or The Supplanting of the System of War By Lucia Ames Mead Author of "Milton's England," etc. 1 With a Foreword by Baroness von Suttner The God of war is now a man of business with vested interests. Zangwill. G. P. Putnam's Sons The Knickerbocker Press HAVIN FOREWORD AVING been for many years in touch with the leading peace workers of America and an assiduous reader of the voluminous supply of pamphlets, books, and articles, which have flooded your country with the discussion of the great subject of the supplanting of the war system of nations by justice and reason, I have concluded that America is far in the forefront in the propaganda of the peace ideal, as in definite plans to bring it into realisation. Its adherents, representing as they do the highest and most influential circles of state, as well as the ablest scholars and religious leaders, have prominently pushed the subject internationally. In literature, in politics, in science, the most prominent men and women of America stand for the world's peace. From out of your beneficent private purses generous provisions have been poured for peace foundations. These several circumstances have awakened among us European pacifists the confident hope that the New World will lead the definite advance in this greatest movement of the twentieth century. I crossed the ocean to express this hope to our American co-workers. I have reported to them how imperatively the revival of militarism in Europe makes it important and necessary that we be helped from here. To my astonishment, I find that, while the cause is espoused by your greatsouled leaders everywhere, the mass of the public seems astonishingly uninformed when the peace movement is mentioned. To my great sorrow, I have also observed in certain circles even a strong military tendency and concern for national war-readiness, which has either not wholly died out of some inheritance from your past or is slowly invading your continent. I have asked myself whether its importation has perhaps been prompted by the European jingoes or by continental gun-agents. After reading this book, I confess myself more clear as to the source of this expanding militarism in your midst. I have learned much from its pages that I did not know before. It has made me realise the extent of the advance of militarism in the United States in these last years. The element of hope is in the fact that it is probably a comparatively small number of men who have pulled the strings, that the great body of the public is undoubtedly right-minded, and that right action will surely |