^^iiiiii^ ffiiilKiilitoi (HmmW Uttirmitg Jikatg THE GIFT OF Pno^yah^^.&.XWnru kz,io fafoS - ■ to\y^\X Cornell University Library JX 1953.J82 War and waste; a series of discussions of 3 1924 007 379 633 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924007379633 WAR AND WASTE WAR AND WASTE A Series of Discussions OF War and War Accessories By DAVID STARR JORDAN " / confess mikout shame that I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success, the most brilliant, is over dead and mangled bodies, the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for missing sons, husbands, and fathers. It is only those who hose not heard a shot, nor the shrieks and groans of the mounded, friend or foe, aho cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation." General Williau T. Sherman (i865). Garden City New York DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1913 Copyright, 1912, 1913, fry DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COUPANY All rightt reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian COPniGHT, 191 9, BY THZ IHDIFEMDENT WZXKXY, INCOKFOtATED coryiiCHT. 1919, BY TBI roFCLAK scuhcz iiomHiY TO THE MEMORY OF SIR CHARLES BAGOT AND OF RICHARD RUSH patriots of a hundred years ago, who excluded warships from the Great Lakes of America, and thus secured lasting peace between two great nations. Where there are no soldiers there is no war; when nobody is loaded, nobody explodes. PREFATORY NOTE This volume contains a series of addresses, essays and editorials having the purpose of opposition to war, to war scares, and to war accessories in general. The address, "War and Waste," was delivered at the Harvard Union in 191 1. The four essays which follow are reprinted from the World's Work with the consent of the editor. The editorials, "What Shall We Say?" have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Independent, and journals at home and abroad. D. S. J. Stanford University, California. June 20, 1913. rll CONTENTS cBAras ttes I. War and Waste 3 II. Foreclosing the Mortgage on War 41 III. The Perennial Bogey of War . 52 IV. Taxing the Cost of Living 70 V. The Interlocking Directorate . 97 VI. The Higher Politics 105 VII. Naval Waste "3 VIII. Japan and The United States 136 IX. The Federation of Europe 152 X. What Shall We Say? . 162 I. Peace and the Balkans . 162 II. Shall the Turk Go? . i6s III. Why the Turk Fails . 167 IV. The Fate of Armenia . 170 V. The Great War of Europe . 173 VI. Twenty-five Thousand at Pan- ■ 179 ama VII. The Canal and Its Enemies . 181 VIII. "Our Ships" and Our Money ' 183 IX. The Open Door at Panai na . 186 X CONTENTS CHAPTER '*<* X. What Shall We Say? — Continued. X. Which Ship Goes First? . 187 XI. The Monroe Doctrine . . 189 XII. The Size of the Navy. . I93 XIII. At the Drop of the Hat . .197 XIV. The Unready Navy . . 201 XV. Military Conscription . 206 XVI. The Abolition of Piracy . 210 XVII. Entangling Alliances . .212 XVIII. The Pest of Glory . . 215 XIX. The Force of Arms . . 223 XX. The Fighting Edge . . 225 XXI. The Net of the Usurer . 229 XXII. The Fertile Dreadnaught . 231 XXIII. The Ships and the Tension 235 XXIV. Fort Graft . . .239 XXV. The Dream of Universal War 240 XXVI. The Defense of the Pacific . 244 XXVII. Pearl Harbor . . .251 XXVIII. Magdalena Bay . . . 254 XXIX. The Samoan Precedent . 260 XXX. Japanese Immigration . . 261 .XXXI. Anti-alien Legislation in Cali- fornia . . . 264 CONTENTS xi rHA?TEIt PAOB X. What Shall We Say? — Continued. XXXII. The Race Problems of America 268 XXXIII. Who Is the Enemy? . 272 XXXIV. The Six-power Loan to China 277 XXXV. The Old-Age Pension . 279 XXXVI. Popularize the Navy . 283 XXXVII. The American Peace Policy . 28s XXXVIII. What is Peace? . 288 Appendix 291 WAR AND WASTE CHAPTER I WAR AND WASTE THE movement of civilization is toward a new conception of the State, not as a "power," but as a centre of jurisdiction. Its main function is not as in medieval times to exercise force beyond its borders, or to bring unwilling peoples under its sway, but rather to maintain peace and justice within its limits, other states having outside its boundaries the same function exercised in a similar way. The Canadian boundary marks the northern limit of the jurisdiction of the United States, and the beginning of precisely similar jurisdiction on the part of Canada. It is not a line of battle, and a citizen of either nation can travel in the other or even per- manently establish himself there without loss of comfort or rights. The railways of one nation freely traverse the other when necessity arises, and the relative size or "power" of the two nations in no way affects these conditions. Viewed as a "power" in the medieval sense, Germany, for example, is crowded and hampered on 4 WAR AND WASTE every side. She is largely shut off from the sea on the one side, from the Orient on the other. Millions of people of German blood are cut off by the boun- daries, becoming citizens of Austria or Switzerland, instead of Germany. Her boundaries north, east, and west are marked by giant fortresses and scarred by old wars, while of oversea dependencies, the glory and the cost of modern empire, nearly all worth having were preempted before the modern Empire of Germany was born. Even the German Rhine is German for its middle part only, and of the Danube, the navigable part begins where Germany leaves off. But considered as a modern state, Germany suffers nothing from these limitations. Her power is quite as adequate to look after the welfare of her people as though no limitations existed. Her universities are just as great, her factories as busy, her people as prosperous as though the whole land from the Bosphorus to the British Channel were under the German flag. Her people, when passing the bord- ers outside the German jurisdiction, find no lack of justice, no [increase of taxation. The flag of civilization'floats over all. Considered as a "power," the great State of Illinois, one tenth as populous as Germany, is hampered in a similar way. She reaches neither sea nor mountains, and her navigable rivers are WAR AND WASTE s shared with a dozen other states. But no citizen of Illinois ever felt himself cramped by these misfor- tunes. Illinois is a modern state, a region of juris- diction and not a "power," or centre [of military- force. Similarly, Germany, England, France, the United States, as civilization progresses, must cease to be "powers" to become part of the organized civili- zation of the earth. When each state accepts this attitude, becoming the representative of its people and trusting other states in like fashion, we shall realize the ideals of international peace. These ideals are not realized in the conditions of peace in Europe to-day. These conditions have been defined as " bankruptcy armed to the teeth, " which, as Gam- betta once said, shall find Its final climax in "a beggar sitting by a barrack door. " International peace means mutual respect and mutual trust, a condition in which the boundary line between states Is not a line of suspicion and hate, but, like the boundaries of provinces, a convenience in judicial and administrative adjustments. Such a boundary as this is found In the four-thousand-mile line which separates Canada from the United States, an undefended border which for nearly a hundred years has not known a fortress nor a warship nor a 6 WAR AND WASTE gun. There Is nothing of which the two great North American nations have a greater right to be proud than this boundary of trust and confidence. It is the beginning of the new era, the era of justice and peace among the nations. The end of our efforts is found in the conception of peace through law. A natural law is the expression of the way in which things normally come about. Human law is the expression of the best relations among men. In war, the conceptions of right and duty disappear. In arms, the laws are silent. Worse ways of doing things take the place of better, to the detriment of society and of the individual man. The whole movement of civilization has been from strife toward order. In barbarism, every man's hand is against every other. In barbarism, the life of every man and woman is a tragedy. As man has risen cooperation has taken the place of compulsion. Men have brought peace to their families and their neighbourhoods by working together to exclude war. They have learned more and more to leave their differences to the decision of others, either through arbitral settlement or judicial decision. The one brings about a condition of mutual tolerance; the other strives toward ideal justice. And in the world of to-day both methods find their centre in the councils and tribunals at The Hague. WAR AND WASTE 7 In such fashion, step by step, men have passed ' from tribal wars, municipal wars, struggles of robber barons, and of rival dynasties, marauding expedi- tions, holy wars and wars unholy, to relative peace within the borders of the nation. The only place where killing on a large scale is legalized is on the line where great nations meet. Along these borders to-day the most crushing burdens of war machinery the world has ever imagined are steadily 1 piling up. All this is avowedly in the interest of final peace, of "peace by preponderance," the peace of dread and dreadnaughts, the peace which is the twin sister of war, and the greater the "peace estab- lishments" thus built up, the more frequent are the war scares and the more insistent the danger of actual war. The chief purpose of national existence is to en- sure local peace. Its extension defines a limit in which peace shall exist. This does not inhibit riots, violence, or civil wars, because no one can guarantee that a nation shall be just within its own jurisdiction, nor that a people shall be docile and law-abiding, even when fairly treated by those in authority. But the tendencies of national development make fcfr national peace. The growth of popular government\ makes everywhere for better understanding among men, and groups of men who know each other recog- 8 WAR AND WASTE K, nize their common humanity and common interests as far outweighing their desire for fight. Along the international borders, or at times the boundaries of races, ill-feeling and violence are most likely to appear. Across these same borders a thousand emissaries for good are also passing, from day to day. The missionary has been a powerful agency for