For the tactics of the prison and the hunger-strike depend for their

value upon the innocency of the prisoners. Their offense must be merely
nominal or technical. The suffragettes had rediscovered the Quaker
truth that the spirit is stronger than all the forces of Government,
and that things may really come by fasting and prayer. Even the
window-breaking, though a perilous approach to the methods of the Pagan
male, was only a damage to insensitive material for which the
window-breakers were prepared to pay in conscious suffering. But once
the injury was done to flesh and blood, the injurer would only be
paying tooth for tooth and eye for eye; and all the sympathy would go,
not to the assailant, but to the victim. Mrs. Pankhurst says the
Government must either give votes to women or "prepare to send large
numbers of women to penal servitude." That would be indeed awkward for
the Government if penal servitude were easily procurable.
Unfortunately, the women must first qualify for it, and their crimes
would disembarrass the Government. Mrs. Leigh could have been safely
left to starve had her attempted arson of that theater really come off,
especially with loss of life. Thus violence may be "militant," but it
is not "tactics." And violence against society at large is peculiarly
tactless. George Fox would hardly occupy so exalted a niche in history
if he had used his hammer to make not shoes but corpses.

The suffragettes who run amuck have, in fact, become the victims of
their own vocabulary. Their Union was "militant," but a church
militant, not an army militant. The Salvation Army might as well
suddenly take to shooting the heathen. It was only by mob
misunderstanding that the suffragettes were conceived as viragoes, just
as it was only by mob misunderstanding that the members of the Society
of Friends were conceived as desperadoes. If it can not be said that
their proceedings were as quintessentially peaceful as some of those
absolutely mute Quaker meetings which the police of Charles II.
humorously enough broke up as "riots," yet they had a thousand
propaganda meetings (ignored by the Press) to one militant action
(recorded and magnified). Even in battle nothing could be more decorous
or constitutional than the overwhelming majority of their "pin-pricks."

I remember a beautiful young lady, faultlessly dressed, who in soft,
musical accents interrupted Mr. Birrell at the Mansion House. Stewards
hurled themselves at her, policemen hastened from every point of the
compass; but unruffled as at the dinner-table, without turning a hair
of her exquisite _chevelure_, she continued gently explaining the
wishes of womankind till she disappeared in a whirlwind of hysteric
masculinity. But in gradually succumbing to the vulgar
misunderstanding, playing up to the caricature, and finally
assimilating to the crude and obsolescent methods of men, the
suffragettes have been throwing away their own peculiar glory, their
characteristic contribution to history and politics. Rosalind in search
of a vote has supplied humanity with a new type who snatched from her
testifyings a grace beyond the reach of Arden. But Rosalind with a
revolver would be merely a reactionary. Hawthorne's Zenobia, who, for
all her emancipation, drowned herself in a fit of amorous jealousy, was
no greater backslider from the true path of woman's advancement. It is
some relief to find that Mrs. Pankhurst's latest program disavows
attacks on human life, limiting itself to destruction of property, and
that the Pethick Lawrences have grown still saner.

There might, indeed, be--for force is not always brute--some excuse
and even admiration for the Terrorist, did the triumph of her cause
appear indefinitely remote, were even that triumph to be brought
perceptibly nearer by forcibly feeding us with horrors. But the
contrary is the case: even the epidemic of crime foreshadowed by Mrs.
Pankhurst could not appreciably delay woman suffrage. It is coming as
fast as human nature and the nature of the Parliamentary machine will
allow. To try to terrorize Mr. Asquith into bringing in a Government
measure is to credit him with a wisdom and a nobility almost divine. No
man is great enough to put himself in the right by admitting he was
wrong. And even if he were great enough to admit it under argument, he
would have to be godlike to admit it under menace. Rather than admit
it, Mr. Asquith has let himself be driven into a position more
ludicrous than perhaps any Prime Minister has occupied. For though he
declares woman suffrage to be "a political disaster of the gravest
kind," he is ready to push it through if the House of Commons wishes,
relying for its rejection upon the House of Lords, which he has
denounced and eviscerated. He is even not unwilling it shall pass if
only the disaster to the country is maximized by Adult Suffrage. It is
not that he loves woman more, but the Tory party less.

