and its affairs when the will-to-peace in the industrial nations, the nations to which power is given, crystallizes and acts along lines which will prevent war from getting away with anything. "Facts differ incredibly from all theories," said a witty Frenchman, indulging in a bit of exaggeration for the sake of a clear-cut phrase. Let us take the hint, however, and see what we have in the way of commonly accepted facts. Certain methods of human competition have been suppressed by the opposition they have brought down upon themselves; slavery, for instance, and the more flagrant forms of dishonesty in private dealings. For some time past, the suppressive opposition to these methods has far outbalanced any possible gains that might be derived from them. War, of course, is but one method of international competition. It is resorted to when a nation determines to impose its will upon another in order to gain some political end, worthy or unworthy, which cannot be gained by peaceful methods. There is no other conceivable motive for a resort to arms save defense, and defense is only reaction to attack. It is also evident that people make war with the idea of winning it. Now the problem of winning a war has been studied by many men in many lands for many centuries. Their accumulated experience establishes the fact that to win one must strike out, must possess oneself of enemy forces or nerve centres or bases of supply, must break down enemy resistance by aggressive action. The wars that are won by staying at home and fighting only on the defensive are in reality only failures of the offensive, victories of attrition. To the present generation it must be equally clear that modern war is vulnerable because attrition now tears into the vitals of warring nations to an unprecedented degree. Witness Germany, Austria and Russia. It is therefore safe to say that we can count on these facts: That certain methods of human competition have been suppressed, that international war is made to gain a political end, that aggressive action is necessary to win the war and so to gain the end, and that attrition cuts into modern war power very heavily. Add to these facts a supposition: Suppose a group of industrial nations (which means potentially powerful military nations) determines that no war in which any one of them may be involved as a belligerent shall result in the gain of any political end whatever. Is it not evident that such a war could be suppressed by that group of nations, taking advantage of the fact that modern war is vulnerable because of attrition? They would have only to use their power to block or cripple any major offensive by either belligerent, and so prevent either side from winning and holding a dominant position which would enable it to impose its will and gain its end. Attrition would do the rest. The discouraging effect on war would be enormous and accumulative. Is it not, in fact, rather more evident that, under this supposition, such a war would rarely if ever occur, simply because of the evident impossibility of gaining the end which might justify the war? Now let us test this theory of war suppression against the outstanding facts of the World War. The old fires of conquest broke out in Central Europe in 1914. (Again I use "conquest" in the only sense that expresses its full meaning-the imposition by war of political will upon foreign people.) That conquest was nullified, that imposition of will frustrated by a gradual accumulation of superior military power. We attained the great aim for which we fought. We smothered those fires of conquest. That fact stands-will stand for all time. But we can never look at it without seeing the other side of the shield. But we We suppressed a flagrant, violent outbreak of war. did it at an appalling cost: millions of lives, billions of treasure, demoralization and devastation such as our civilization had never known. For years the struggle went on under no one directive head. For years there was no intelligent coöperative planning, not even in the elementary matter of supply. Russia, brittle and inapt, collapsed completely. Belgium, Serbia and Roumania were consumed by the fires while their more powerful allies stood by almost helpless. And to cap it all, when the end came it found us as unprepared to deal with peace as we had been to deal with war. We had great need to secure the world against another such outbreak, and good reason to punish the guilty; but under the cloak of security or of justifiable punishment we scrambled among ourselves for political and commercial aggrandizement, and imposed our will-to-profit by the right of the conqueror. On harrowed fields we found no better seed to sow than dragon's teeth. What possible conclusion can one draw from such facts as these, other than that war can be suppressed because it has been suppressed, that haphazard, unprepared methods of war-suppression lead to monstrous loss and waste, and that war-suppression which ends in great political and economic advantages being won by the suppressing powers will but lead to future wars? Certainly we cannot infer from the glaring facts of the World War that, in some miraculous way, man may be counted on to improve his manners in the future. Theories of pacifism we had aplenty before 1914, excellent plans of arbitration, conciliation, agreement; but we cannot, by any stretch of sophistry, make these altruistic and beneficent theories square with the facts of our own times. "Respect facts," wrote Lord Bryce, himself a somewhat disillusionized altruist in the mature wisdom of his eighty years. "Man is in each country not what we may wish him to be, but what Nature and History have made him." Well, the undeniable fact of all history is that man has intermittently, but with remarkable persistency, lusted for conquest and gone forth to war. No logic nor ethics nor religions have curbed him. By force alone we have recently put down a war outbreak on a great scale-blunderingly, wastefully, but still we have done it. Respecting facts, can we fail to draw the obvious conclusion? Altruism is unquestionably a great force for good. But in the present stage of civilization it can no more suppress a war than a Carnegie Library can quell a street riot. Again respecting facts, can we avoid the conclusion that we must devise war-suppressing methods of the future less costly than those we used in 1914-18? The victors in that struggle were also the victims; terribly mangled victims, some of them. If the attrition of modern war may make conquest prohibitively costly, it may also present a staggering bill to those who would suppress conquest. That bill can be reduced only by intelligent coöperation. Hard, cold facts point to the colossal waste and ruin which fall to the lot of those who blunderingly use the highly explosive forces of to-day. Since we must use force, let us use it intelligently; let us have our plans prepared beforehand; above all, let it be known beforehand that we will use it, if necessary, to suppress war. Crippled, demoralized, penniless, the nations are now struggling to their feet and asking themselves how the great cataclysm through which they have just passed can be avoided in the future. What is the answer? What would have been the answer in 1914 had a group of strong, industrial nations been prepared to deal with a violent outbreak of war; prepared in the measure, say, of their preparedness to cope with an outbreak of fire in one of their great cities? What would have been the answer had they been prepared for immediate, concerted action; prepared and determined to see to it that no possible gain could be had by conquest? With the possibility of conquest reduced to a minimum, with the certainty of an intelligent and (if necessary) a prolonged opposition before them, with the modern cost of war attrition staring them in the face, can it be conceived that men would have deliberately lit the firebrands of conquest and chosen war as a means to political gain or domination? Brave men will fight desperately in defense of their homes. In that splendid spirit the germ of war does not lie. It lies simply and wholly in the human instinct for domination, for conquest. If we would rid the world of war, we must have our international organization for war suppression prepared beforehand, and backed by the determination that there shall be no conquest. By the obvious manifestation of that determination we may cut the heart out of war. SHERMAN MILES. THE LEAVES: AN ECLOGUE BY STARK YOUNG (A wood of pine trees, with birches and undergrowth. In the woods far and near, and now and then, the sounds of strings plucked, and of sifting leaves in the wind; at length a shepherd's pipe approaching and very faintly in the wood other pipe notes. The young shepherd enters, followed by a herdsman.) Herdsman: Shepherd, why are you sad? I hear your music sometimes in the trees, I mark your wandering feet, They are grown slow, your trails are dull, I know of paths more sweet, But yet you follow these. Shepherd: May not the sad be sweet and the foul fair? Herdsman: Why do you go up and down the world Packing your golden sorrow everywhere; Shepherd: If it be so I can but say it, Herdsman: If thou art sad I know of one that loves thee, |