peace. So, likewise, is the commercial traveller, the board of trade, the international com- mission, the world congress, and all other agencies for bringing men together on the basis of common interest and common trust. The world over, men engaged in similar work, though in different nations, have more In common than the men of the different groups within a single nation. The steady extension of unification in international life is a guarantee that international war among civilized nations has already come to an end. The old impulses for international war have passed away. The dream of a unified church and a unified state, including all Christendom, and both held together by force, no longer exists. The Holy Roman Empire Is only a memory. The marauding nation, which lives on the spoils of its neighbours, has not been possible for a hundred years. No war can bring financial, social, or political gain to any nation, as the world goes to-day. No leader can congratulate his WAR AND WASTE 9 army as did Napoleon, after Mantua, on its amount above expenses it has sent home to its national treasury. This idea of profit through war, dominant so long, has been lately characterized as "the Great Illusion. " Even the control by force of half- barbarous states is a matter of tremendous expense and no profit. Wars of spoliation, imperial wars, must go the way of international wars, as too costly for the people of a modern industrial state. Victory or defeat alike bring disorder, confusion, debt, and bankruptcy. An armed peace, by which nations are supposed to be frightened into acquiescence, is in the long run likely to be equally ruinous. Though war has ceased, its cost still goes on. Since Jean de Bloch sounded his first majestic warning as to the financial ruin involved in war, the war debts of the nations have mounted higher and higher, and the yearly budget for war machinery has doubled and doubled, and is still rising at an accelerated pace. To borrow money implies money-lenders, and an adequate group of such could not be developed save on an international scale even as is now actually the case. A gigantic national debt involves an invisible empire which shall direct and control credit. The foundation of such an empire was laid less than a century and a half since by the pawnbroker, Mayer Amschel, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, doing business lo WAR AND WASTE under the sign of the Red Shield. He was the ; financial adviser of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, | and the funds controlled by him made him a factor in large affairs. As "uncle" to the king of Den- mark, his importance was enhanced and the in- genuity of his gifted son, Nathan Rothschild, at Waterloo and at London forced the downfall of the house of Bonaparte to ensure the rise of the house of Rothschild. In every subsequent financial trans- action of every nation of Europe, the princes of the Unseen Empire have taken the leading part. From \ the battle of Waterloo until his death Nathan Roths- \ child was the actual ruler of Europe. The crown of the last Napoleon was bought and held in its place by the gold of the Unseen Empire, while the struggle in which this crown fell was financed on both sides alike by the majestic masters of finance. These money-lenders on both sides alike! belonged to the group that knows no nationality and acts on no cross purposes. The drastic exac- tions of Germany were fixed by the Invisible Empire. By the same men, these vast sums were advanced, the loan being finally repaid in large part by the patience and thrift of the people of France. And the debt once paid, the sum was borrowed again, in part\ for railway extension, but for the most part the loan went into the bottomless pit of militarism, until the WAR AND WASTE ii debt of France to-day overtops that of all other nations of the world. To control It is not necessary to own. We find the difference in our American problems of railway management. As may con- trol a railway without owning it, so may one control likewise a nation. It is only necessary to control its need for money. And the control of the debt of Europe means the final decision, accidents excepted, of all questions of high finance, of war and spoliation and peace. > A hundred years ago there was published in France ; a cartoon of finance. A farmer ploughed in the field, on his back a frilled marquis of the old regime I tapping his dainty snuff box. Not many years ago j appeared another cartoon. The farmer still ploughed | in the field, on his back a soldier, armed to the teeth, i and on his back in turn a money-lender. And the 1 money-lender rides on the nation's back to-day. 1 The debt of France to-day is six thousand millions ! of dollars. This is practically all war debt, because ; without war France could have paid her way without / borrowing. The interest paid each year is two hun- 1 dred and forty millions of dollars. The war debt) of Europe to-day exceeds twenty-seven thousand millions of dollars. The yearly interest is over a thousand millions of dollars. The debt will never, be paid, can never be paid. Two of the great instru- 12 WAR AND WASTE ments in national slavery are the deferred payment and the indirect tax. "The system of laying burdens on posterity," says Goldwin Smith, "removes the last check on war. " By means of indirect taxation, the people never know what they are paying. , By means of war debt, the cost is shifted to generations still unborn. The interest money exacted and the millions spent from year to year on armament mean the final collapse of European industry unless the process is somehow checked. The interest is beyond the capacity of the people. The rule that " in expanding nations war shall consume the fruits of progress" is so univeral that it has been raised to the dignity of a law, "Johnson's Law of National Waste." The world's annual production of gold is little more than one third of the interest money due in Europe. The world's entire stock of gold is little more than one fourth of the war debt of Europe. The unpaid bal- ances must be added to the principal, which mounts higher with its attendant interest. Most payments are made in credits, of course, and credits must be added to the principal. The great ogre, war, says Bastiat, "devours as much when he is asleep as when he is awake." War armament is the beginning of war, and war on borrowed money is a two-edged sword which cuts both ways. WAR AND WASTE 13 Besides the vast sums demanded as interest on old debts, the annual expenditure of the world on armies and navies in these times of peace passes ^4,000,000,- 000 every year. This is extorted by taxation, a present load on industry and commerce over and above all demands made by the war debt which no man and no nation ever intends to pay. The deferred war debt, the malignant device of Pitt a little more than a century ago, has now become the over-shadowing danger of national life. It Is not clear where its operations may end. No check remains to its operations to-day, nor any prospect of a check in the near future. Democracy does not arrest it. A nation can borrow when a king can- not. Probity, statesmanship, do not affect it. The "watchdog of the treasury" has a thankless task. He meets with scant favour from his brethren. The sordid deals and extortions of the kings of the eigh- teenth century were trivial transactions compared with the expenditures of the free nations who put their money into ships of war. So long as Great Britain, by virtue of her primacy in commerce and civilization, was entitled to twice — with 10 per cent, added — the number of warships possessed by any other nation, and so long as Germany is more populous than England and more effective industri- ally, while yet possessed with the medieval spirit 14 WAR AND WASTE of military rivalry, there seems no way out. France at first unwillingly and the United States with joyous recklessness are swept on the same path into the same whirlpool. All seem possessed with the belief, once true, that all peoples are watching to pounce on the nation which leaves itself unarmed. In this feeling, all consideration of the growth of civilization, common interest, and common decency is thrown to the wind. The Great Illusion remains that such invasions would be profitable, with the further illusion that they would be even possible. Neither profitable nor possible could they be at the present time; nor can it be long possible for debt and armament alike to increase as they are now increas- ing. The entire wealth of six leading countries of Europe is very roughly estimated atjS240,ooo,ooo,ooo, a little less than ten times the war debt of these same countries. It is an interesting question in mathe- matics to know how long the wealth may outrun the debts. For the wealth rises by arithmetical pro- gression, the debts by geometrical progression, the rise of compound interest. It is not strange that the average wealth of the citizen is greater in the small countries of Europe than in the large ones; in Switzer- land and Holland than in Germany; that the com- merce per capita is greater in these small ones, and WAR AND WASTE 15 that bonds of the smaller nations sell on a higher basis than those of Great Britain and of Germany. It is not strange that Booker Washington, in a late visit to Europe, should declare that in certain regions of southern Europe the common folk had less oppor- tunity, less hope, less income, than is the lot of the negroes of Alabama. It is by the condition of the common folk that the prosperity of all nations should be measured. It is not the status of the banker, the trader, the landholder, the professional man, the university, the theatre, the art gallery, which determines the place of the nation. It is the chance of the common man to make the most of himself. We may not judge England by the neighbourhood of St. James's, nor France by the Place de I'Opera, nor Russia by the fair streets of her capital. We must value the nations by the kind of life lived by the generations that come and go unnoticed in the pages of romantic history. And before this court of judg- ment the war debt is a monstrous wrong, a crime com- mitted by the last generations against the rights of those that follow. To waste men's earnings is to waste men's lives. "In war time," says Edward H. Clement, "always the contractors, the money-lenders, the