THE recommendations of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Daniels and the persistent agitation of Mr. Gardner have at length brought forth fruit in the fairly progressive programme of armament that Congress finally authorized. The general discussion of these measures was singularly trite. On the one hand we had a recrudescence of the doctrine that military efficiency is a sound guaranty of peace the doctrine of the Big Stick, with which Mr. Roosevelt's years of outpouring have made us more or less familiar. The peace advocates pointed out in rebuttal that in Europe an unparalleled military efficiency has been no guaranty of peace, but, on the contrary, the most highly specialized military establishment in the world has turned out to be nothing but an appalling instrument of organized selfishness and thuggery. Then, with this as a text, they redoubled their excellent discourse: Mr. Jordan, for instance, insisting that war is illogical and brutal; Mr. Babson tabulating its economic waste; and Mr. Carnegie praising the principle of arbitration and an international police.

Mr. Garrison and Mr. Daniels are politicians, and so, par excellence, is Mr. Gardner. They have a special point of view,

interesting possibly, but quite well understood, and, at all events, not especially pertinent here. The peace advocates also have a special point of view which is not so well understood. It is that of the rationalist philosopher or propagandist, which assumes that men are governed chiefly, or at least much more than actually they are, by

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reason and logic. The peace advocates are notably disposed to rest their case with proving that war is irrational, illogical, horrible, and costly; and they appear to think it quite enough to do that, in order to make us all forsake war and militarism forthwith, and create a better method of composing our differences.

But, really, men are very little governed by reason and logic; and this accounts for the fact that in an issue between the philosopher and politician, the politician always wins. He may, nay, invariably does, have a worse case: but he quite regularly carries it, because he knows how men act and how they may be induced to act. He must know, for otherwise he could not be a politician; this instinctive knowledge is the primary essential qualification for his squalid trade. As between war and peace, for instance, or between 'military preparedness' and disarmament, the peace advocates have all the best of it; there is no answering their arguments, no meeting their representations. From the standpoint of reason and logic, therefore, nothing could be more simply silly than the recommendations of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Daniels, nothing more vicious than the activity of Mr. Gardner. But, I repeat, men are not governed by reason and logic, and hence my purpose in writing is to lodge a humble remonstrance with the peace advocates, begging them to believe that in their sheer dependence upon these they are leaning on a broken reed.

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The matter and the time demand plain speech, at any risk of presumption. The peace advocates will therefore forgive me if I say that their efforts against war have always been canceled and nullified because they either do not see, or do not sufficiently consider, how the idea of war presents itself to the common man. The politician sees this plainly; his reaction to it is as instinctive as to the letters of the alphabet; but if long and careful observation of their labors is to be trusted, the peace advocates do not see it or react to it at all. For example, only the other day I attended the organization-meeting of the new Anti-Armament Society, and of the hundred or more present not one, except Commissioner Howe, Benjamin Marsh, and myself, could be presumed to have the faintest idea of war's appeal to the common man. An exception ought possibly to be made for the Reverend Mr. Grant, but of this I am by no means sure.

The fact is that, on account of the auspices and sanctions under which war is presented to him, the common man concerns himself very little with its justification in either reason or morals. 'His not to reason why'; he finds no trouble about rolling all this burden of ethical responsibility off on the shoulders of some Kaiser, Parliament, or Congress, or of some Mr. Garrison or Mr. Daniels. A 'popular war,' such as Germany is at present waging, is evidence of the astonishing reach of this purblind trust and derived morality. It is by another side entirely, by the side of interest, that war makes its chief appeal for the common man's suffrage. War and peace are simply two great rival enterprises, standing in competition for the personal interest of the potential recruit; and in the determination of this interest the factors of logic, abstract reason, and abstract morals are extremely insignificant and weak.

as we

As soon as we appreciate may by the very slightest exercise of observation-the fact that war makes no great bid for the approval of the common man's reason or conscience, but bids very high for his interest, we immediately perceive the substantial ground of competition between war and peace, and are able to suggest to the peace advocates a most important and wholly positive line of approach to their problem.

If war has always outbid peace for the common man's suffrage, clearly it must have succeeded in making itself more interesting; and on examination, that is precisely what we find it has done. We may dismiss consideration of its appeal to the 'primeval man,' to the supposititious fund of savagery that is thought to lurk beneath the veneer of civilization in each of us; analysis will show that this appeal amounts to almost nothing. But war addresses some of the best permanent instincts of mankind, addresses them powerfully and shrewdly; and they are the very instincts that have been most continuously baffled and denied by peace.

