FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

THE root cause of the present horrible conditions in Europe is an IDEA.

A delusion, a strong superstition, is at the bottom of the whole affair. That delusion is hundreds of years old. It is as perverted as devil worship, as abhorrent as the sacrifice of children to Moloch, as vicious and dangerous as the most violent form of insanity known in an insane asylum.

It is MILITARISM. It is the belief that armies help a nation to prosperity.

Militarism is based upon the disbelief in the principle of federation. There is no logical alternative to war except federation.

Many of the periodicals in America are decrying the European war; but it is amazing to see how some of these self-same publications urge an increase of armament in the United States.

Do not forget that the ONLY REASON the European states are now engaged in the most wretched war of history is that EACH

WAS PREPARED FOR WAR. You cannot find, with a microscope, any other reason that is not absurdly insufficient.

And the only way to keep out of war is not to be ready to fight. We may not get all the nations of earth to agree to this at once; they are too sunken and enslaved by the illusions of militarism; but ONE BY ONE, BEGINNING WITH THE MOST COURAGEOUS MORALLY, THE NATIONS NOW AT PEACE MUST BEGIN TO LAY DOWN THEIR ARMS.

The world has fifty-three independent governments. Of these nine are at war. Let the forty-four nations at peace get together and form a political union, agreeing to settle all disputes by an international body. Let the beginnings of world-federation be made at

once.

No more Hague conventions and pratings of peace by armed states. Let us begin federation now.

The United States of America would be the logical leader in this movement.

At the close of the great war the leading European states will be open to conviction. Their people, if not their rulers, will be ready to abandon the insanity of militarism for the common sense of federation.

For they are now spending $50,000,000 a day, or $18,500,000,000 a year. That will leave them impoverished and tax-ridden, the flower of their manhood destroyed.

Come, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan, make the move. Call the peaceful states together. Inaugurate a world government. Nobody will attack it, for the simple reason that it will attack no one.

Begin! Now is your hour!

You have the unprecedented opportunity to take the first step that shall lead the world out of the horrible pit and the miry clay of

war.

It is the twentieth century. It is the era of the people.

Begin! Begin! Begin!

Powerful, rich, above suspicion, with a people almost to a man opposed to war, this nation faces a crisis wherein to begin the longdreamed-of federation of the world will be its undying glory and wherein to hesitate, TO DICKER AND MANOEUVRE MERELY TO MAKE MONEY OUT OF THE SITUATION, WILL BE ITS SHAME.

Make no mistake. Do not muddle the issue. It is armed rivalry on the one hand and unarmed co-operation on the other. The na

tions must get together or perish by their own stupidity and egotism.

Rise up, America! Take the lead! For what other nation can?

"Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape, more than all others. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there deliverance arise from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: AND WHO KNOWETH WHETHER THOU ART COME TO THE KINGDOM FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS?"

Tuesday, September 1, 1914.

NOT PEACE BUT FEDERATION

THE word "Peace" is not attractive. Its vibrations are wrong. It suggests a lot of doddering theorists. It connotes weakness,

submission to wrong.

War is not necessarily bad. It all depends on what the war is about. The war of the Colonials, for instance, to win independence from England was a good war, wholesome, beneficial. The present European war is inconceivably wicked.

War is only a symptom. To abate the symptom we must cure the disease.

War is a fever, with delirium. It is one of those fevers caused by pus. The pus in this instance is MILITARISM.

Militarism means in plain English that a nation should maintain sufficient armed forces to settle any international dispute BY ITS OWN POWER.

That is the tomfool theory upon which the nations of the world now do business.