Part 18

Up to the year when the war began, there came to our shores upwards of one million immigrants every twelve months, seeking work, and most of them homes in this country. The great bulk of them got no farther than our cities, increasing congestion, already in many cases acute, and many of them becoming in time, from one cause or another, dependents, the annual cost of their maintenance aggregating many millions every year.

With these vast acres ready for them large numbers could, under a wise system of distribution, be sent on to the great West and Southwest, and more easily and directly now since the Panama Canal is open for navigation. Allotments of these lands could be assigned them that they could in time become owners of, through a wisely established system of payments. Many of them would thereby be living lives similar to those they lived in their own countries, and for which their training and experience there have abundantly fitted them. They would thus become a far more valuable type of citizens--landowners--than they could ever possibly become otherwise, and especially through our present unorganised hit-or-miss system. They would in time also add annually hundreds of millions of productive work to the wealth of the country.

The very wise system that was inaugurated some time ago in connection with the Coast Defence arm of our army is, under the wise direction of our present Secretary of War, to be extended to all branches of the service. For some time in the Coast Artillery Service the enlisted man under competent instruction has had the privilege of becoming a skilled machinist or a skilled electrician. Now the system is to be extended through all branches of the military service, and many additional trades are to be added to the curricula of the trade schools of the army. The young man can, therefore, make his own selection and become a trained artisan at the same time that he serves his time in the army, with all expenses for such training, as well as maintenance, borne by the Government. He can thereby leave the service fully equipped for profitable employment.

This will have the tendency of calling a better class of young men into the service; it will also do away with the well-founded criticism that army life and its idleness, or partly-enforced idleness, unfits a man for useful industrial service after he quits the army. If this same system is extended through the navy, as it can be, both army and navy service will meet the American requirement--that neither military nor naval service take great numbers of men from productive employment, to be in turn supported by other workers. Instead of so much dead timber, they are all the time producing while in active service, and are being trained to be highly efficient as producers, when they leave the service.

Under this system the Federal Government can build its own ordnance works and its own munition factories and become its own maker of whatever may be required in all lines of output. We will then be able to escape the perverse influence of gain on the part of large munition industries, and the danger that comes from that portion of a military party whose motives are actuated by personal gain.

If the occasion arises, or if we permit the occasion to arise, Kruppism in America will become as dangerous and as sinister in its influences and its proportions, as it became in Germany.

Another great service that the war has done us, is by way of bringing home to us the lesson that has been so prominently brought to the front in connection with the other nations at war, namely, the necessity of the speedy and thorough mobilisation of all lines of industries and business; for the thoroughness and the efficiency with which this can be done may mean success that otherwise would result in failure and disaster. We are now awake to the tremendous importance of this.

It is at last becoming clearly understood among the peoples and the nations of the world that, as a nation, we have no desire for conquest, for territory, for empire--we have no purposes of aggression; we have quite enough to do to develop our resources and our as yet great undeveloped areas.

A few months before the war broke, I had conversations with the heads or with the representatives of leading publishing houses in several European countries. It was at a time when our Mexican situation was beginning to be very acute. I remember at that time especially, the conversation with the head of one of the largest publishing houses in Italy, in Milan. I could see plainly his scepticism when, in reply to his questions, I endeavoured to persuade him that as a nation we had no motives of conquest or of aggression in Mexico, that we were interested solely in the restoration of a representative and stable government there. And since that time, I am glad to say that our acts as a nation have all been along the line of persuading him, and also many other like-minded ones in many countries abroad, of the truth of this assertion. By this general course we have been gaining the confidence and have been cementing the friendship of practically every South American republic, our immediate neighbours on the southern continent. This has been a source of increasing economic power with us, and an element of greatly added strength, and also a tremendous energy working all the time for the preservation of peace.

One can say most confidently, even though recognising our many grave faults as a nation, that our course along this line has been such, especially of late years, as to inspire confidence on the part of all the fair-minded nations of the world.

Our theory of the state, the theory of democracy, is not that the state is above all, and that the individual and his welfare are as nothing when compared to it, but rather that the state is the agency through which the highest welfare of all its subjects is to be evolved, expressed, maintained. No other theory to my mind, is at all compatible with the intelligence of any free-thinking people.

Otherwise, there is always the danger and also the likelihood, while human nature is as it is, for some ruler, some clique, or factions so to concentrate power into their own hands, that for their own ambitions, for aggrandisement, or for false or short-sighted and half-baked ideas of additions to their country, it is dragged into periodic wars with other nations.

Nor do we share in the belief that the state is above morality, but rather that identically the same moral ideals, precepts and obligations that bind individuals must be held sacred by the state, otherwise it becomes a pirate among nations, and it will inevitably in time be hunted down and destroyed as such, however great its apparent power. Nor do we as a nation share in the belief that war is necessary and indeed good for a nation, to inspire and to preserve its manly qualities, its virility, and therefore its power. Were this the only way that this could be brought about, it might be well and good; but the price to be paid is a price that is too enormous and too frightful, and the results are too uncertain. We believe that these same ideals can be inculcated, that these same energies can be used along useful, conserving, constructive lines, rather than along lines of destruction.