All things considered, I am afraid the Suffrage Movement will have to
make up its mind to wait for another Parliament. There is more hope for
the premature collapse of this Parliament than for its passing of a
Suffrage Bill or clause. And at the general election, whenever it
comes, Votes for Women will be put on the program of both parties. The
Conservatives will offer a mild dose, the Liberals a democratic.
Whichever fails at the polls, the principle of woman suffrage will be
safe.

This prognostic, it will be seen, involves the removal of the immovable
Asquith. But he must either consent to follow a plebiscite of his party
or retire, like his doorkeeper, from Downing Street, under the
intolerable burden of the suffragette. Much as his party honors and
admires him, it can not continue to repudiate the essential principles
of Liberalism, nor find refuge in his sophism that Liberalism removes
artificial barriers, but can not remove natural barriers. What natural
barrier prevents a woman from accepting or rejecting a man who proposes
to represent her in Parliament? No; after his historic innings Mr.
Asquith will sacrifice himself and retire, covered with laurels and
contradictions. Pending which event, the suffragettes, while doing
their best to precipitate it through the downfall of the Government,
may very reasonably continue their policy of pin-pricks to keep
politicians from going to sleep, but serious violence would be worse
than a crime; it would be a blunder. No general dares throw away his
men when nothing is to be gained, and our analysis shows that the
interval between women and the vote can only be shortened by bringing
on a general election.

There are, indeed, skeptics who fear that even at the next general
election both parties may find a way of circumventing woman suffrage by
secretly agreeing to keep it off both programs; but the country itself
is too sick of the question to endure this, even if the Women's Liberal
Federation and the corresponding Conservative body permitted it. That
the parties would go so far as to pair off their women workers against
each other is unlikely. At any rate, now, when other forms of agitation
are more or less futile, is the moment for these and cognate bodies to
take up the running.

But even if these women workers fail in backbone, and allow themselves,
as so often before, to be lulled and gulled by their male politicians,
there yet remains an ardent body to push forward their cause. Mrs.
Humphry Ward and the Anti-Suffragists may be trusted to continue
tireless and ever-inventive. Mrs. Ward's League to promote the return
of women as town and county councilors is her latest device to prove
the unfitness of women for public affairs, and since the Vegetarian
League for combating the carnivorous instincts of the tigress by
feeding her on blood, there has been no quite so happy adaptation of
means to end. If anything could add to the educative efficiency of the
new League, it is Mrs. Ward's scrupulousness in limiting it exclusively
to Anti-Suffragists.


ELBERT HUBBARD

There was a time in England when all the laws were made and executed by
the King.

Later he appointed certain favorites who acted for him, and these were
paid honors and emoluments accordingly.

Still later, all soldiers were allowed to express their political
preferences. And that is where we got the idea about not allowing folks
to vote who could not fight.

It was once the law in England that no Catholic should be allowed to
vote.

It was also once the law in England that no Jew could hold real estate,
could vote at elections, could hold a public office, or serve on a
jury.

Full rights of citizenship were not given to the Jews in Great Britain
until the year 1858. Deists, Theists, Quakers, and "Dissenters" were
not allowed to testify in courts, and their right to vote was
challenged in England up to 1885.

For centuries, Jews occupied the position of minors, mental defectives,
or men with criminal records.

Women now in England occupy the same position politically that the Jews
did a hundred years ago.

Until very recent times all lawmakers disputed the fact that women have
rights. Women have privileges and duties--mostly duties.

