THE P8YCH0L00Y OF WAR 575
Six months ago we talked only of defending our coast. Now we are talking of defending the weak brother and protecting our honor. There is not a man in public life who could not go out and shoot some one down on the grounds of an offended honor. All of the warring powers are sincere in believing that they are fighting for justice, honor and self-preservation.
A congressman said to me the other day: ^^How are we going to defend ourselves when Germany has guns that shoot eighteen miles ?^^ I said : *^ Suppose we make guns that shoot twenty miles, and she makes guns that shoot thirty miles. Suppose we build ten battleships and she builds as many, are we any better off? Does it not simply mean greater certainty of war and greater destruction when it comes ? How is any one nation to know that she is the best prepared? If she did know that, how is she to know what combinations will be made against her? Must we not always expect the weaker ones to combine against the stronger ones? Alas, the politicians will see none of these things. They are trusting to chance to modify events in the future. They look on at the military conditions in Germany with bitter criticism, but they can never be made to see that the gradual growth of militarism in this country can produce similar strong sentiments for war. They do not see that the very democracy on which they rely to save us from the destiny of other nations owes its perpetuation largely to its freedom from militarism.
They will not listen to such sound psychological advice as President Butler, of Columbia University, was reported as giving in the New York Times for October 18, 1914. He says:
It is not each nation 's desire for national expression which makes peace im- possible; it is the fact that thns far in the world's history such desire has been bound up with miUtarism.
The nation whose frontier bristles with bayonets and with forts is like the individual with a magaadne pistol in his pocket. Both make for murder. Both in their hearts really mean murder.
The world wiU be better when the nations invite the judgment of their neighbors and are influenced by it.
If war was such a psychological necessity in the evolution of man, why is it not so still? When the whole male population constituted the army, the weak, feeble and cowardly were the ones weeded out. Modern militarism has exactly reversed this process. Our wars leave the race to be replenished from the most unfit. In past times one race or tribe either annihilated or made slaves of the weaker race. Baces are no longer exterminated or enslaved. Modern methods of warfare make war absolutely impoverishing to all parties, even to the victors. Suppose the Japs diould want to take from us the Hawaiian Islands. How many lives and how much money are they worth? Are they worth a single battleship with a thousand soldiers that may go down
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