grafters, the whole catalogue of parasites preying on the life-blood of the community, are winners, i6 WAR AND WASTE no matter which of the combatants may lose, even when the loser is their own country. There is the same opportunity at the other extreme of the social scale in the Invisible Empire as that seized on by the criminal classes and the baser elements of mankind in a city given over for the hour to rioting. The looting mob suddenly makes its appearance and takes full advantage of the situation, reaping the same sort of greedy harvest as the deavcrs in foodstuffs and arms and ships, shoes and clothing and government bonds do in their field of operations, when for a time the wonted order of civilization is broken between nations." In similar vein, Burke speaks of certain traders in war-time as "scenting with delight the cadaverous odour of lucre. " When nations struggle for life or death, this is the pirate's opportunity. One of the momentous periods in the political history of the world is that of the coming together near the beginning of the nineteenth century of these various conditions: Constitutional government, me- chanical invention applied to war and enormously increasing its expense and destructiveness, the change of war itself from disputes between politicians to a life-and-death struggle between nations, the growth of a cooperating banking system with ramifi- cations wide and strong enough to take whole nations WAR AND WASTE 17 in pawn in exchange for ready money, and, lastly, statesmen ready to pledge the future to any extent for the sake of temporary advantage. Constitutional government gives stability enough to make deferred payments on a vast scale possible. The old kings had to pay on the spot and made their way by extortior, graft, sale of favours, debasement of coinage, by fawning and by violence. A nation could borrow money it was never expected to pay, if it could keep up the charges of interest. Hence the debt of France to-day is many times as great as Louis the Magnificent was ever able to make it. Even the interest charges alone to-day equal the high- water mark of the royal loans of the eighteenth century. Mechanical invention has supplanted the old wooden frigate with the dreadnaught and the super- dreadnaught, gigantic floating forts, each one costing an emperor's ransom, and each one sending all previous vessels as worthless to the junk-heap. Twelve millions of dollars is the standard cost of one of these vessels, and a few more years may double even this. Equal progress has been made in the art of destroying ships. In an hour of actual conflict, every warship will be sunk, captured, victorious, or run away. Shore guns, mines, and torpedoes now forbid the entrance of any battleship l8 WAR AND WASTE into any hostile port, and already their existence is threatened from the air. Guns, powder, ball, all have moved onward since the days of Napoleon in un- fortunate parallelism with the application of science in all other directions — a science which has grown through peace, for all science was impossible in the dayswhen war was the chief business of all virile men. Statesmen willing to borrow, on the plea of Pitt that the nation belongs to the living generation, on which posterity has no claim, have abounded in all times and under all forms of government. For one Turgot planning for the future there are a hundred Calotipies interested only in the present expenditure. And because this is so, the outlook is very dark to- day for debt-crushed Europe. Because this is so, even free America and free Canada stand to-day at the parting of the ways, and the easiest way is that leading toward debt and waste. It is easier for a nation, as for a man, to follow the lead of its associ- ates than to strike out for itself toward thrift, honesty, and prosperity. The way out, the only way out so far as America is concerned, is to raise the whole matter above the level of personal interest and partisanship. We are now spending more than $800,000 on army and navy; more than $io,coo per day, for example, on smokeless powder alone. No one, not financially WAR AND WASTE 19 interested, can believe that this is a patriotic necessity. No one familiar with the facts can be- lieve that there is any war before us unless begun by our own initiative. Yet there is no one who can check this expense, because no one has any plan as to the future, nor any grasp on the many elements concerned. The President, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, cannot reduce his command. In his Cabinet is a secretary of war, a secretary of the navy, with no secretary of economy,of sanitation, of education, of national morals, of internal peace. The danger to you and to me and to our families, from the international band of outlaws called white slavers, is infinitely more than the danger of any foreign foe. Yet two days of smokeless powder costs more than our Government can afford for the suppression of this most horrible of all evils. We spend more than two thirds of our annual income on military affairs. We have not enough to go around for any useful purpose whatever, outside of national defense. In national defense if we have anything at all, whatever we need should be of the best. That goes without saying. But for the present we blunder along, sometimes under the dictation of the arma- ment lobby, sometimes controlled by national vanity, sometimes following merely the evil example of 20 WAR AND WASTE England and Germany. This difference obtains, however, that we pay for what we get. In this regard the United States is the strongest of all the great "powers." Her credit is good, and it is not yet true that with her "war has consumed" all "the fruits of progress." But our military expenditures are outrunning our increase in national wealth, and the final end of this policy must be the same as in Europe. We have three possibilities: Peace through the crash of arms and the destruction of credit, peace through international exhaustion, and peace through the rise of public opinion and insistence on arbitration in the settlement of international differences. With arbitration these differences would mostly cease. International differences have very rarely been causes of war. Usually they have served merely as pretexts. If they cannot be thus used, and if war is not the alternative means of settlement, we shall rarely hear of these differences. The only excuse for war is that it is a means of settle- ment, however crude, horrible, and unsatisfactory. If there is a better way, easier, quicker, more honour- able, there will not often be any difference to settle. "War," Disraeli is credited with saying — "war is never a solution, it is an aggravation." Few wars have arisen afresh between nations; they grow mostly from seeds left by past wars. WAR AND WASTE 2i But greater than the waste of the "earnings of poor men's lives" is the waste of life itself. It is a fundamental fact of biology that the laws in heredity which apply to man are those which govern the lower animals as well. "Like the seed is the harvest" — this is the fundamental law. The men you breed from determine the future. Heredity runs level. No race of men nor animals has improved save through selection of the best for parentage. None has fallen save through the choice of inferior stock for parentage. Whatever influence may cause the destruction of the strong, the brave, the courageous, the enterprising will ensure a generation which shall show these qualities in lower degree. Rome fell because the old Roman stock was for the most part banished or exterminated. There was no other cause. The Romans were gone and that was the end of it; while the sons of slaves, camp-followers, scullions, and peddlers filled the Eternal City. The Republic fell when "Vir gave place to Homo," real men in Rome to mere beings. The Empire fell when the barbarians filled the unoccupied city, unoccupied so far as the men of the old Roman type were con- cerned. The latest historian of the "Downfall of the Ancient World," Dr. Otto Seeck, of Mxinster, tells us how after the wars of Marlus and Sulla, "only 22 WAR AND WASTE cowards remained, and from their brood came for- ward the new generations." We ask no other reason for the disappearance of Greece. Greek art, Greek philosophy, Greek literature, the perfection of form in thought, in action, in speech — all of these were impossible save to men of Greek blood; and when these had fallen in suicidal war, there was no longer the heredity which could replace them. Some twenty years ago, I visited the city of No- vara in northern Italy. South of the town was a wheat-field where the Sardinian army was once encamped and from which they were driven by the Austrians. From the field the Sardinians fled — you can still trace their flight by the marks left by bullet and by cannon ball on the houses — down the long street to the city of Novara. Here the King, Charles Albert, sat in his palace, and when the fleeing army came by he gave up his throne to his son, Victor Emanuel. History tells the rest, but the significance of such events lies not in the fate of the kings, nor does it lie in the fate of the men, nor yet in the waste of their lives, nor even in the sorrows of those who loved them. It is found in the effect upon the race. On the battlefield of Novara the farmers had \ ploughed up the skulls of the slain, had stacked them up until they formed a pyramid some fifteen feet \ WAR AND WASTE 23 high, with a little canopy which kept off the rain. These were the skulls of young men between eigh- teen and thirty-five years of age, young men from the farms and shops and schools, some from France, some from Italy, the rest from Austria. And as these were, according to custom, the best among the yeomanry, so in their homes since then the generations have arisen from inferior stock. By the character and fate of the common man and the opportunity offered to him, the nations must be judged. On him the fate of the nation depends, and the waste of Novara is a waste which is enduring. It is like cutting the roots of a tree while its flowers and fruit- age continue. The roots of to-day determine the fruitage of the future. Those nations who have lost their young men in war have in so far checked their own development. Not one Novara could work ruin to any nation. But no Novara ever stood alone. Down the road in Lombardy