A nation may have the most colossal and perfect military system in the world, and still may suffer defeat in any given while, because of those unseen things that pertain to the soul of another people, whereby powers and forces are engendered and materialised that make defeat for them impossible; and in the matter of big guns, it is well always to remember that no nation can build them so great that another nation may not build them still greater. National safety does not necessarily lie in that direction. Nor, on the other hand, along the lines of extreme pacificism--surely not as long as things are as they are. The argument of the lamb has small deterrent effect upon the wolf--as long as the wolf is a wolf. And sometimes wolves hunt in packs. The most preeminent lesson of the great war for us as a nation should be this--there should be constantly a degree of preparedness sufficient to hold until all the others, the various portions of the nation, thoroughly coordinated and ready, can be summoned into action. Thus are we prepared, thus are we safe, and there is no danger or fear of militarism.

In a democracy it should, without question, be a fundamental fact that hand in hand with equal rights there should go a sense of equal duty. A call for defence should have a universal response. So it is merely good common-sense, good judgment, if you please, for all the young men of the nation to have a training sufficient to enable them to respond effectively if the nation's safety calls them to its defence. It is no crime, however we may deprecate war, to be thus prepared.

For young men--and we must always remember that it is the young men who are called for this purpose--for young men to be called to the colours by the tens or the hundreds of thousands, unskilled and untrained, to be shot down, decimated by the thoroughly trained and skilled troops of another nation, or a combination of other nations, is indeed the crime. Never, moreover, was folly so great as that shown by him or by her who will not see. And to look at the matter without prejudice, we will realise that this is merely policing what we have. It is meeting force with adequate force, if it becomes necessary, so to meet it.

This is necessary until such time as we have in operation among nations a thoroughly established machinery whereby force will give place to reason, whereby common sense will be used in adjusting all differences between nations, as it is now used in adjusting differences between individuals.

Our period of isolation is over. We have become a world-nation. Equality of rights presupposes equality of duty. In our very souls we loathe militarism. Conquest and aggression are foreign to our spirit, and foreign to our thoughts and ambitions. But weakness will by no means assure us immunity from aggression from without. Universal military training up to a reasonable point, and the joint sense of responsibility of every man and every woman in the nation, and the right of the national government to expect and to demand that every man and woman stand ready to respond to the call to service, whatever form it may take--this is our armour.

All intelligent people know that the national government has always had the power to draft every male citizen fit for service into military service. It is not therefore a question of universal military service. The real and only question is whether these or great numbers of these go out illy prepared and equipped as sheep to the shambles perchance, or whether they go out trained and equipped to do a man's work--more adequately prepared to protect themselves as well as the integrity of the nation. It is not to be done for the love or the purpose of militarism; but recognising the fact that militarism still persists, that with us it may not be triumphant should we at any time be forced to face it. There are certain facts that only to our peril as well as our moral degradation, we can be blind to. Said a noted historian but a few days ago:

"I loathe war and militarism. I have fought them for twenty years. But I am a historian, and I know that bullies thrive best in an atmosphere of meekness. As long as this military system lasts you must discourage the mailed fist by showing that you will meet it with something harder than a boxing glove. We do not think it good to admit into the code of the twentieth century that a great national bully may still with impunity squeeze the blood out of its small neighbours and seize their goods."

We need not fear militarism arising in America as long as the fundamental principles of democracy are preserved and continually extended, which can be done only through the feeling of the individual responsibility of every man and every woman to take a keen and constant interest in the matters of their own government--community, state, national, and now international. We must realise and ever more fully realise that in a government such as ours, the people are the government, and that when in it anything goes wrong, or wrongs and injustices are allowed to grow and hold sway, we are to blame.

Universal military training has not militarised Switzerland nor has it Australia. It is rather the very essence of democracy and the very antithesis of militarism.

"Let each son of Freedom bear His portion of the burden. Should not each one do his share? To sacrifice the splendid few-- The strong of heart, the brave, the true, Who live--or die--as heroes do, While cowards profit--is not fair!"

Many still recall that not a few well-meaning people at the close of the Civil War proclaimed that, with upwards of two million trained men behind him, General Grant would become a military dictator, and that this would be followed by the disappearance of democracy in the nation. But the mind, the temper, the traditions of our people are all a guarantee against militarism. The gospel, the hallucination of the shining armour, the will to power, has no attraction for us. We loathe it; nor do we fear its undermining and crushing our own liberties internally. Nevertheless, it is true that vigilance is always and always will be the price of liberty. There must be a constant education towards citizenship. There must be an alert democracy, so that any land and sea force is always the servant of the spirit; for only otherwise it can become its master--but otherwise it will become its master.

XIII

OUR SOLE AGENCY OF INTERNATIONAL PEACE, AND INTERNATIONAL CONCORD

The consensus of intelligent thought throughout the world is to the effect that just as we have established an orderly method for the settlement of disputes between individuals or groups of individuals in any particular nation, we must now move forward and establish such methods for the settlement of disputes among nations. There is no civilised country in the world that any longer permits the individual to take the law into his own hands.

The intelligent thought of the world now demands the definite establishment of a World Federation for the enforcement of peace among nations. It demands likewise the definite establishment of a permanent World Court, backed by adequate force for the arbitrament of all disputes among nations--unable to be adjusted by the nations themselves in friendly conference. We have now reached the stage in world development and in world intercourse where peace must be internationalised. Our present chaotic condition, which exists simply because we haven't taken time as yet to establish a method, must be made to give place to an intelligently devised system of law and order. Anything short of this means a periodic destruction of the finest fruits of civilisation. It means also the periodic destruction of the finest young manhood of the world. This means, in turn, the speedy degeneration of the human race. The deification of force, augmented by all the products and engines of modern science, is simply the way of sublimated savagery.