pools of water illumined at night by phosphorescent glow; and, dominating all, irradiated by light, will stand the statue of Universal Peace.

In July, 1911, there was held in London, at the suggestion of Dr. Felix Adler, one of the most remarkable assemblies that ever met in human history, known as the Universal Races Congress. This Congress included representatives of over forty races and nationalities, and was presided over by Lord Weardale. About twelve hundred members, each paying a guinea, attended the eight sessions and brilliant social functions, and each received a copy of the volume of 450 pages on Inter-Racial Problems which contained the valuable collection of scientific papers prepared by the invited speakers. German professors and high-bred English women, Americans, and other representatives of the white races sat down to luncheon with men and women of all degrees of colour. Learned Brahmins, an American Indiana graduate of Dartmouth College-Cambridge professors, London and Paris economists, cultivated negroes from America and South Africa, Turks, Egyptians, Persians, Chinese diplomats, Hungarians, Russians,—men and women from all lands, including one handsome Maori,-here commingled as friends and neighbours, all intent on one great problem-to promote good-will and solve the problems of race intercourse due to man's ignorance and prejudice. The Roosevelt professor at Berlin discussed "Geographic, Political, and

1

Economic Conditions"; and among other subjects were "Miscegenation," "International Law and Subject Races," "Traffic in Intoxicants and Opium," and various aspects of international, economic, and peace problems. This remarkable gathering is doubtless destined to prove the first of many triennial or quadrennial conferences which will focus the minds of scholars the world over on some of the most difficult problems which tradition and prejudice have rendered still more difficult of solution. It was hoped that one of the first steps in showing how people of culture and goodwill may transcend race prejudice in common intercourse would be the establishment in London, New York, and other great centres of an international hostel or cosmopolitan club, where people of all races, with proper credentials, would be welcomed and where distinguished foreigners would be entertained. Such centres would be potent agencies for bringing home to the representatives of the various peoples their interdependence and for promoting their influential co-operation.

CHAPTER IV

"DON'T

MAKERS OF MILITARISM

ON'T you think that you put too high a value on human life?" asked a newspaper reporter some years ago, after listening to an address given by the writer. "Only the valuation which the courts of our country give," was the reply, "which makes the murder of even one black baby a capital crime before the law."

As one reads frequently in nearly every newspaper the headline, "War Game," and sees how the ghastly science of killing human beings is treated by the press as if it were football, one is appalled at the effect which the power of suggestion must have over the minds of the youth, whose fathers, twenty-five years ago, knew nothing of "war games" and were not afraid when we had no navy, or but a very small one.

Granted that some slaughter of human beings has been necessary in the past, and that there is still a possibility of our again fighting a foreign foe, is not the press of the country largely responsible for creating the psychological conditions that breed war and make it alluring, when, instead of as

"war practice" or "war study," they treat the whole thing as a game, or show, or sport? Doubtless the sheriff, who is to execute a murderer, must practise with his gallows to enable him to slip the noose perfectly; but we put no glamour over this, and our children do not play at hangings. But when we prepare to kill en masse, and it is not a question of killing a criminal, who is a menace to society, but of killing thousands of men who are patriotically serving their country according to their light, as our soldiers are serving our country, then the spectators are moved to hilarity and amusement; bayonet practice, the stabbing of imaginary heads and breasts and legs with the deadly steel, is surrounded with the glamour of a game.

Of late the interest in target practice is increased by firing at sham figures of men with movable limbs like jumping-jacks. In England the power of suggestion is adduced by one writer as having great results in the Aldershot practice manœuvres when the combatants referred to each other as Germans. "Is n't that rather an ill-considered custom?" an officer was asked. "Is n't it calculated to stir up bad blood and encourage hatred?” "I don't know as to that," he replied, "but it certainly is calculated to get the keenest sort of work out of them. They 're lazy beggars unless we set 'em on the Germans; then you should see 'em."

During the last sixty years we have fought with a foreign power only six months. We have never been attacked by any foreign power since we

became a republic, as has previously been said, and in every one of our three wars we made the first attack. There is no reason to suppose that future history will reverse the past, or, now that we have endless methods of defence other than powder and dynamite, that we shall ever be attacked. What is the excuse altogether for this sudden, extravagant devotion to military manœuvres, so vastly greater than anything we saw a few years ago? Never were we so safe, so able to preserve ourselves from danger by arbitration, neutralisation, and the mighty power of nonintercourse. Doubtless our soldiers must practise. But let their work be called practice, not a game, or play, or sport, which by big headlines and journalistic art is forced upon the attention of the public as a matter of high importance. Few of the populace have imagination enough to realise what all this means, and few have any perception of relative values.

It is salutary to be reminded in 1912 of the venom and hysteria of the makers of militarism seventeen years ago in their suspicions of Great Britain, as unfounded then as are their present accusations against another nation. Some of the men whose words here follow must in later and cooler moments be themselves startled at the record. Said Senator Lodge in 1895:

The gold monometallic policy of Great Britain is I believe the great enemy of good business through