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The most pernicious effect of this false education is found in nonmilitary nations where public opinion determines national policies. Disarmament propaganda is not undertaken and could have little effect among military nations, but is carried among the people of nonmilitary nations, and affects public opinion and causes memorials to the governments. In this way it has thwarted efforts to secure increases of naval preparation, which alone could insure national safety and promote international peace and make it possible some day to realize actual disarmament. This propaganda plays to the inherent weakness attending liberal institutions, the lack of attention to national defense, which has largely compassed the overthrow of liberal governments in the past and should be looked upon as an insidious disease striking at the vitals of the nation.

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The greatest harm of all has been done in the United States. nation has no natural or inherited hatred, but is made up of all the other nations mingled in a perfect reconciliation. It covets no territory of another nation and has an abhorrence for colonial empire. Its people do not follow military pursuits, but are absorbed year in and year out in occupations of peace. In the organization of fortysix sovereign States, under a system with legislative, judicial, and executive branches, it represents in model form the coming organization of the nations of the world, under which individual armaments will disappear. The application of the principle of equal rights and equal opportunities to the development of unparalleled natural resources has produced and continues to produce fabulous wealth. Free from the turmoils that embroil the nations of Europe and Asia, asking only that just policies prevail, America is wonderfully equipped and is the only nation equipped for the task of counterbalancing the military tendency of the present transformation period. of growing armaments. Fortunately, lying over the ocean from the armies of Europe and Asia, she can do this through naval power alone. Control of the sea in the two oceans washing our shores would enable us to live in security and continue indefinitely our peaceful pursuits at home, guaranteeing absolutely the survival of the new civilization of peace based on justice, which this nation now embodies, and would enable impartial America to hold the balance of

power in Europe and keep that balance permanently turned to the side of peace. It would have caused Russia to evacuate Manchuria, when our just demand for evacuation was made, thus averting the war between Russia and Japan. It would enable us now to make good the just policy of the "open door" in China, averting the world-wide wars that will ensue if contemplated attempts at the invasion and partition of China are carried out. It would enable America to lay the foundation of justice in the Pacific upon which the yellow race and white race, remaining each in its own habitat, could meet as friends in commerce to help each other, and not as enemies in war to destroy each other.

RICHMOND PEARSON HOBSON.

THE CASE FOR LIMITATION OF ARMAMENTS

The question of limitation and even of gradual reduction of armaments must be carefully differentiated from that of disarmament, complete and thorough-going. The demand for limitation of armaments put forward by the leaders of the peace movement is often unfairly assumed to be a demand for total disarmament. The most advanced pacifists, in whatever nation they may be found, and however radical may be their views theoretically as to the duty of the nations to disarm and live together in permanent peace under the dominion of love and law, are not at the present time urging disarmament as a practical measure. They know very well that before the happy time shall come when nations will "beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks" in any general way a very wide educational work for the removal of false conceptions and old prejudices must be done, and the process of rapprochement among the nations, now so happily taking place, must be carried much farther than it has yet gone. The practical thing which they are demanding and, as they think, on the best of grounds is the immediate arrest of the present feverish rivalry in armaments, and of the attending rapid increase in the already colossal army and navy budgets. This step they hold to be not only perfectly reasonable and practicable under the present conditions of the nations in their relations one to another, but also imperatively demanded in the interests of universal justice and the common welfare of the populations on whom the burden of keeping up the exhausting rivalry falls with such peculiar oppressiveness. Only the salient features of the argument, or group of arguments, by which this demand of the pacifists is supported, can be developed in a single article.

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The first and most impressive contention of the friends of peace of this way of thinking is that civilization is now so far advanced that not only is war itself out of date, but the colossal preparations for war, which meet the view in whatever direction one turns, are

thoroughly out of harmony with the humane spirit, the social habits, the intellectual attainment, and the philanthropic institutions of the age. When one puts this general character of our civilization over against the colossal armaments of the time and looks at the two with clear eye, the judgment pronounced is very much like that made when one looks at black and white their total unlikeness is seen

without any argument.

Private war, which for many generations ravaged Europe, has disappeared. The duel remains in but few civilized countries, and where it is still tolerated it is for the most part a farce. Personal fights with fists or clubs are to-day nearly unknown, except among thugs and drunken brawlers, which constitute a very small portion of any ordinary community, and are easily taken care of by a moderate police force. The carrying of deadly weapons openly is no longer in vogue. The possession of concealed weapons about the person is not only illegal in most countries, but is so generally held to be disreputable that no gentleman cares to have it known that his hip pocket is the receptacle of a revolver.

Parallel with this crowding of violence and the implements of brutality into the background goes a noteworthy prevalence of social confidence and trust, rising in innumerable cases, over wide areas, into genuine sympathy, friendship, and much mutual service. Neighbor trusts neighbor. The man on this side of the street is not suspicious of the man on that side. The different sides of cities no longer look upon each other as natural enemies, to be hated and maltreated. Mountains and rivers do not now divide peoples into mutually exclusive and malevolent communities. Indeed, mountains, rivers and seas may be said no longer to exist, to such an extent have modern means of communication brought all parts of the world into direct communication with all other parts. The unity of the world, on the material side, is no longer a dream; it is an accomplished fact. Solidarity of thought and feeling, or interest and purpose, prevails within the national boundaries over great areas of territory. Philanthropies innumerable, which look after the needy and helpless, have the sympathy and support of the whole people, and these philanthropies have already been, to a striking extent, internationalized.

Educational and industrial enterprises, scientific, social, sanitary, and many other types of endeavors, both individual and collective, are marked characteristics both of national and international life. Peoples within the national borders settle their disputes, where they have any, either by direct friendly negotiation, by the arbitration of friends, or through the courts of law and equity. We have, indeed, in the case of most of the nations, within which peoples of different races and languages are compacted into nationalities largely homogeneous, reached an era of practically universal and perpetual peace. Civil war has virtually disappeared. Men and communities live together, if not without friction and misunderstanding, at least without those outbursts of passion and violence which only a few generations ago prevailed in all countries and expressed themselves in bloody and ruinous wars.

In such an advanced state of civilization in respect of individuals and separate states, where reason and common sense so largely prevail and the use of brute force is being reduced in an ever-increasing degree, it seems utterly incongruous that the nations in their corporate capacities should hold war in the highest honor, should keep themselves in a chronic state of feverish preparation for it, and should be increasing and multiplying their military and naval establishments especially the latter with a rapidity and at a cost never before even dreamed of. It is difficult to conceive of folly and absurdity carried to a higher pitch than this. The fact that it has always been so can no longer be made an excuse for its continuance. Bad habits in nations are even less excusable than in individuals. There is but one way in which the states which constitute the so-called family of nations can deliver themselves from the guilt and burden. of this folly, and that is by taking steps at once to get together and solemnly agree that the present competitive arming shall stop short and go no further. No international act will be found easier than this, the moment the governments determine to undertake it with seriousness and with sincerity. There are many evidences which go to show that many of the governments themselves are already taking this view of the situation, though a few of them appeared at the last Hague Conference to have formed no real conception of the absurd nature of the situation.

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