Foremost, perhaps, among these is the instinct for equality. War has invariably served and promoted this instinct, and peace has invariably disserved and disallowed it. I was in New York at the outbreak of the Spanish War, and curiosity led me to mingle with a number of young men whom I saw in the neighborhood of Union Square, coming forward to enlist. I noticed that, while some of them appeared to be of the class that lives by casual labor, and might not unfairly be regarded as waifs and strays, many came out of shops and stores and small factories, where they might be supposed to get some sort of daily bread. I wondered why they were all so eager to enlist. They did not seem moved by the lust of blood, nor yet, strictly speaking,

by the quest of adventure. They were not of the high-spirited type, but on the contrary very miserable. Patriotism did not enlist them, for none of them really knew much about the war or seemed to care greatly. I asked a number of questions and presently got their point of view. They saw war as the great equalizer of opportunity. It was for each of them the one great chance in a disinherited life; it was their emergence into responsibility, their opportunity to be per se 'as good as anybody.' Peace had kept them under the dragging handicap of artificial distinction and artificial privilege; war came, and offered them a start at scratch. When they were once enlisted, the stigma of the dullard, the ne'er-do-well or the unclean starveling was wiped away; they had everybody's chance to prove themselves anybody's equal. They coveted the exhilaration of standing for the first time on their own, shoulder to shoulder with their fellows, doing their share and getting their share of everything that was going.

It's 'Tommy' this and Tommy' that, and 'Chuck 'im out, the brute!' But it's 'Saviour of 'is country' when the guns begin to shoot.

This powerful longing for equality and for the joys of equality is undoubtedly one of the strongest impulses that carry men away from peace and into war. The very institutions of war are a moving allegory and symbol of their wish. The regimentation, the marching, the parade, the drill! - here are men with their individuality fully expanded and preserved, yet each with his primary thought continually reaching beyond himself, each consciously responsible for the perfection of alignment toward a common purpose. The little boy paid our nature's instinctive tribute to equality when he asked his mother, 'Why is it that when I hear soldiers' music I feel so much happier

than I really am?' We all feel that. Martial music forecasts upon our emotions a prophetic picture of human society as we shall one day come to know it; a society whose rhythm and harmony of progress shall reach and animate every one throughout the ranks and make inspiration a common property.

Another immeasurable advantage which war has over peace in competing for the common man's interest, is in its appeal to the sense of purpose. The purpose of war always stands out clear and cogent. There is the enemy massed on the frontier. We know what he means to do; his intention is definite. We are massed to meet him with an intention equally definite. War has its perils and its horrors; but the first glad sense of great definite purpose dawning into stagnant and unillumined lives is sufficient to set them at naught. The conditions of war, terrible as they are, interpret themselves to the common man's satisfaction. They give account of themselves in terms of distinct purpose; and of purpose which with little pressure he inclines to accept, and in accepting it, to accept without complaint the hard conditions of its fulfillment.

But the blight of peace is its aimlessness. Peace, too, has its perils and horrors, and gives no clear sense of what they are for. There is no great unmistakable vision of purpose to suffuse its miseries and mitigate its pains of progress. Its intentions do not stand clear before our minds, shedding their interpretative light upon its immediate conditions. A friend told me lately about an experience he had in Chicago last summer, when the city was sweltering under an unusually long spell of torrid heat. On a Sunday morning he took a train, which he found filled with factory hands going out for a breath of such air as they could get. He over

heard a girl of seventeen telling her escort that in the factory, the day before, five girls had fainted at their work; two, dazed by the heat, had their hands drawn into machines and lost their fingers; and a man, suddenly overcome, fell into some heavy machinery and was killed.

The story is in itself not extraordinary; what my friend chiefly remarked was the girl's unmoved, matter-of-fact way of telling it. She spoke of these frightful happenings as if expecting her listeners to accept them without any waste of emotion, as simply so much in the day's work.

Now when peace imposes conditions like these and induces this mental attitude toward them, good heavens! can one wonder at the chance it stands in competition with war? Does the light of high collective purpose play clearly upon the average life lived on those terms? I urge the peace advocates to ask themselves this question; not in the mind of the reflective philosopher balancing abstract values, but in the mind of the common man confronting a practical choice in interest for him between two competing enterprises. When the United States goes to war, we will not be left in doubt about its high and holy purpose; Mr. Garrison and Mr. Daniels will attend to that. Mr. Gardner may be relied on to expound it; Mr. Hobson, Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. William Randolph Hearst will proclaim it, instant in season and out of season. But the conditions of peace are left without an interpreter. Mr. Carnegie does not interpret them for us; Mr. Butler, Mr. Holt, Mr. Eliot, Mr. David Starr Jordan, Mr. Villard, Mr. George Foster Peabody, representing everything that is influential, distinguished, accomplished, do not interpret them for us. They are left to interpret themselves only in the narrow individualist terms of holding a job, getting a living,

or, perchance, keeping a family together. Above this, no august and compelling collective purpose stands out; our society, as the common man sees it, is otherwise aimless; and such as this has never been and never will be the dominating motive in human conduct. It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.