is the little town of Magenta. You know the colour we call Magenta, the hue of the blood that dyed the locust trees in the little park, the blood that stained the river below the hard-fought bridge. Here the French came up from the west. In due time the Austrians fled from the bridge to the park, from the park down the long street toward Milan, and at last out of all Lombardy. Here in a cloister 24 WAR AND WASTE of the old church of Magenta you will find the pile of skulls — skulls of brave men. You can know it by the bullet holes which the spiders for half a century have vainly tried to heal. You will go down the plains of Lombardy, east- ward to Desenzano, on the Lake of Garda. Near here is the field of Solferino, bloodiest of all, where j some forty thousand killed and wounded men were left by the cowardly armies for three days on the field, untended save by flies and mosquitoes. It was here that Henri Dunant of Geneva, a tourist in Verona, organized the work of relief which grew at last into the Red Cross Society. Dunant was almost the first to see a battlefield with modern eyes. To him it was not a field of glory but "a European calamity." He died at Heiden on October 31, 1910, but not until he had earned the Nobel prize, not for his work for peace, but for doing his part to make war a bit more human and less horrible. And these do not stand alone. Scarcely a town in Italy that has not some sort of battle record. I like the frank Italian way of showing unshrinkingly the spoils of war. But there are other piles and piles of skulls, none ; the less significant because the bones are buried. The walls of Paris tell their story, Metz, Worth, and the slaughter field of Sedan. Then we can trace our WAR AND WASTE 25 lines across Germany; Jena, Leipzig, Austerlitz — names called glorious In the history of the slaughter of young men — Liitzen, Bautzen, Ulm, Wagram, Hohenllnden. Let us pass them all to recall the grand army of Moscow, 600,000 men, the finest body of men that ever stood in line. Then let us recall the blasts of winter, the burning city, the lack of base of supplies, the hatred of the people of the invaded country. And after that let us see, with the histo- rian, the pitiful retreat of the 20,000 men who re- mained of this great army. The historian tells us that: "Amidst ever-deepening misery they struggled on, until of the 600,000 men who had proudly crossed the Nieman for the conquest of Russia, only 20,000 famished, frost-bitten, unarmed spectres staggered across the bridge of Korno in the middle of Decem- ber." The inevitable result of all this must be the loss to the nation of the qualities which are sought for in the soldier. It leaves the nation crippled, unf nation blessee. The effect does not appear in the efface- ment of art of*scIence or creative Imagination. Men who excel in these regards are not drawn by prefer- ence or by conscription to the life of the soldier. If we cut th'e roots of a tree, we shall not affect, for a time at least, the quality of its flower or fruit. We 26 WAR AND WASTE are limiting its future rather than changing its present. In like manner does war aflFect the life of the nation. It limits the future rather than checks the present. Those who fall in war are the young men of the nations, men between the ages of eighteen and thirty- five; they are the men of courage, alertness, dash, and recklessness, who value their lives as naught in the service of the nation. The men who are left are, for better and for worse, the reverse of all this, and it is they that determine what the future of the nation shall be. They hold its history in their grasp. However noble, encouraging, inspiring the history of modern Europe may be, it is not the history we would have the right to expect from the develop- ment of its original elements. It is not the history that would have been made had these same elements been released from the shadow of reversed selection cast by fratricidal war. The angle of divergence between what might have been and what has been is measured by the parentage of strong, capable, and courageous men slain on the bloody fields of glory. All this applies not to one nation alone nor to one group of nations, but in like degree to all nations that have sent forth their young men to the field of slaughter. As it was with Greece and Rome, with France and Spain, Mauretania and Turkestan, so has WAR AND WASTE vj it been with Germany and England; so with all nations that have sent forth "the best they breed " to foreign service, while retaining cautious, thrifty mediocrity to fill up the ranks at home. Four millions of men fell in Napoleon's campaigns. ,^No wonder the life of Europe is impoverished. No wonder that France is a wounded nation, as are all others whose men were caught up in that holocaust. Napoleon, it was said, "has peopled hell with the elite of Europe. " Stacked up on the field, as at Novara, their skulls would make a pile thirty times as high as our own Washington monument. To this cause of reversed selection almost alone we may ascribe the social and personal deficiencies of the common folk of Europe. To be " him that overcometh " one must have a lineage made up of those who were "captains of their fate" and "masters of their soul" in their day and generation. If we send forth the best we breed, there is no way by which those of the future shall be other than second best. In the break-up of the Roman Empire, no prov- ince had a better future than Hispania, our Spain, and she, like others, had staked and lost her future in war. "Against the credit for redeemed souls," said, in 1620, La Puente, the Augustian friar, "I set the cost of armadas and the sacrifice of soldiers and friars sent 28 WAR AND WASTE to the Philippines. And this I count the chief loss. For mines give silver, and forests give timber, but only Spain gives Spaniards, and she may give so many that she may be left desolate and constrained to bring up strangers' children instead of her own. " "This is Castile," says another writer. "She makes men and wastes them." "This sublime and terrible phrase, " says Captain Calkins, " sums up the whole of Spanish history. " In his charming studies of "Feudal and Modern Japan," Mr. Arthur Knapp mentions again and again the great marvel of Japan's military prowess, as shown in the Chinese War, after more than two hundred years of peace. It has been even more con- clusively shown in the Russo-Japanese War since Mr. Knapp's book was written. His astonishment was that after more than six generations In which military drill was not the final aim of each young man, the virile qualities of patience and courage were found unimpaired. In the light of the reverse of this condition which we have been considering In the case of European nations, we can readily see that the experience of Japan was just what we might expect. In times of peace there Is no slaughter of the strong, no sacrifice of the brave. In the peaceful struggle for existence, there is a premium placed upon these virtues. The WAR AND WASTE 29 virile and the brave survive. They and their de- scendants are not wasted on the battlefield. It Is the idle, the weak, and the dissipated that go to the wall, ■ "What won the battles on the Yalu, In Korea or Manchuria," says Prof. Inazo Nitobe, "was the ghosts of our fathers guiding our hands and beating in our hearts." If we translate this from the lan- guage of Shintoism into that of science, we find It a strong testimony to the fact of race-heredity, the survival of the strong in the lives of their self-reliant and effective sons. The shades of the soldiers who fell before Napoleon are not guiding the hands or beating in the hearts of the men of Europe to-day. If after two hundred years or even twenty years of incessant battle Japan should remain virile and warlike, that would indeed be a marvel. But that marvel the world has never seen. It is doubtless true that military traditions are most persistent with nations most frequently engaged in war. But mili- tary traditions and the physical strength to gain victories are very different. Other things equal, the nations which like Japan have known "the old Peace with velvet-sandaled feet" are most likely to develop the "strong battalions" on which victory In war is most likely to rest. What now of Germany? She has had her share 30 WAR AND WASTE of the desolation and the degradation of war. It is said that in the Thirty Years' War the population of Germany was cut down from 16,000,000 to 6,000,000 1 people. It is said that not before 1 870 was Germany able to regain the ground she held in 1618. It is, moreover, claimed that while Germany is military, she is not warlike. While there is no nation so dominated by the professional soldier with his medi- eval scorn of commerce, science, and all civilian things, yet there is virtually not a man in the Ger- man army who ever saw a battle. The superiority of Germany lies in her science, her industrial art, her commerce, her intensification of civilian activities. Theevidenceof the havoc of war is not so clear in Ger- many as In most other lands of Europe. Perhaps as Doctor Seeck seems to think, massacre and desolation destroyed the weak as often as the strong. Perhaps, again, the fact of universal compulsory education and compulsory industrial training, with compulsory insurance against old age, has reduced the visible number of unemployed and of the unemployable. The factor of emigration which has filled the great cities of the new world with young Germans, am- bitious and energetic, is one which we cannot esti- mate in comparison with the effects of war. When the best emigrate, the home lands become impov- erished, but emigration gives new ideas and new WAR AND WASTE 31 experiences. The loss of one region is the gain of another, and the gain with good men overbalances the loss. The men of the new world are old-world men who have learned something in a new environ- ment, lost something perhaps in exchange for all that is gained, but in the long run the new advan- tages outweigh the old. But loss which is loss comes from the sacrifice of the strong. What shall we say of England and of her place in the history of war? In the Norse mythology, it was the Mitgard Serpent which reached around the world, swallowed its own tail, and held the world together. England has made this a British world. Her young men have gone to all regions where free men can live. They have built up free institutions which rest on cooperation and compromise. She has carried the British peace to all barbarous lands, and she has made it possible for civilized men to trade and pray with savages. "What does he know of England, who only England knows?" For the activities of Englishmen have been greater by manifold than within the little island from which Englishmen set forth to inherit the earth. What has all this cost? It could not be done unless it was paid for, and we must not wonder if such strenuous effort, such sacrifice of life and force, has left her with something like exhaustion. 