All the laws are made by men, and for the most part the rights only of
male citizens are considered. If the rights of women or children are
taken into consideration, it is only from a secondary point of view, or
because the attention of lawmakers is especially called to the natural
rights of women, children, and dumb animals.

Provisions, however, have always been made in England as well as all
other civilized countries for punishing Catholics, Jews, Quakers, and
women.

In old New England there was once a pleasing invention called a
"ducking stool," that was for "women only." For the most part, the
punishment for these individuals who were not citizens was very much
more severe than it was for the people who made and devised the
punishment for them.

Women are admitted into the full rights of citizenship in New Zealand
and Australia, and in several States in the United States.

There will surely come a time when we will look back and regard the
withholding of full political rights from women in the same way that we
now look back and regard the disfranchisement of Jews and Catholics.

There is no argument that can possibly be presented against the right
of women to express their political preferences which does not in equal
degree apply to the right of male citizens to express theirs.

Every possible logical argument has been put forward and answered.

The protest in England by certain women who are working for equal
suffrage has taken what is called a militant form.

These women, in many instances, have been guilty of violence.

The particular women who have been foremost in this matter of violence
are not criminals in any sense of the word. They are not plotting and
planning the overthrow of the government. They are not guilty of
treason; and certainly they are not guilty of disorder along any other
line than that springing out of their disapproval of the failure of the
government to grant the right of political representation to women.

"Taxation without representation" was the shibboleth of the men who
founded the government of the United States of America.

This shibboleth, or slogan, came to them from across the sea and was
first uttered in England before the days of Magna Charta.

That every adult individual, man or woman, possessed of normal
mentality, should be thoroughly interested in the government, and
should have the right of expressing his or her political preferences,
is beyond dispute, especially under any government that affects to
derive its powers from the governed.

The right to govern is conferred by the governed, and this is now
admitted even in the so-called monarchies. And the governed are not
exclusively males; the governed are men and women, for women are
responsible before the law.

So thoroughly are these facts fixed in the minds of a great many men
and women everywhere that a few men are possessed by the righteousness
of the cause to a degree that they are willing not only to live for it
and fight for it, suffer for it, but also to die for it.

Some of these women in London, who have been throwing stones into
windows, thus destroying property, have signified as great a
willingness to injure themselves as they have to injure the property of
their fellow citizens, provided by so doing they can bring to the
attention of the men in charge of the government the absolute necessity
of recognizing the political rights of women.

If certain people in the past had not been willing to stake their all
on individual rights, there would to-day be no liberty for any one.

The saviors of the world are simply those who have been willing to die
that humanity might live.

It may be hard for an individual of average purpose to understand or
comprehend this mental attitude where the individual is fired with such
zeal that he is willing to suffer physical destruction for it.

In England, the test has come to an issue of whether these women,
intent on bringing about governmental recognition of the rights of
women, should be allowed to die for the cause or not. And from all
latest reports, John Bull does seem troubled about it.




MILITARISM

ITS CLIMAX IN THE THREAT OF UNIVERSAL WAR OVER MOROCCO A.D. 1911

NORMAN ANGELL

SIR MAX WAECHTER, D.L.

Ever since Germany by the completeness of her military preparation won
so decisive a victory over France in 1870, Europe has plunged deeper
and deeper into Militarism. That is to say, each European state that
could possibly afford it has increased its army and its navy, until
to-day their military force is many times more powerful than it was
half a century ago. The theory on which this is done is that you can
secure peace only by showing you are ready to fight; that if one nation
is sure that it can thrash another, it will probably plan an
opportunity to do so. Such is the theory; but what is the tragic
result? Military expenditures have increased at a stupendous rate and
all Europe groans under a burden of almost unendurable taxation.
Moreover, the possession of such splendid machinery of warfare is a
constant temptation to employ it and so vindicate its staggering
expense. This was startlingly shown in the case of the Morocco
imbroglio.

