to all, even the meanest, equal rights to enjoyment of property, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Will arbitration be able to make the Anglo-Saxon, the Teuton, the African, and the Oriental meet one another on common ground, and share and share alike, live and let live, when their interests come into collision?

If arbitration cannot do this—if arbitration does not do this—if it does not treat all with strict impartiality, then those who are ill-treated are going to rebel, and wars will still come.

Between nations no sentimental consideration exists or is possible, sufficiently effectual to exert more than the merest microscopic influence as a deterrent of war. Self-interest always has been, and always will be, the deciding factor in the settlement of international disputes. War uncloaks international hypocrisy, and the people are seen in their true character.

The attitude of the warlike and powerful nations in the past toward the weaker nations has been very similar to that of the carnivora toward the herbivora.

International arbitration may somewhat lessen the burden of armaments, but the time will be long before it can lift the burden. The orators who plead at the International Tribunal will speak in the voice of the deep-throated guns behind them; their persuasion will be that of cold steel, and neither brotherly love nor international sympathy will be their guide, but self-interest, and no demands will be relinquished except from policy in their observance of such rights of others as are warded by the frowning ramparts of opposing force.

Unless all the nations of the world join in the pact, then arbitration will simply be an alliance for the benefit of the allies themselves as against all others. There will be nothing new in such an arrangement. The Six Nations of New York did the same thing; they formed a federation and settled their differences by arbitration, and it was a good thing for the Six Nations; but it was not a good thing for the neighboring Indian tribes.

We Americans expect to get all we want any way, either with or without arbitration. If we expected that the Chinese would be forced upon us, or our rights and privileges curtailed in the Orient, we should not think of joining in an arbitration pact for a minute.

There will always be the warfare of commerce for the markets of the world, and it will be tempered with avarice, not mercy; and commercial warfare will become more and more severe as the nations grow, and as competition, with want and hunger behind it, gets keen as the sword-edge with the crowding of people into the narrow world.

Unchanging Human Nature

Human nature is the same today as it was in the ante-rebellion days of human slavery. It is the same as it was when Napoleon, with the will-o'-the-wisp of personal and national glory held before the eyes of emotional and impressionable Frenchmen, led them to wreck for him the monarchies of Europe. Human nature is the same today as it was in Cæsar's time, when he massacred two hundred and fifty thousand Germans—men, women, and children—in a day, in cold blood, while negotiations for peace were pending, and entered in his diary the simple statement, "Cæsar's legions killed them all." Human nature is the same today as it was in the cruel old times, when war was the chief business of mankind, and populations sold as slaves were among the most profitable plunder. Yes, human nature is the same as it has always been. Education and Christian teaching have made pity and sympathy more familiar to the human heart, but avarice and the old fighting spirit are kept in leash only by the dominance of necessity and circumstances, which the institutions of civilization impose upon the individual.

The following is quoted from "Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain," by the late Professor J. A. Cramb:

"War may change its shape, the struggle here intensifying it, there abating it; it may be uplifted by ever loftier purposes and nobler causes. But cease? How shall it cease?

"Indeed, in the light of history, universal peace appears less as a dream than as a nightmare, which shall be realized only when the ice has crept to the heart of the sun, and the stars, left black and trackless, start from their orbits."

Max Müller has told us that the roots of some of our words are older than the Egyptian Pyramids. Far older still are the essential traits of human nature. The human nature of today will be the human nature of tomorrow, and the human nature of tomorrow will be in all essential respects the same as it was in ancient Rome, Persia, and Egypt, and even in the palmy days of sea-sunk Atlantis.

The best of us are at heart barbarians under a thin veneer of civilization, and it is as natural for us to revert to barbarous war as for the hog to return to his wallow.

If we were able to apply to the upbuilding of our Army and Navy the money that goes to political graft throughout the country, and the money that has been squandered, and is still being squandered through our notorious vote-purchasing pensions, we could place ourselves upon a war footing that would be an absolute guarantee of permanent peace. It is not, therefore, very encouraging, to enlarge this failing system of laws, in order to save an annual expenditure certainly less than what the defects of our laws now cost the country.

Even though international wars may be prevented by a court of arbitration, can rebellion and civil war be prevented, and ought they always to be prevented?

Justifiable Wars

When the unjust laws of an iniquitous government make existence intolerable for the great mass of the people of a country or of a colonial possession; "when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary" for a people to throw off the yoke of oppression, as we did in our War of the Revolution, or as the French people did in the French Revolution, or as the great Chinese people have lately done by their rebellion against the domination of an intolerable savage Manchu monarchy, then war is the only remedy, and freedom can then plead only with the sword.

I quote the following from Theodore Roosevelt's "America and the World War":

"In 1864 there were in the North some hundreds of thousands of men who praised peace as the supreme end, as a good more important than all other goods, and who denounced war as the worst of all evils. These men one and all assailed and denounced Abraham Lincoln, and all voted against him for President. Moreover, at that time there were many individuals in England and France who said it was the duty of those two nations to mediate between the North and the South, so as to stop the terrible loss of life and destruction of property which attended our Civil War; and they asserted that any Americans who in such event refused to accept their mediation and to stop the war would thereby show themselves the enemies of peace. Nevertheless, Abraham Lincoln and the men back of him by their attitude prevented all such effort at mediation, declaring that they would regard it as an unfriendly act to the United States. Looking back from a distance of fifty years, we can now see clearly that Abraham Lincoln and his supporters were right. Such mediation would have been a hostile act, not only to the United States but to humanity. The men who clamored for unrighteous peace fifty years ago this fall were the aenemies of mankind."