32 WAR AND WASTE There's a widow in Sleepy Chester Who mourns for her only son. There's a grave by the Pabeng River, A grave which the Burmans shun. If we would know why Chester is sleepy, we have only to turn to her great cathedral. The long north side of her red sandstone walls tells of her dead, the world over, and always the same story. Tablets to the memory of young men, gentlemen's sons from Eton and Rugby and Winchester and Harrow; scholars from Oxford and Cambridge, from Man- chester and Birmingham and Liverpool, who have given up their lives in some petty war in some far-ofF country. Their bodies rest in India, Zululand, in Burmah, the Transvaal. In England only are they remembered, men who should have been the makers of empire. This has led Alfred Noyes to say to England : "It is only my dead that count," She said, and she says to-day. These names are recorded by the score in every parish church, by the thousand in every cathedral, and the churches are numbered by the thousands. The statement that in every parish church such tablets may be found might be questioned. As a test, with an Oxford friend we chose a solitary church standing almost alone on a bleak plain in WAR AND WASTE 33 Hertfordshire, Whitchurch, once celebrated because it employed the young Handel as its organist. On opening the door I saw a tablet: "Sacred to the memory of Thomas Henry, eldest son of Thomas Hall Plummer, Esquire, of this Parish, and Lieutenant in the 49th regiment of Bengal National Infantry. He died in camp while serving at the seige of Moulton, on the 14th of December, 1848, in the twenty-seventh year of his age. His Sepoys for the love of him bore his body to the grave. This tablet was erected by his brother officers." Other tablets told of service in India, but this met the test, and this is typical. The foreign service of England for a hundred years has furnished careers for the sons of the squire and the gentleman. For a century Great Britain has sent her strongest and most forceful sons. "Send forth the best ye breed," and the nation breeds from the second best. And in this loss of fair and strong, the "unreturn- ing brave," we may find an answer to some of England's most desperate problems. Where is the country squire of English life and 34 WAR AND WASTE English history? Where are his rosy-cheeked and strong-limbed daughters? Where, indeed, is the typical John Bull of the time-honoured cartoon? Why is it that three or four millions of English- men are unable to earn a decent living, or any living at all, in England to-day? Why is it that these same unemployed are found unemployable in Canada, in Australia, or wherever they may go? Why is it that the tendency in all average physical standards is downward, while the standards of the best are growing always higher? The answer lies in the reversed selection of war. Its effects are found in England and everywhere else where strength and courage have been rewarded by glory and extinction. England has exchanged her country squires for the memorial tablet. More than for all who have fallen in battle, or were wasted in the camps, England should mourn "the fair women and brave men" that should have been descendants of her strong and manly men. If we may personify the spirit of the nation, England should most grieve, not over her unreturning brave, but over those who might have been but never were, those who so long as history lasts can never be. We have fed our sea for a thousand years And she calls us still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves But sweeps o'er our British dead. WAR AND WASTE 35 We have strewed our best to the wave's unrest To the shark and the sheering gull, And if blood be the price of Admiralty Lord God, we paid it in foil. Walk wide of the Widow of Windsor, For half of creation she owns, And we've bought her the same with the sword and the flame And we've salted it down with our bones. O thou, whose wounds are never healed, Whose weary race is never run, O Cromwell's England, must thou yield, For every foot of ground, a son.' Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet, The flower of England's chivalry? Wild grasses are their winding sheet. And sobbing waves their threnody. By the law of probability as developed by Quetelet, it is claimed that there will appear in each generation the same number of potential poets, artists, investi- gators, patriots, athletes, and superior men of each degree. This law, however, involves the theory of continuity of paternity, that in each generation a practically equal percentage of men of superior mentality will survive to take the responsibilities of parenthood. Otherwise this law becomes subject to the action of another law, that of reversed selec- tion, or the biological law of "diminishing returns." In other words, breeding from an inferior stock brings race degeneration, and such breeding is the 36 WAR AND WASTE sole agency of such degeneration; as selection, natural or artificial, along one line or another is the sole agency for race progress. And all laws of probabilities and averages are subject to a still higher law, the primal law of biology, which no cross- current of life can check or modify: Like the seed is the harvest; almost alike but never quite, but on the whole always following the lead. There is in fact no law of Quetelet, save this : Under like conditions heredity runs alike, almost alike, but with like varia- tions. When conditions change, so change the pro- ducts of heredity. What shall we say of our own country, with her years of peace, and her two great civil wars, the struggle of children with their parents, of brothers with brothers? It may be that war is sometimes justified. It is sometimes inevitable, whether necessary or not. It has happened once in our history, that "every drop of blood drawn by the lash must be drawn again by the sword. " It cost us 700,000 lives of young men to get rid of slavery. \ I saw not long ago in Maryland one hundred and fifty acres of these young men. There are some 12,000 acres filled with them c«i the fields of the South. And this number, almost a million. North and South, was the best that the nation could WAR AND WASTE 37 bring. North and South alike, the men were in dead earnest, each believing that his view of state rights and of national authority was founded on the solid rock of righteousness and fair play. North and South, the nation was impoverished by the loss. The gaps they left are filled to all appearance. There are relatively few of us left to-day in whose hearts the scars of fifty years ago are still unhealed. But a new generation has grown up of men and women born since the war. They have taken the nation's problems into their hands; but theirs are bands not so strong or so clean as though the men that are stood shoulder to shoulder with the men that might have been. The men that died in "the weary time " had better stuff in them than the father of the average man of to-day. Those states which lost most of their strong young blood, as Virginia, Louisiana, the Carolinas, will not gain the ground they lost, not for centuries, perhaps never. Doctor Venable, president of the University of North Carolina, told me not long ago that one half the alumni of that college up to 1865 were in the Civil War. One third of these were slain. We can never measure our actual loss nor determine how far the men that are fall short of the men that might have been. 38 WAR AND WASTE Dr/Hans Gadow, of the University of Cambridge, who lately visited the United States, told me that the most vivid impression he got in all his travels from Boston to San Francisco and to Mexico came from a chance statement of a friend in Boston, that he belonged to the Sixty-ninth Regiment of Massachu- setts Volunteers. It was, indeed, a wonder that this little state, with less than half a million people, should have sent 69,000 men into the Civil War because they believed that the war was just. This gave an impression of the moral earnestness in- volved in that struggle, which he had gained in no other way. There were in fact 159,000 men who enlisted in the sixty-nine Massachusetts regiments. It took at times 2,500 men to fill the ranks, to keep in each regiment its full quota of a thousand men. We may recall Colonel Halpine's rhyme of "the thousand and thirty-seven," showing how, at the banquet of the officers, there were "the remnant, just eleven," where once Twinkled a thousand bayonets And the swords were thirty-seven. Edward H. Clement uses these striking words: "Ever since the middle of the last century, or rather its last quarter, the lamentation has been heard: Where are the poets of yesterday? Where are the WAR AND WASTE 39 'hundred Boston orators'? Where are the his- torians, the philosophers, the political leaders, the moral reformers whom the whole country and the world itself gladly followed in the liberalizing of thought and of religion itself? "In the light of emphasis ... on the de- generation of nations through their glorious wars, answer might well be sought in the roll of honour of Harvard Memorial Hall. The price was worth paying, no doubt. At all events, the ones who gave their lives in the Civil War most certainly thought so. But the price was exacted all the same. There stand the names of those who, but for this sacrifice, might have continued the Glory of Boston as it was in all the higher reaches of the intellectual life, in national politics and in social advance. In their stead we have been fain to put up with — well, what we have. " Through all time war has told the same story. Sophocles once said, two thousand years ago: "War does not of choice destroy bad men, but good men ever. " Schiller said : "Der Krieg verschlingt die Besten." , (War devours the best.) An old French proverb says the same: "Ce sont toujours les memes, qui se font tuer." (They are always the same who get themselves killed.) 