During the early part of 1911 the French government made clear its
intent to take complete possession of the semi-independent African
state of Morocco. On July 1st, Germany sent a warship to the Moroccan
port of Agadir, as a sign that she also had interests in the country,
which France must not override. Instantly Europe buzzed like an angry
bee-hive. England and France had previously made a secret treaty
agreeing that France should be allowed to take Morocco in exchange for
keeping hands off Egypt, where England was establishing herself. Hence
England now felt compelled to uphold her ally. When Germany seemed
inclined to bully the Frenchmen, England insisted that she also must be
consulted. Germany growled that this was none of England's business.
Everybody began getting out their guns and parading their armies.
Germany sought the support of Austria and Italy, her partners in the
"Triple Alliance." France and England emphasized the fact that Russia
stood with them in an antagonistic "Triple Entente." On November 4th,
France and Germany came to a peaceful agreement, France taking Morocco
and "compensating" Germany by yielding to her some territory in Eastern
Equatorial Africa.

Thus the whole excitement passed off in rumblings; there was no war.
But it was revealed a few months later that the nations had really
approached to the very brink of a Titanic struggle, which would have
desolated the whole of Europe.

And here is the peculiar tragedy of Militarism. The mere threat of that
great "Unfought War" cost Europe billions of dollars. Moreover, as a
result of Germany's discontent at what she rather regarded as her
defeat in this Morocco affair, she in 1913 enormously increased her
army and more than doubled her already heavy military tax upon her
people. Then France and Russia felt compelled to meet Germany's move by
increasing their armies also, extending, as she had done, the time of
compulsory military service inflicted upon their poorer classes.

Norman Angell, an English writer, has recently stirred all thinking
people by a remarkable book of protest against Militarism. He here
discusses the Moroccan imbroglio under the title of "the Mirage of the
Map." Sir Max Waechter is an authority of international repute upon the
same subject.


NORMAN ANGELL

The Press of Europe and America is very busy discussing the lessons of
the diplomatic conflict which has just ended. And the outstanding
impression which one gets from most of these essays in high
politics--whether French, Italian, or British--is that we have been and
are witnessing part of a great world movement, the setting in motion of
Titanic forces "deep-set in primordial needs and impulses."

For months those in the secrets of the Chancelleries have spoken with
bated breath--as though in the presence of some vision of Armageddon.
On the strength of this mere talk of war by the three nations, vast
commercial interests have been embarrassed, fortunes have been lost and
won on the Bourses, banks have suspended payment, some thousands have
been ruined; while the fact that the fourth and fifth nations have
actually gone to war has raised all sorts of further possibilities of
conflict, not alone in Europe, but in Asia, with remoter danger of
religious fanaticism and all its sequelae. International bitterness and
suspicion in general have been intensified, and the one certain result
of the whole thing is that immense burdens will be added in the shape
of further taxation for armaments to the already heavy ones carried by
the five or six nations concerned. For two or three hundred millions of
people in Europe life, which with all the problems of high prices,
labor wars, unsolved social difficulties, is none too easy as it is,
will be made harder still.

The needs, therefore, that can have provoked a conflict of these
dimensions must be "primordial" indeed. In fact, one authority assures
us that what we have seen going on is "the struggle for life among
men"--that struggle which has its parallel in the whole of sentient
existence.

Well, I put it to you, as a matter worth just a moment or two of
consideration, that this conflict is about nothing of the sort; that it
is about a perfectly futile matter, one which the immense majority of
the German, English, French, Italian, and Turkish people could afford
to treat with the completest indifference. For, to the vast majority of
these 250,000,000 people, more or less, it does not matter two straws
whether Morocco or some vague, African swamp near the Equator is
administered by German, French, Italian, or Turkish officials, so long
as it is well administered. Or rather one should go further: if French,
German, or Italian colonization of the past is any guide, the nation
which wins in the conquest for territory of this sort has added a
wealth-draining incubus.