Those who are oppressed by the superincumbent weight of society, and labor for mere existence, with no hope of freedom from poverty, are slaves as much as were those made bondsmen in old-time wars. It matters little whether the wolf at the door be a creature of sociological conditions, or a creature of war. The evil is no less real.

James Russell Lowell, in his admirable poem on France and the French Revolution, said about the most expressive, the most potential, and altogether the best thing that has ever been said illustrative of the uncontrollable massiveness of the popular will, which, under the stimulus of patriotism or the smart or burden of accumulated wrongs, can stampede a nation into war:

"As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches
Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow,
Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches
And the blind havoc leaps unwarned below,
So grew and gathered through the silent years
The madness of a People, wrong by wrong.
There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears,
No strength in suffering;—but the Past was strong:
The brute despair of trampled centuries
Leapt up with one hoarse yell and snapt its bands,
Groped for its rights with horny, callous hands,
And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes."

The justification of war depends entirely upon the conditions which produce it. In short, war is justifiable only when it is a remedy for evils greater than the evils of the war. War is sometimes a very bitter remedy; nevertheless, there are diseases much worse than the remedy. The horrors of the French Revolution, bad as they were, remedied a condition still more horrible, for the condition of the French common people, "bowed by the weight of centuries," had become so abject that life was intolerable; no change could be for the worse. Under such circumstances there is no fear of death; the fear of death is only fear of the loss of life through love of life. When existence is intolerable, and there is no hope in the heart for better things, life, having no value, is not much loved, and death has no terrors.

In spite of all the bloodshed of the reign of terror, in spite of all who fell under the leadership of Napoleon, the French people were benefited by the Revolution a thousand-fold more than they were injured by it.

If arbitration could prevent such wars, which are man's God-given privilege that a people may secure its inalienable rights, then arbitration, in that respect, would be an iniquitous thing.

War, at best, is a horrible business. It is a reversion to the brute force of primitive savagery, and is never justifiable except in the extremity of last resort. But we must appreciate and acknowledge the fact that the horrors of war, the sacrifice of treasure, the sacrifice of life, are no arguments whatever against war when inalienable human rights are at stake that must be fought for, and that are worth the sacrifice.

There are at times objects and obligations which are worth the sacrifice. To prevent war in such cases would be a disgrace and a crime.

As Admiral Mahan says, "Even the material evils of war are less than the moral evil of compliance with wrong."

Christianity and War

In 1901, the editor of The Christian Herald requested me to write an article in answer to the following question: "Is it consistent for a loyal Christian, who believes that war is contrary to the teachings of the Prince of Peace, to engage in the manufacture of material designed exclusively for the purpose of war?"

In my reply, I pointed out that the great majority of Christians throughout the world, while they hate war, are often called upon themselves to become warriors and to fight for their doctrine of peace. The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage was chosen to reply to my article, which he did by agreeing with all I had said.

According to the annals of history, wars have almost invariably been caused by one party attempting to rob another party, or one people another people. On such occasions, it is self-evident that the blame for the wars rested with the robbers. Those who fought in defense of their lives and property, although actual participants in warfare, were guiltless.

Of course, the attempt to rob and plunder has sometimes been mutual, and both participants have been aggressors, as were Napoleon and Alexander in the Russian war. In the great majority of cases, however, one side has been on the aggressive, and the other on the defensive.

When an officer of the law catches an evil-doer in the act, and is attacked by him, if, in making an arrest, the officer is compelled to draw his own revolver and shoot the malefactor, he does a justifiable act. We have here war in miniature, and it may be taken as a type of all wars. While we are free to grant that wars are wrong, yet the wrong rests entirely with the offenders, instead of with the defenders, of human right.

Housebreaking is wrong, yet the brave knight who, in mediæval times, breached a castle wall to free some prisoner unjustly held, did a wholly commendable act. Similarly, one nation which raises an army to free from bondage slaves held by another nation, does an equally commendable act, and the blame for the war rests with those who hold the slaves.

War is an ugly and an awful thing, while some peace theories are very beautiful, and they are quite safe in times of peace; but when, in the past, slaves had to be freed, then the true Christians took down their old swords and shouldered their old guns, and went to the front. If we read the inscriptions on the monuments erected to the memory of those who died in our great Civil War, we find it was an army of Christians who fell.

War is often a necessity. It cannot always be avoided, and, when it comes, we want the best tools we can get with which to fight. It is criminal negligence for a nation not to be prepared against war. It is criminal negligence for a great nation not to be abreast of the times in arms and equipment.

Often at the bayonet's point, trade and civilization and even Christianity, have been forced upon the savage, and upon exclusive and unwarlike peoples, and now Christianity, civilization, and militarism, sisters of strange relation, hand in hand, embrace the world.

In "Sartor Resartus" Carlyle says:

"The first ground handful of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling. What will the last do?"

His own answer is that it will

"... achieve the final undisputed prostration of force under thought, of animal courage under spiritual."

Again Carlyle says, in the same work:

"Such I hold to be the genuine use of gunpowder: that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more mind, though all but no body whatever, then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. Hereby, at last is the Goliath powerless and the David resistless; savage animalism is nothing, inventive spiritualism is all."