the other. Such a condition would afford us a much more convincing, if more horrible, example - which we can but pray God will never come.

Citizens en masse are not soldiers. Courageous and hardy though they be, they cannot afford the same protection as a trained military force, and hence do not afford an equally good insurance against war.

H

CHAPTER III

THE LIKELIHOOD OF WAR TODAY

AVING assumed that wars are probable in order to reach our conclusion that military force is but a proper insurance, it becomes desirable to prove our assumption. We have two great classes of men who feel that war can be abolished, both dreamers varying rather more in methods than in their danger to the nation, and both classes having certain elemental truths as a foundation upon which they base widely-distorted theories; theories as different as are the entirely opposite classes of men belonging to each school. We refer to the socialists and the pacifists.

Many writers ignore the doctrine of the socialist as ridiculous anarchistic rot, which is the proper designation of the most widely circulated publications of this class. Yet these are writings whose effect is too great to permit their being entirely ignored by those who have the interests of their nation at heart. It is not because the arguments of the socialist will bear investigation and thought, but because their writings are circulated among men who are sufficiently well educated to read, but not learned enough to refute the incorrect statements or to

discern the fallacies which the socialist sets forth. Thus the socialist parasite lives by distributing his skillfully worded writings among those sufficiently ignorant to purchase and read the work, but unable to comprehend the viciousness of the thought.

The socialist argues that war is for capital alone; that the working man does the fighting, bears the brunt of the loss, and gains nothing; while the capitalist does no fighting, suffers no loss, but gains all that is gained in the war. As a means of preventing the wars which they oppose so bitterly, the socialist suggests that the working man refuse to fight at what they term, the "bid of their superiors." Many wars, however, are due to the outcry of the public. Many of them are for the benefit of labor; and labor, which the socialist doctrine counts upon for its strength, is oftentimes the first to demand war. Nor are these mere arbitrary statements, as we will shortly demonstrate. It is because of this fact that the socialist's hopes of persuading the "common people" to refuse to fight are vain. They will not refuse it; they will rather demand the armed struggle in protection of their interests.

The pacifists may be divided into two main classes

those who favor arbitration as a settlement, and the few who cry for peace at any price. A third class growing in number and presenting the most conservative, reasonable, and forceful arguments, are those who are of the school of Norman Angell,

the author of The Great Illusion. This school studies the question from a strictly economic, businesslike viewpoint, and the errors and omissions are few, though important. Their arguments are well summed up in the following illustrative questions which Mr. Angell asks, and in one sentence, answers:

Is it true that the wealth, prosperity and welfare of a nation depend upon its military power, or have necessarily anything whatever to do therewith?

Can one civilized nation gain moral or material advantage by the military conquest of another?

Does conquered territory add to the wealth of the conquering nation?

Is it possible for a nation to "own" the territory of another in the way that a person or corporation would own an estate?

Could Germany "take" English trade and colonies by military force?

Could she turn English colonies into German ones, and win an overseas empire by the sword as England won hers in the past?

Does a modern nation need to expand its political boundaries in order to provide for increasing population?

If England could conquer Germany tomorrow, completely conquer her, reduce her nationality to so much dust, would the ordinary British subject be the better for it?

If Germany could conquer England would any ordinary German subject be the better for it?

The fact that all these questions have to be answered in the negative and that a negative answer seems to outrage

common sense, shows how much our political axioms are in need of revision.*

The one great fact, that which all of these schools (with the partial exception of Mr. Angell) either overlook or minimize, is that there are questions arising which involve absolutely vital interests, and yet which are so finely balanced that each party may be absolutely sincere and, in his own mind, positive in the belief that his is the side of right. Under these conditions, each party believing that there is nothing questionable in the case, will refuse to risk what it holds to be a vital point in arbitration or otherwise.

Should it ever occur that the total wealth, or the sweetheart, or the wife of a giant be claimed by a man of much smaller stature and inferior strength; should both men appeal to an arbiter who had no means of enforcing his decision, and should it be that the giant would willingly give up his all -the possessions beyond price - merely at the word of the third party; should this be the attitude of all human beings; should all human beings be so constituted morally and intellectually that they will in this manner surrender their own absolute convictions, and thereby their most prized earthly possessions and attachments willingly and without force, at the mere statement of some tribunal that they are

*The Great Illusion, Norman Angell, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.