This, of course, is preposterous; I am losing sight of the need for
making provision for the future expansion of the race, of each party
desiring to "find its place in the sun"; and heaven knows what.

Well, let us for a moment get away from phrases and examine a few facts
usually ignored because they happen to be beneath our nose.

France has got a new empire, we are told; she has won a great victory;
she is growing and expanding and is richer by something which her
rivals are the poorer for not having.

Let us assume that she makes the same success of Morocco that she has
made of her other possessions, of, say, Tunis, which represents one of
the most successful of those operations of colonial expansion which
have marked her history during the last forty years. What has been the
precise effect on French prosperity?

In thirty years, at a cost of many million sterling (it is part of
successful colonial administration in France never to let it be known
what the colonies really cost) France has founded in Tunis a colony, in
which to-day there are, excluding soldiers and officials, about 25,000
genuine French colonists: just the number by which the French
population in France--the real France--is diminishing every six
months! And the value of Tunis as a market does not even amount to the
sum which France spends directly on its occupation and administration,
to say nothing of the indirect extension of military burden which its
conquest involves; and, of course, the market which it represents would
still exist in some form, though England--or even Germany--administered
the country.

In other words, France loses twice every year in her home population
two colonies equivalent to Tunis--if we measure colonies in terms of
communities made up of the race which has sprung from the mother
country. And yet, if once in a generation her rulers and diplomats can
point to 25,000 Frenchmen living artificially and exotically under
conditions which must in the long run be inimical to their race, it is
pointed to as "expansion" and as evidence that France is maintaining
her position as a Great Power. A few years, as history goes, unless
there is some complete change of tendencies which at present seem as
strong as ever, the French race as we now know it will have ceased to
exist, swamped without the firing, may be, of a single shot, by the
Germans, Belgians, English, Italians, and Jews. There are to-day in
France more Germans than there are Frenchmen in all the colonies that
France has acquired in the last half-century, and German trade with
France outweighs enormously the trade of France with all French
colonies. France is to-day a better colony for the Germans than they
could make of any exotic colony which France owns.

"They _tell_ me," said a French Deputy recently (in a not quite
original _mot_), "that the Germans are at Agadir. I _know_ they are in
the Champs-Elysees." Which, of course, is in reality a much more
serious matter.

And those Frenchmen who regret this disappearance of their race, and
declare that the energy and blood and money which is now poured out so
lavishly in Africa and in Asia ought to be diverted to its arrest, to
the colonization and development of France by better social,
industrial, commercial, and political organization, to the resisting of
the exploitation of the mother country by inflowing masses of
foreigners, are declared to be bad patriots, dead to the sentiment of
the flag, dead to the call of the bugle, are silenced in fact by a
fustian as senseless and mischievous as that which in some marvelous
way the politician, hypnotized by the old formulae, has managed to make
pass as "patriotism" in most countries.

The French, like their neighbors, are not interested in the Germans of
the Champs-Elysees, but only in the Germans at Agadir: and it is for
these latter that the diplomats fight, and the war budgets swell.

And from that silent and pacific expansion, which means so much both
negatively and positively, attention is diverted to the banging of the
war drum, and the dancing of the patriotic dervishes.

And on the other side we are to assume that Germany has during the
period of France's expansion--since the war--not expanded at all. That
she has been throttled and cramped--that she has not had her place in
the sun: and that is why she must fight for it and endanger the
security of her neighbors.

Well, I put it to you again that all this in reality is false: that
Germany has not been cramped or throttled; that, on the contrary, as we
recognize when we get away from the mirage of the map, her expansion
has been the wonder of the world. She has added 20,000,000 to her
population--one-half the present population of France--during a period
in which the French population has actually diminished. Of all the
nations in Europe, she has cut the biggest swath in the development of
world trade, industry, and influence. Despite the fact that she has not
"expanded" in the sense of mere political dominion, a proportion of her
population, equivalent to the white population of the whole colonial
British Empire, make their living, or the best part of it, from the
development and exploitation of territory outside her borders. These
facts are not new, they have been made the text of thousands of
political sermons preached in England itself during the last few years;
but one side of their significance seems to have been missed.

