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will be only too glad to follow their leadership. China's 400,000,000 will be only too thankful to save their taxes for constructive purposes when relieved of the menace of the great powers. Neither Hague Conferences nor Hague Courts can prevent or settle civil strife. Theoretically that may break out indefinitely, though practically it would be far less frequent as international war ceased, and despotism disappeared.

Eliminate from consideration our two civil wars -the Revolution and the Rebellion-and the consideration of our own problems becomes much easier and the objector is more readily answered. We are seen to have had no wars since the Revolution except those of our own making. The Mexican War was fought primarily in the interest of slavery, and many are justified in the conclusion that, had it not been for yellow journalism and the blowing up of the Maine from some still unknown cause, we might by other methods have relieved Cuba without war and the subsequent entanglements in the East. In regard to our wars with foreign powers, which wars, during over ninety years, have lasted only two and a half years and have involved no invasion of our territory, there is serious difference of opinion as to their excuse. The consideration of war problems is greatly simplified when clear definitions remove the fog which vague and varied use of terms by even such masters of English as Admiral Mahan throw around the difficult subject. When it is seen that abolitionists of war

share the general reverence for the heroes of Bunker Hill and Gettysburg and in general are wasting little time in condemning wars which took place before substitutes for war were provided, much of the hostile criticism towards their efforts is shown to be irrelevant.

Admiral Mahan's reference to "the moral elevation which comes to every citizen in the membership of a great empire" ignores the fact that membership in the Chinese Republic or Russian Empire means far less to the citizen and to the respect which the world renders him than citizenship in the educated, thrifty little states of Holland, Switzerland, or Denmark. Norman Angell has quoted a beggar watching the Coronation procession of colonial and exotic warriors as saying:

I own India, Africa, and the Antipodes, the island of the tropic seas, the snows of the north, the jungles of far continents, and I am starving for a crust of bread. I rule all the black millions from which these legions have been drawn; my word is law in half a world, and yesterday a negro savage turned from my rags in disgust when I cringed before him for alms.

Admiral Mahan derides the efficacy of organisation as a promoter of peace because according to him human nature is not likely to change much for many a century. He evidently shares the feeling of the average sceptic who says to the peace advocates:

Your theories are admirable and would work splendidly if it were not for one thing that you doctrinaires always forget, and that is human nature. This is a wicked world, and Belgians abusing natives on the Congo, or men in Georgia and Pennsylvania burning human beings at the stake, or anarchists in Kentucky or Colorado, or deceitful Russians are not yet quite ready to be left to moral suasion. So long as we have cruelty and deviltry, no milk-and-water policy will do. When we abolish militia and police and go to bed with unlocked doors and trust our lives to our own citizens, then we will abolish army and navy and trust ourselves unprotected to the mercies of strangers,-and, mind you, not before that.

This retort sounds smart and plausible. Ninetynine soldiers out of a hundred, nine lawyers out of ten, accept it without question; yet therein lies a dangerous fallacy. Admiral Mahan writes: "There are no short cuts by which men may be made peaceful. If the world could have been saved by an organisation, it would have been saved a thousand years ago by the Christian Church." The fallacy here is in confounding states with individuals. In 1787, less than one hundred men worked out in our Constitutional Convention the method which has prevented war between any two of our own States ever since. In like manner, a comparatively few even of the one or two millions above mentioned will work out the methods of preventing war between any two nations.

All this involves no more change of human

nature than that which has made a strong, united Germany out of a score or more of separate units within a generation; it involves no better human nature than that which exists in our own country without war between one State and another, although we are pre-eminent in homicides and lynching within our States. The common assumption that industrial disputes must end before we can hope to settle international quarrels with peace and justice is based on a false assumption. As well might one conclude that permanent peace could not be secured between the State of Kentucky and the State of Tennessee so long as "night riders," lynchings, and homicides are so prevalent within those States.

Human nature doubtless is improving, and improving faster than fruits and flowers under the magic hand of Luther Burbank; the marvellous changes wrought in hostile cannibal tribes bear evidence; but it is organisation, not improved human nature, which prevents such old-time wars as were carried on between Italian cities in the days of Dante and Saint Francis. The Christ of the Andes, which commemorates the pledge of eternal peace between Chili and Argentina made when they escaped imminent war by arbitration, is one of many refutations of Admiral Mahan's statements, so far as governments are concerned. This does not mean that individuals of the two nations will never commit murder, nor that they have not latent the possibility of fiendish conduct

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