THREE BILLION DOLLARS IN THE RATHOLE

GENERAL WOOD bewails the unpreparedness of our army. The Navy League urges increased expenditure for ships, that we be not undefended if a war breaks out. Every once in a while a congressman sensationally dilates upon the defenselessness of our coasts. The yellow newspapers periodically seek to fan to flame a war scare.

The whole of these people are wrong, with the same fatal wrongness that right now is disembowelling Europe. The "be-ready-tofight" party never seems to learn anything.

A lieutenant in the United States army, for instance, arrived home from Europe the other day and sagely announced that now perhaps America would take warning from the great war-and arm herself! That is to say, that we, seeing what has befallen the transatlantic nations by their continued use of bichloride-of

mercury-militarism tablets, should swallow the stuff ourselves.

Since 1900 this country has spent $3,308,066,310 on the army and navy. Yet army and navy men tell us we are wholly unprepared; that Germany or Japan might come over and invest us any day.

In other words, over three billion dollars has been poured down the rathole. Why keep it up?

As a matter of fact, our freedom from foreign invasion has not depended one jot upon our arms, but upon the fact that we have minded our own business and kept out of quarrels.

The surest defense of this or any country is to act courteously, justly, and with forbearance toward all nations.

To render ourselves unassailable in the future this nation has only

1. To behave as a gentleman, and not as a bully;

2. To reduce its armament to such a proportion that no neighbor can imagine we mean to attack it, as any fully prepared nation easily finds a pretext for war;

3. To spend as much as we have spent for war preparedness, say two billion dollars in the next ten years, cultivating the good will

of our neighbors, as Japan, China, England, and Germany, developing trade with them, encouraging friendly travel, and the like;

4. And especially in forming a federation with any nation or all nations that will join, and building up an international army and navy, abandoning thus forever the idea and eliminating the possibility of wars of conquest, and laying the foundation of intelligent world-government, in which the nations may be relieved of the intolerable and useless burden of vast individual armaments.

Let us not argue. Let us look at facts. Armament of each nation never has secured Inexorable logic says that it never

peace. will.

It is high time now that the United States step out of the wallow of militarism, strip off its danger-making arms, join hands with such of the nations as will come with us, and lead the world up to the only solid ground of rational peace-federation.

Saturday, October 31, 1914.

ORGANIZED INSANITY

THE word is Lloyd George's. It means that strange, inexplicable idiocy under the influence of which nations go on increasing their armaments for the purpose of maintaining peace.

History shows that armies never did keep the peace. The present horror in Europe shows precisely what rivalry in armaments

comes to.

Yet some people never learn. Facts slip off them like water from a duck's back. In fact, they have the astounding effrontery to appeal to this country to increase its arms. To commit the same infernal folly Europe has committed this they call learning from experience! Could logical contortion twist itself into greater absurdity?

Here is Mr. Roosevelt urging us to increase our murder machinery, and pointing to China as a "horrible example" of the policy of nonaggression. He says that country has been

oppressed and invaded because it would not fight. But what about the countries that DID fight-Rome, Greece, Egypt, Spain, andGermany? China is older than any of them.

And here comes Mr. Mann with his talk of our "inevitable" conflict with Japan. If it is inevitable it is because men like Mann are inevitable. He might be a schoolmate of Bernhardi and Munsterberg, the prize maniacs of the war cult.

Also comes Representative Gardner, of whom we had thought better things. And ex-Secretary Meyer.

Meyer wants us to have forty-two firstclass battleships, so that we may "control" the Pacific. What do we want to control the Pacific for? The idea is vicious, war-producing. We want the Pacific and all oceans free to the ships of the world.

And the more warships we build, the more Japan will build; then China will get into the game. That way lies international madness,

ruin.

While the best minds in England and France are calling the present conflict a war upon militarism, and advocating reduction of armaments at its close, is it possible that we Americans are itching to fall into their old error?