We get, then, this: On the one side a nation extending enormously its
political dominion and yet diminishing in national force, if by
national force we mean the growth of a sturdy, enterprising, vigorous
people. (I am not denying that France is both wealthy and comfortable,
to a greater degree it may be than her rival; but she has not her
colonies to thank for it--quite the contrary.) On the other side, we
get immense expansion expressed in terms of those things--a growing and
vigorous population and the possibility of feeding them--and yet the
political dominion, speaking practically, has hardly been extended at
all.

Such a condition of things, if the common jargon of high politics means
anything, is preposterous. It takes nearly all meaning out of most that
we hear about "primordial needs," and the rest of it.

As a matter of fact, we touch here one of the vital confusions, which
is at the bottom of most of the present political trouble between
nations, and shows the power of the old ideas, and the old phraseology.

In the days of the sailing ship and the lumbering wagon dragging slowly
over all but impassable roads, for one country to derive any
considerable profit from another, it had, practically, to administer it
politically. But the compound steam engine, the railway, the telegraph,
have profoundly modified the elements of the whole problem. In the
modern world political dominion is playing a more and more effaced role
as a factor in commerce; the non-political factors have in practise
made it all but inoperative. It is the case with every modern nation
actually that the outside territories which it exploits most
successfully are precisely those of which it does not "own" a foot.
Even with the most characteristically colonial of all--Great
Britain--the greater part of her overseas trade is done with countries
which she makes no attempt to "own," control, coerce, or dominate--and
incidentally she has ceased to do any of these things with her
colonies.

Millions of Germans in Prussia and Westphalia derive profit or make
their living out of countries to which their political dominion in no
way extends. The modern German exploits South America by remaining at
home. Where, forsaking this principle, he attempts to work through
political power, he approaches futility. German colonies are colonies
"pour rire." The Government has to bribe Germans to go to them; her
trade with them is microscopic; and if the twenty millions who have
been added to Germany's population since the war had had to depend on
their country's political conquest they would have had to starve. What
feeds them are countries which Germany has never "owned" and never
hopes to "own"; Brazil, Argentina, the United States, India, Australia,
Canada, Russia, France, and England. (Germany, which never spent a mark
on its political conquest, to-day draws more tribute from South America
than does Spain, which has poured out mountains of treasure and oceans
of blood in its conquest.) These are Germany's real colonies. Yet the
immense interests which they represent, of really primordial concern to
Germany, without which so many of her people would be actually without
food, are for the diplomats and the soldiers quite secondary ones; the
immense trade which they represent owes nothing to the diplomat, to
Agadir incidents, to Dreadnoughts; it is the unaided work of the
merchant and the manufacturer. All this diplomatic and military
conflict and rivalry, this waste of wealth, the unspeakable foulness
which Tripoli is revealing, are reserved for things which both sides to
the quarrel could sacrifice, not merely without loss, but with profit.
And Italy, whose statesmen have been faithful to all the old "axioms"
(Heaven save the mark!) will discover it rapidly enough. Even her
defenders are ceasing now to urge that she can possibly derive any real
benefit from this colossal ineptitude.

Italy struck at Turkey for "honor," for prestige--for the purpose of
impressing Europe. And one may hope that Europe (after reading the
reports of Reuter, _The Times_, the _Daily Mirror_, and the New York
_World_ as to the methods which Italy is using in vindicating her
"honor") is duly impressed, and that Italian patriots are satisfied
with these new glories added to Italian history. It is all they will
get.

