1910, the essay already quoted, "The Moral Equivalent of War." The idea there set forth had been clearly anticipated fifteen years bofore by Charles Ferguson in his pamphlet on "The Economics of Devotion." 2 The essence of the idea seems to be that militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and that human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. James says that the war party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods. He adds that "without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its superiority."3 The world can ill afford to lose these qualities and characteristics. The new-born hope is that we may be able to switch this belt of moral power from the destructive machinery of war to the productive machinery of art and industry and civilisation.

Nor does war make men brave. War has no

1" The Moral Equivalent of War" was written for and published by the American Association for International Conciliation in 1910.

2 Published in 1895.

3 Memories and Studies, pp. 277, 288.

more power to make heroes than industry has power to manufacture saints. Clearly, what war does is to bring out the potential courage (or cowardice) of men. It reveals men for what they are, as the lightning reveals the stout heart of the oak — or its rotten core. War, just because of its irresistible appeal to the imaginations of men, helps us to "become what we are."1 Deeds of courage and heroism are particular types of idealistic action, and it is with them as it is with the other forms of idealism referred to in the previous section they are stimulated by the excitement of war. There can be no doubt that there is in war an extraordinary power of exaltation that calls forth the finest faculties of the soul. But that is not unusual. Danger always does this in the common walks of ordinary life. All that is wanted is the stimulus of imperative demand. When the Titanic went down off the coast of Newfoundland heroism was so universal as to be almost commonplace. When San Francisco lay torn and bruised and bleeding, everybody wore the red badge of courage.

But even if it were true that war stimulated only the virtues of valour, inspired no emotions less noble than generous heroism, that would not be a suffi

1 Pindar.

cient reason for perpetuating it as a desirable institution. Poverty sometimes acts upon the human

So also does disease

We do not therefore

spirit in much the same way. and every form of suffering. argue that misery, injustice, disease and distress should be permanently endowed because the mar tyrs of maladjustment sometimes become devout saints. When a stimulant turns out to be a deleterious intoxicant it is the part of wisdom to find some substitute less harmful.

CHAPTER XIV

EARTHQUAKES OR AVALANCHES?

THE second article in the creed of militarism says that War is Inevitable; in a word, Fatalism. And why? Because, forsooth, civilisation is only skindeep and progress is an illusion. "Man," writes Major-General J. P. Story,1 "in his evolution from primitive savagery has followed laws as immutable as the law of gravitation. . . . A few idealists may have visions that, with advancing civilisation, war and its dreadful horrors will cease. Civilisation has not changed human nature. The nature of man makes war inevitable. Armed strife will not disappear from the earth until after human nature changes."

But is the notion of progress a great illusion, a vital lie? Is the world getting worse instead of better? 2 Can we move only in circles and cycles? Must history forever repeat itself? Is hope but the mother of regret and faith the child of folly? Is the progress of the nations only as a lizard that

1 In an Introduction to Homer Lea's Valor of Ignorance.

2 Edward Alsworth Ross, Latter Day Saints and Sinners.

scales the wall to find a place in the sun and then slip back again? Is the advance of the race but as the advance of the waves of the sea, that soon recede only to leave behind them the wetted sands of our disappointment? Is the rise of mankind like the rise of the tides of the ocean to full flood, only to be followed again by ebb-tide? When we think we are getting ahead are we merely going round and round with endless political, social, and industrial revolutions till dizzy with despair? Is it not more reasonable to suppose that when we go round we also ascend as one who climbs a circular staircase? Is not the escalator a fitting symbol of social progress? Or, in believing this, are we but hardened optimists, incorrigible idealists? For we must not forget that there is a "well-nigh universal persuasion that Progress accomplishes itself, that a benignant Fate drags the nations forward in an ascending scale, by the mere irresistible drift of elemental and evolutionary forces-without need of any intervention of human virtue or human will." 1 But this common notion that evolution means social advance and that there is some law of nature that insures progress, quite irrespective of education or selection, is wholly without war

1 Charles Ferguson.