40 WAR AND WASTE In our Civil War, Captain Brownell tells us of The deeper green of the sod Where we left the bravest of us. John Esten Cooke, in Virginia, when Pelham fell at Kelly's Ford, calls out: O band in the pine wood cease, Cease with your splendid call; The living are brave and noble. The dead are the bravest of all. In Scotland: Proudly they march, but each Cameron knows He may tread the heather no more. Again, in India, Bartholomew Dowling: Cut off from the land that bore us, Betrayed by the land we find. When the brightest are gone before us And the dullest are left behind. The same motive, the same lesson lasts through all ages, and it finds keen expression in the words of the wisest man of our early national history, Benjamin Franklin, "Wars are not paid for in war time: the bill comes later." CHAPTER II FORECLOSING THE MORTGAGE ON WAR WAR Is dying. It dies because It cannot pay Its way. It dies because, through the spread of education and the demands of confimerce, no part of the civilized world can be suf- fered to engage In a life and death struggle with any other part. The nations are no longer separate entitles but each Is a part In a unified whole to which international war is mischievous and hateful. In his clever poem, "The Peace of Dives," Mr. Rudyard Kipling tells us the story of the passing of war. It seems that Dives, wicked, rich, and in Torment, asked for release, offering In exchange to bring peace to the world. So he went out among the nations selling the costliest of human toys, "sea-power" and land-power, and "the dry decreeing blade." The nations bought freely, pledging the future for all sorts of weapons, but were so tied up at last In the bonds of debt that none of them could fight. Thus Dives brought peace to the world, and such peace we have with us to-day. 41 42 WAR AND WASTE We understand, of couse, that Kipling's story is but a parable. The rich man was not wicked, but sturdy, honest, and long-heade-d. His name was not Dives, and he was not in Torment. His name was Mayer and he lived in a narrow, seven-story, high- gabled house in Frankfort-on-the-Maln. From the swinging red shield of his pawnbroker's shop he got the name of "Rothschild," and the story of his rise to power and that of his successors is the story of the passing of war. It was a strange period in which he lived, the end of the eighteenth century. In that period we have the effective rise of popular government. With this came peace within the nations, the extension of education, the rise of science and of its double, me- chanical invention, and the great Increase In the wealth of the people. When representative government was established, a nation as such could borrow money. Kings had been poor pay. The pledges of parliaments, however, were safe investments. The chief business of nations was still war, and diplomacy was its handmaid. By means of secret deals, artificial friendships, and artificial enmities, diplomacy could spy out the land. It could find places where war would be safe and profitable and it could find pretexts to begin war with good grace. Wars have been rarely fought FORECLOSING MORTGAGE ON WAR 43 for causes. Mostly diplomacy has offered only pretexts. Meanwhile science made war more and more effective and vastly more costly. Warships changed from wooden tubs costing perhaps $12,000 to gigantic floating fortresses worth $12,000,000, with all else in proportion. The people could not pay for these things, and ran Into debt for them, England first, and after her all the other nations, each in its degree. Here was Dives's opportunity. The great house of Rothschild, Its five branches knowing no country, was prepared to take a nation into pawn, all for a moderate percentage, "absorbing" its bonds and placing them where they would "do the most good." Allied with this house as partners or as rivals In the same business of giant " pawnbroking, " were a dozen other similar establishments, and little by little into the hands of this group, consisting of the Roths- childs and the great joint-stock banks — which now excel them in resources and power — and constitut- ing the so-called "Unseen Empire of Finance," fell the control of Europe. To control a railway it is not necessary to own it, only to administer Its debts. The same is true of na- tions. Thus It came about that In all matters of war, peace, and finance, the international bankers had the last word. At first, the control was more or less a 44 WAR AND WASTE , matter of dominating personality, but in time, with the vast increase in the complexity of business rami- fications, it has naturally become more and more impersonal and automatic. Lord Rosebery has said that "Royalty is no longer a political but a social function. " This is another way of saying that the will of no individual is now supreme as opposed to the uncommon interests of the people. With the eco- nomic growth of the last thirty years has come a parallel change in financial domination. As war is now mainly a matter of finance, armies and navies being mere incidents as compared with financial reserves, the bankers still have the last word. No international struggle, accident aside, can break out until they give the signal. In our belief, whatever the apparent provocation of noisy speech or h e;ctoring diplomacy, we shall ne ver see another war among the great nations of Europe! "There is too much at stake. War is a distul-bance of all normal relations. It is a sort of world sickness, local in its inception, but likely to spread to other parts of the social organism. A great war is a great defeat. It means ruin to the victor as well as to the loser. Under present conditions there can be no such thing as victory, and neutrals must share with the others in the settlement of loss. Banking, according to Norman Angell, is "pro- FORECLOSING MORTGAGE ON WAR 45 viding the economic and social organism with sensory nerves, by which damage to any part, or to any function, can be felt and, thanks to such feeling, avoided." The influence of sound banking is therefore everywhere and automatically opposed to war. To the modern banker, as to Benjamin Franklin, "there never was a good war nor a bad peace." In the last hundred years every nation has had its statesmen, representative of the people, ready to pledge all futures for the sake of present advantage, real or apparent. Especially have they been willing to go to any lengths of debt or taxation in the interest of standing armies and of naval greatness. And the net result is that the war debt of the world for borrowed money, practically all used for war pur- poses, amounts to nearly ^37,000,000,000. This sum is expressed in the "Endless Caravan of Ciphers," which carries no meaning to the average taxpayer until he feels its pressure in the rising cost of living and in his own difficulties in making both ends meet. The interest charges of the world on its national bonded debt are about $1,500,000,000 a year, and about $2,500,000,000 are expended yearly on stand- ing armies and on battleships. If we were to sell out the entire holdings of the United States, capitalize the returns, and put the whole sum at interest at 46 WAR AND WASTE 4 per cent., it would just about keep up the military expenses of the world in time of peace. Through our attempts to keep war going, after its prosecution had ceased to be financially profitable to anybody (to say nothing of moral or social values), we have carried civilization well toward bankruptcy. "We have long since," says the editor of Life, "passed the simple or kindergarten stage of living beyond our means; we are now engaged in living beyond the means of generations to come. " Let me ^illustrate by a supposititious example. A nation has, let us say, an income and expenditure of $100,000,000, It raises this sum by taxation of some sort and thus lives within its means. But this hundred millions is equal to the interest on a much larger sum, $2,500,000,000. Let us suppose that instead of paying a hundred millions year by year for expenses, we use this as the interest on a large capital. By borrowing we have immediately at hand a sum of twenty-five times as great. The interest on this sum is the same as the annual expense account. We have then borrowed $2,500,000,000, paying the interest charges of $100,000,000 a year. While paying these charges we have the principal to live on for a generation. Half of it will meet current expenses for a dozen years. The other half is at once available for national purposes, for dockyards, wharves, for- FORECLOSING MORTGAGE ON WAR 47 tresses, public buildings, and above all for army and navy expansion. Meanwhile in our country — no nation stands quite still — twelve years of invention and commerce have doubled the national income. This gives us another hundred million which may be capitalized in the same way, another twenty-five hundred million borrowed. And all borrowings be- come war debt, because the standing army and the navy take the lion's share. Were it not for war and war preparations, the other expenses of government would have been everywhere met without permanent indebtedness. In the fashion here indicated France has built up her war debt of $6,000,000,000, and most other nations of Europe have followed the same example. The system of borrowing then extends through the body politic; individuals, corporations, municipalities^ all live on their principal, leaving debt and interest for future generations to pay. And by this means one and all finally pass into the control of their creditors. The nations of Europe have no Inde- pendent existence, they are all "provinces of the Unseen Empire of Finance. " What will be the end, no one can say. There is a steady growth of "un- rest" among the taxpayers of the world. There would be a still more violent "unrest" could pos- terity be heard from. And in its time posterity can 48 WAR AND WASTE save itself from utter ruin only by new inventions and new exploitations or by a frugality of administration of which no nation gives an example to-day. The present complex condition, incongruous as well as disconcerting, is apparently a necessary phase of the passing of war, a world-process involved in the change from the rule of force to that of law. The power