Or rather, will they get much more: for Italy, as unhappily for the
balance of Europe, the substance will be represented by the increase of
very definite every-day difficulties--the high cost of living, the
uncertainty of employment, the very deep problems of poverty,
education, government, well-being. These remain--worsened. And
this--not the spectacular clash of arms, or even the less spectacular
killing of unarmed Arab men, women, and children--constitute the real
"struggle for life among men." But the dilettanti of "high politics"
are not interested. For those who still take their language and habits
of thought from the days of the sailing-ship, still talk of
"possessing" territory, still assume that tribute in some form is
possible, still imply that the limits of commercial and industrial
activity are dependent upon the limits of political dominion, the
struggle is represented by this futile physical collision of groups,
which, however victory may go, leaves the real solution further off
than ever.

We know what preceded this war: if Europe had any moral conscience
left, it would have been shocked as it was never shocked before. Turkey
said: "We will submit Italy's grievance to any tribunal that Europe
cares to name, and abide by the result." Italy said: "We don't intend
to have the case judged, but to take Tripoli. Hand it over--in
twenty-four hours." The Turkish Government said: "At least make it
possible for us to face our own people. Call it a Protectorate; give us
the shadow of sovereignty. Otherwise it is not robbery--to which we
should submit--but gratuitous degradation; we should abdicate before
the eyes of our own people. We will do anything you like." "In that
case," said Italy, "we will rob; and we will go to war."

It was not merely robbery that the Italian Government intended, but
they meant from the first that it should be war--to "dish the
Socialists," to play some sordid intrigue of internal politics.

The ultimatum was launched from the center of Christendom--the city
which lodges the titular head of the Universal Church--to teach to the
Mohammedan world what may be expected from a modern Christian
Government with its back to eighteen centuries of Christian teaching.

We, Christendom, spend scores of millions--hundreds of millions, it may
be--in the propagation of the Christian faith: numberless men and women
gave their lives for it, our fathers spent two centuries in unavailing
warfare for the capture of some of its symbols. Presumably, therefore,
we attach some value to its principles, deeming them of some worth in
the defense of human society.

Or do we believe nothing of the sort? Is our real opinion that these
things at bottom don't matter--or matter so little that for the sake of
robbing the squalid belongings of a few Arab tribes, or playing some
mean game of party politics, they can be set aside in a whoop of
"patriotism"?

Our press waxes indignant in this particular case, and that is the end
of it. But we do not see that we are to blame, that it is all the
outcome of a conception of politics which we are forever ready to do
our part to defend, to do daily our part to uphold.

And those of us who try in our feeble way to protest against this
conception of politics and patriotism, where everything stands on its
head; where the large is made to appear the great, and the great is
made to appear the small, are derided as sentimentalists, Utopians. As
though anything could be more sentimental, more divorced from the sense
of reality, than the principles which lead us to a condition of things
like these; as though anything could be more wildly, burlesquely
Utopian than the idea that efforts of the kind that the Italian people
are now making, the energy they are now spending, could ever achieve
anything of worth.

Is it not time that the man in the street, verily, I believe, less
deluded by diplomatic jargon than his betters, less the slave of an
obsolete phraseology, insisted that the experts in the high places
acquired some sense of the reality of things, of proportion, some sense
of figures, a little knowledge of industrial history, of the real
processes of human cooperation?

At present Europe is quite indifferent to Italy's behavior. The
Chancelleries, which will go to enormous trouble and take enormous
risks and concoct alliances and counter-alliances when there is
territory to be seized, remain cold when crimes of this sort are
committed. And they remain cold because they believe that Turkey alone
is concerned. They do not see that Italy has attacked not Turkey, but
Europe; that we, more than Turkey, will pay the broken pots.

And there is a further reason: We still believe in these piracies; we
believe they pay and that we may get our turn at some "swag" to-morrow.
France is envied for her possession of Morocco; Germany for her
increased authority over some pestilential African swamps. But when we
realize that in these international burglaries there is no "swag," that
the whole thing is an illusion, that there are huge costs but no
reward, we shall be on the road to a better tradition, which, while it
may not give us international policing, may do better still--render the
policing unnecessary. For when we have realized that the game is not
worth the candle, when no one desires to commit aggression, the
competition in armaments will have become a bad nightmare of the past.