A third instinct, preeminently satisfied by war and notoriously dissatisfied by peace, is the instinct for responsibility. Such as they are, war insists upon its ideals, its standards, even its amenities, with a stringency that admits no hint of favor or exception. Those upon whom war has conferred its peculiar regards must walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they are called. The rewards themselves set the mark of definite expectation, and the expectation must be strictly met. The soldier may not be idle; he may not be lazy, trivial, self-centred, untrustworthy, irresponsible, traitorous, disloyal. If a leader, he must lead; he may not shirk or malinger or dissipate his powers. If he fails, he is superseded; he has but one chance. The code of 'an officer and a gentleman' may be conventional and specific, no doubt it is, for all codes are; but it is inexorable. Noblesse oblige has always been graven on the sword and spear.

But never on the ploughshare and pruning-hook. Peace makes no such formal demands upon those whom she rewards or distinguishes. Those who receive her best gifts may use them with a scandalously loose discretion, and she remains complacent. Does peace forthwith degrade the captain of industry who exercises a treasonable oppression upon the persons and the social forces he controls? Does peace cashier the rich man's heir or heiress who does not serve society, does not do any work, does not do anything but seek pleasure? Does peace summarily

court-martial the man of trained ability who capitalizes his powers and who then withholds them from the common welfare? War would give but very short shrift to such flagrant irreponsibility as this.

By this time I hope I have made it clear that the appeal of war to the common man is something far different from what the peace advocates appear to think it is. Nowhere, speaking broadly, does the common man enlist because he loves war, but because he hates peace. The conditions which peace forces on him make him regard it as something to be broken with at the first attractive opportunity. The skillful politician knows this and counts on it. Not for nothing have the aristocratic modes of government always had the instinct to 'keep their people down.' The more drab and unrelieved the conditions of peace, the more gladly will the common man escape them; and while he may escape them momentarily by the anodyne of drink, gambling, or commercial amusement, the only escape that carries a substantial interest for him is by war.

How disappointing, therefore, how purely negative and ineffectual, are the despondent antiphons of the peace advocates, as they tell us of the horrors of war and the economic waste of war! This is not what will do any good. The long-distance recital of horrors makes no impression upon minds quite accustomed to actual horrors, and the disinherited are indifferent to pleas against economic waste. Let the peace advocates hereafter make a clean sweep of this kind of thing, I entreat them. Let them for once come over to the common man's point of view, and they will forthwith perceive what a waste of energy it is. I urge them for once to see war as we see it, if merely for the sake of giving their efforts a better direction. At the risk of indelicacy, I personally impor

tune my friends, Mr. Villard and Mr. Peabody, for once to consider war, not as no doubt it really is, but as it is for us. Peace is very interesting to Mr. Carnegie and Bishop Greer and Mr. Mead; there is every reason why it should be so. Peace promotes the philosophical detachment that is so agreeable and becoming to Mr. Eliot. Probably these gentlemen will find it very hard to understand how peace can ever fail to interest us, when it interests them so deeply. But I beg them to make the effort, and I offer the foregoing for their guidance to our point of view. To us whom peace disinherits, war offers equality; to us whom peace compels to live aimlessly, war offers a clear and moving purpose; and to the finer sensibilities that peace disregards and benumbs, war offers gratification and refreshment. What irony it is, that even the Kaiser must depend upon the restless urge toward democracy to fill his ranks!

As soon as one takes this point of view, one sees that the function of the true peace advocate is not to deplore war but to help make peace interesting; to create a peace that shall meet war on its own terms and outbid it; a peace that shall answer these normal and proper demands of the human spirit at least as well as war now answers them. When peace interests the rank and file of us as it now interests Mr. Holt and Mr. Villard, we, too, will be quite proof against the seductions of war. War will then lose its power of attraction; it will be merely one of the things that one looks at and passes by. We will then no longer go to war, because we shall have no time; we shall be entirely preoccupied with the institutions of peace. When Mr. Roosevelt talks about the peril of disarmament, we will not hear. When Mr. Garrison and Mr. Daniels call us to arms, we will not heed, at most, having Mr. Bernard Shaw's

or