of old tradition keeps alive the sinuous diplomacy of Europe, with its use of warships as counters in its games, and its use of war scares as means to force the people to build the warships. We still have the Deferred Payment and the Indirect Tax, the means by which an outworn statecraft extorts money from the people. We have all interests of commerce totally and openly opposed to war, and all interests of finance quietly opposed to all war which does not pay. We have the mur- derous cost of the whole thing at all times, with the final certainty that the perfection of our monstrous implements will never allow any sort of war to pay, while the alternative of "Armed Peace" is equally impossibly expensive. We have also the growth of international relations, of the spirit of mutual under- standing, the development of international law, the extension of arbitration and our own emergence from the medieval darkness when war was deemed natural and good, an institution to be cherished for its own FORECLOSING MORTGAGE ON WAR 49 sake. Lastly, the bankers have given ample evi- dence of their power, for example, in the Morocco affair. They have long since skimmed off the cream of the international loan business. There is little gain to them in further extension of the policy. And so war is dying, self-slain by the costly weapons science has forged for it, and it now remains for finance to give it a decent and fitting burial. The way out of war will open, the world over, with the enlightenment of public opinion, with the exten- sion of international law, and the perfection of the international courts at The Hague. The machinery of conciliation is created by public opinion; and with its more perfect adjustment, the force of public opinion behind it will grow steadily more and more insistent. Little by little war will be erased from the possibili- ties. As the years go by its crudfi and costly con- clusions become less and less acceptable and the victories of peace become more and more welcome as well as more stable. The fact that a better way of composing differences exists is, of itself, a guarantee that no serious dif- ferences shall arise; for, as a rule, wars do not arise from the alleged "causes of war." The "causes" assigned are almost wholly mere pretexts after war has been determined on. "Affairs of honour" between nations are worthy of no more respect than 50 WAR AND WASTE "affairs of honour" among men. In either case, an adequate remedy is found in a few days or months of patience and in the adjustments of disinterested friends whose judgments are unbiased by the passion of the moment. This we call arbitration, and its supreme virtue with nations as with individuals lies in its being unlimited. In our own country at present, there opens a door of escape from the waste of war preparation. Tak- ing the Tariff Commission as a model, we should have a High Commission of civilian statesmen to determine exactly how we stand in regard to war. Let these men ascertain what our possible enemies are and what is our actual need in the way of national defense. We need not go very far afield to find out what men should be chosen to serve in this capacity. The Peace Commission already provided by Con- gress, but thus far left in abeyance, could be used to this end. It is unworthy of our ideals and of our best history that we should go on blindly spending $800,000 every day on army and navy, with nearly half as much more in pensions and on interest, simply to follow the confessedly evil examples of Great Britain and Germany. It is unreasonable to seek for ideal perfection of national defense, unless it can be proved that our condition demands such perfection. And it is criminal that we should expend FORECLOSING MORTGAGE ON WAR 51 vast sums on warships and armament on the advice of interested parties alone. Whatever may be the fact at our national capital, we have abundant evi- dence that there exists in the world no lobby more powerful than the dockyard-armament lobbies of Great Britain and of Germany. The naval and military appropriations of Europe represent the demands of these syndicates, not the actual needs of the people or the nations. A High Commission, such as is suggested, could find out the truth, could indicate the path of safety and the path of economy. To reduce our military expenses to our actual needs in America would go far to settle for all time the war problem of debt-cursed Europe. CHAPTER III THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR IT IS an open secret, a very open one, that springtide war scares have but one purpose, the extension of our already monstrous mili- tary and naval appropriations. The real object of attack is found in Congress. When the victory there is won, the appropriations made, another cipher added to the "endless caravan" of waste, there is no external sign of jubilation. Those con- cerned put their pasteboard armies back into the box and settle down quietly to the business of spending until the annual budget is made up again. There can be no doubt that the most powerful lobby in the world is that employed by the great armament builders of England and Germany. It is equally plain that these huge rival war trusts con- sciously and purposely play into each other's hands. The war scare as promulgated through the "Armor- Plate Press" of these countries is the chief agency for affecting public opinion and controlling the action of Reichstag and Parliament. The greater S3 THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR 53 and more imminent the danger, the louder the journalistic noise, the greater the appropriations are likely to be. But when one remembers that the financial resources of all the nations concerned are already strained to the limit of exhaustion by war expenditures in time of peace, and this in spite of the interrelations and mutual dependence of the civilized world which render war impossible, one can see no reality in these clamours. They would be simply ridiculous were it not for their malicious efficiency in wasting the substance of the people. Except as a result of accidental clash in uncon- trollable war machinery, international war is already impossible. Even these war schemers do not want war. All they care for is appropriations. And as wolves wear sheep's clothing at times, so do these monstrous war agencies claim to be the true pro- moters of peace. An analysis of the war lobby of Europe will show that, besides the war syndicates, their stockholders in and out of office, their employees in and out of office, and their subsidized journals; besides the group of contractors, adventurers, and ghouls who make money out of war; besides that part of the army and the navy which is anxious above all things for preferment or for the testing of war implements, we must count a vast number of others, more or less 54 WAR AND WASTE allied with these, acting consciously or unconsciously with the war lobby, throwing all their influence on the side of militarism and the favouring of all schemes of spoliation, savagery, and waste. The caste spirit, strong in England and dominant in Germany, is ever and in all nations an incentive to war. It is claimed in each nation as a matter of course that all its war expenditures are solely for necessary national defense. And, as a matter of course, in each nation, no one believes this statement of the other nations. Thus do the armament pirates play into each other's hands. This chapter is devoted to a discussion of our own war scares and to the foundations (if the word can be used for things so ephemeral) on which they rest. And at the start, we may notice in passing that no war scares originate along our Canadian border. There are no soldiers there, no ships, no guns. There have been none for nearly a century. Not being armed, the men on both sides behave like nor- mal people, and there is nothing to build a war scare on. The border is perfectly defended; its defense is the mere fact of peace. Because no other nation could, by the most violent stretch of imagination, be regarded as a military opponent, Germany and Japan are forced into the role of international villain. When we ask why THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR 55 this country should spend millions in the fortification of Panama and Hawaii, we are confronted with the secret schemes of Germany and Japan. Germany, intoxicated with prosperity, revolts at our Monroe Doctrine; Japan, intoxicated with success, is eager for revenge on account of the trades unions of San Francisco. And so we squander our money, eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars a day, besides interest, pensions, and waste of men's time, that we may not be caught napping when these evil designs mature. We know, of course, that there is nothing in this — that there has never been anything in it, that there are no evil designs, that nothing Germany or Japan have done or can do constitutes a "menace," and that any injury they might inflict would rebound doubly on themselves. With Germany, our public relations are most friendly and they have always been so. We are not concerned in any secret understanding to her disad- vantage. We have not blocked her Bagdad railway nor opposed the extension of her influence anywhere. Nearly one fourth of our people are of German origin. In our educational traditions, Germany has largely replaced England. A very large share of German commerce is with the port of New York. But It Is said that our Monroe Doctrine, acceptable enough S6 WAR AND WASTE to Great Britain, is offensive to Germany. She may some time want a coaling station on the Caribbean Sea. Perhaps the petty island of St. Thomas may be sold to her for that purpose. She may hope to dismember Brazil, taking from her the southern states, in which there is already a thrifty German population. But nothing of this has any foundation in reality. There is no evidence of any desire of the Germans in Brazil to escape from Brazilian juris- diction. Even should an independent German- Brazilian state become possible, it would ally itself with Argentina or Uruguay, rather than seek shelter under the spiked helmet of German imperialism. The caste-ridden, debt-ridden .domination of Prussia is not loved by Germans abroad, nor by Germans at home. Of all the memories of the Fatherland, the expatriated German dwells with least pleasure on the distinctions