SIR MAX WAECHTER

It is generally admitted that the present condition of Europe is highly
unsatisfactory. To any close observer it must be evident that Europe,
as a whole, is gradually losing its position in the world. Other
nations which are rapidly coming to the front will, in course of time,
displace the European, unless the latter can pull themselves together
and abandon the vicious system which now handicaps them In the economic
rivalry of nations.

The cause of this comparative decline is, in my opinion, to be found in
the fact that all the European countries are arming against one
another, either for defense, or for aggression, for the attack is
frequently the best form of defense. The motive for these excessive
armaments can clearly be found in the jealousy and mistrust existing
among the nations of Europe. Europe is spending on armaments something
like four hundred million pounds sterling per year, and there is a
tendency to increase this tremendous expenditure. In order to bring the
magnitude of this sacrifice more vividly before the reader, let us
assume that a European war is not likely to occur more frequently than
about every thirty years. We then find that the incredible sum of
twelve thousand million pounds sterling has been spent in peace in
preparation for this war, a sum which greatly exceeds the total of all
the European state debts. Such stupendous sums can not be raised
without imposing crushing taxation, and without neglecting the other
duties of the state, such as education, scientific research, and social
reform.

One serious economic result of this heavy taxation is that European
industry is placed at a considerable disadvantage in competing with
that of other nations, notably the United States of America. The late
Mr. Atkinson, an American authority, declared that, compared with the
United States, we were handicapped to the extent of five per cent, in
our production. Since then the figures have changed considerably in
favor of America. I recently had an opportunity of discussing this
point with a great German authority on political economy, and he fixed
the advantage in favor of the United States at nearly ten per cent, as
regards the cost of production.

But this is not all. The European countries withdraw permanently four
millions of men, at their best age, from productive work, thus causing
a terrible loss and waste. Besides, enterprise in Europe is crippled by
fear of war. It may break out at any time, possibly at a few hours'
notice. The present system of Europe must inevitably lead, sooner or
later, to a European war--a catastrophe which nobody can contemplate
without horror, considering the perfected means of destruction. Such a
war would leave the vanquished utterly crushed, and the victor in such
a state of exhaustion that any foreign Power could easily impose her
will upon him.

The situation is certainly most alarming, and ought to receive the
fullest attention. What, then, can be done to save Europe from these
impending dangers? The large number of "Peace Societies" which have
been established in different countries have done excellent spade work.
Their main object has been to insure that disputes among nations should
be referred to arbitration, with a view to making more difficult their
resorting to arms. The great success of these societies demonstrates
plainly that there is a strong tendency among the peoples in favor of
peace. But no attempt has been made to reorganize the whole of Europe
on a sound basis.

The Emperor of Russia has made a most praiseworthy effort to bring
about a different state of affairs, by originating and establishing The
Hague Conference, with a view to securing by this means the peace of
the world. This conference has done excellent service, and is likely to
be of increasing usefulness to mankind in the future; but the second
meeting of the conference has amply proved that it can not succeed in
its main object, which is the peace of the world. If the idea of
bringing the whole world into unison can ever be realized, it is only
by stages, of which the union of Europe would be the first.

Let us look at the position. Germany has been for centuries the
battle-field of other states, and has narrowly escaped national
annihilation. She has now at length succeeded in consolidating her
strength so far as to be able to withstand attack from any probable
combination of two of her powerful neighbors. Can Germany now be
approached with a request to reduce her armaments, unless she is given
the most solid guaranty against attack? It would be almost an insult to
the German intelligence to make such a proposal without an adequate
guaranty.

With France the case is similar. The third Republic has been eminently
peaceful, and Frenchmen have devoted their energies and brilliant