of caste and the exaltation of the army. On the Pacific Ocean, Japan has to fill the role of disturber of the peace. To be sure, Japan is a small nation of poor people, and people who have always been especially friendly to our own. Her population is not much more than half ours. Her wealth is little more than one twentieth. She has the handi- cap of a very heavy war debt, amounting to nearly one sixth of her assets, relatively more than twenty times as large as our own national debt. She has THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR 57 fought two great wars within twenty years, the last one to exhaustion. Although she was victorious in every battle, it was a drawn struggle at the end; for neither combatant could raise or borrow money to keep its forces longer in the field. Few people are taxed so heavily as the Japanese and even their patience cannot be tried farther. Moreover, wisely or not, righteously or not, Japan has taken possession of Korea as the only way of keeping this misgoverned buffer state out of the clutches of Russia. This, too, is a costly venture with vast expenditures and no returns except in the hope of ultimate unification of the two nations. The Japanese investments in South Manchuria are sources of risk as well as of profit, and the cost of each of these ventures tends to complicate home politics as well as to delay the great internal improvements, road building, railroad build- ing, sewer building, and educational development of which Japan stands so much in need. The system of protective tariffs, subsidies, and rebates, which Japan, in emulation of Germany, has adopted is also a heavy burden on the people with no redeeming features save those 'of keeping up appear- ances and of starting the wheels of industry a little more quickly than would have been otherwise possi- ble. And for this too the workers have to pay. The Japanese are an optimistic race, and obedient, but S8 WAR AND WASTE at bottom they are not warlike. And all the com- mon people as a whole are thoroughly opposed to war and war taxes. They are as eager for a new war as the people of San Francisco for a new earthquake. The first sign of approaching consideration of army and navy bills by the committees of Congress is usually the appearance of "35,000 Japanese ex- soldiers" among the plantation hands of Hawaii, followed by a larger number, usually estimated at 75,000, at Magdalena Bay, In Mexico. An honour- able general in our army has been found to vouch for the contingent force in Hawaii. It is probably a fact that there are some ex-soldiers In Hawaii, a dozen it may be, or possibly a hundred In all. Even ex-soldiers must live, and until 1907 they, with other rice-field hands, were given passports to the sugar plantations in Hawaii. In 1900, when the islands became part of the United States, a majority of their population was Japanese. Naturally this is still true. But no passports for Japanese labourers to enter Hawaii have been granted since 1907, and it is known to be not true that any considerable number of the Japanese in Hawaii are ex-soldiers. Such as they are, it is not true that they are armed by the Japanese Government or that they have any under- standing with the Japanese Government as to their course of action. THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR 59 One may safely deny, If so preposterous a story merits denial, that the Japanese Government has any designs whatever on Hawaii, or that there is the slightest excuse in reason for the costly fortifications we are erecting about Honolulu at Pearl Harbor. For the Japanese to seize territory of the United States would be simple suicide. It would be the signal of their financial and therefore military col- lapse, for the "sinews of war" are not soldiers but money. It would mean the loss of their foothold on the continent of Asia. There is nothing so important to Japan as the retention of her financial credit, now most jealously guarded, and with this the rulers of Japan will take no chances. Nor have the Japanese any desire to provoke the enmity of America even were it safe to do so. America is her best customer, handling one third of her exports. The historic relations of the two nations have been most friendly. Certainly there have been local infelicities for which neither America nor Japan was responsible, but none of these have affected the traditional friendship. On the positive side, the Japanese as a whole have a sincere admiration and affection for America. One reason for this is that some hundreds of their ablest men were educated in American Universities. And the Japanese student adds to our traditional col- lege loyalty an intensified touch of his own, whereby 6o WAR AND WASTE memories of Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Wisconsin, Stanford, and the rest become transfigured in a light of Shintoism. For every Japanese is an idealist. " Scratch a Japanese, even one of the most advanced type," says Professor Nitobe, "and you will find a Samurai." And to those who have been freely educated in American colleges, this Samuraism works itself out in loyalty to America as well as to Japan. The "designs of Japan on the Philippines" may be very briefly dismissed. Japan does not want the Philippines. She could not afford the luxury. She could not hold them nor control them nor take them as a gift. She has her hands quite full with Formosa and Korea. It would be almost as difficult for Japan to administer at long range the affairs of the Philippines as for us to attempt to administer the affairs of all Spanish America. The usual idea that Japan is an over-crowded nation that must seek colonies for her people is not more than half true. The wonderfully rich rice lands of the southern half of the country are certainly crowded, the farms or gardens averaging less than three acres each. But the Japanese, if fairly com- fortable, like to live in a crowd. Personal privacy is not their ideal. The homeless rice-field hands will leave their native region to go anywhere where wages are paid. The thrifty burghers and farmers, who THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR 6i alone form the stuff for colonies, will not go. The north of Japan, a rich country, fit, not for rice, but for the cultivation of hay, cereals, and grazing animals, was long left unoccupied and even now fills up slowly. The rush to Korea and Manchuria was not of colonists but of adventurers, and most of these were soon forced to return. A recent report by Michitaro Sindo on colonial possibilities in Peru was wholly adverse although the same investigator finds real possibilities in Brazil. There is probably but one nation "under the sun" that would take the Philippines as a gift, and this one for ulterior reasons, for "the mirage of the map," for the prestige of domination, and not for any strength or profit that the possession of these islands would bring her. For the last two years the war scares of the "Armor- Plate Press " have largely centred about Magdalena Bay, in Lower California. To understand the actual facts involved in that situation, we must premise two things: the sale of concessions by Mexico and the optimism of Japanese promoters. The Govern- ment of Mexico has offered its public lands, its fishing rights, and other national properties freely to bidders of any nation. The aim of this policy is to raise money as well as to develop national re- sources. Among the Japanese residents of California are 62 WAR AND WASTE some business men of high order. Others there are without credit or capital, who are eager to take ventures such as they see men of other nationalities taking. Promoters are promoters everywhere and a Japanese adventurer may throw out hints of the backing of rich financiers or even of partnership with the Government, when, as a matter of fact, he may have neither money nor credit and the Government no knowledge of his existence. Three different Mexican concessions are involved in the Magdalena Bay situation: the Sandoval fishing concession of the shores of Lower California, the "Chartered Company's" concession of desert lands, and a fishery concession about Salina Cruz. Magdalena Bay lies in the rainless belt of Lower California, a little nearer to Mazatlan than San Diego, as far from either or from any town as Boston is from Washington, and almost as far from Panama as it is from Boston. There is an excellent harbour, rich in fishes, in a stormless sea — a suitable place for target practice, as there are no jack-rabbits even to be disturbed. There is no town and no place for a town; for there is no fuel, no arable land, and no water except from a small brackish spring in the sand dunes. A concession covering the fishery rights to Lower California was granted some years ago to Mr. A. THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR 63 Sandoval of Los Angeles. At Magdalena Bay, Mr. Sandoval has a small cannery which puts up crabs and sea turtles. The flesh of the great tuna is salted and dried in the form in which it is used in Japan as a condiment. Other fish — corvina, sea bass, cavalla, yellowtail, and the like — run in great abundance, but these are mainly used for the manu- facture of fertilizer. It does not pay to salt them for the reason that the Mexican rock salt does not strike in quickly enough, consequently the fish dry up or spoil before curing, and other salt is too expensive. The markets for fresh fish are much too far away, and for ordinary salt fish there is no market nearer than China. There are now about one hundred people at Magdalena Bay, six of them (not 75,000) are Japa- nese, as many Chinese, the rest mostly Mexicans. The Mexicans are not good fishermen. At places along the Lower California coast the Japanese dive for abalone, the meat as well as the shell of this big sea-snail commanding a good price. Since 1907, the Japanese Foreign Office has granted no passports for labourers to come to any part of North America. It is therefore not possible for them to increase this colony very much. It is, however, apparently true that individual Japanese have made inquiries in regard to the concession. 64 WAR AND WASTE Mr. Takesaki, the foreman of the cannery at Mag- dalena Bay, was formerly in charge in a sardine cannery (now closed) on the Inland Sea of Japan. It is said that this enterprise failed on account of the prohibitory tariff on tin. Meanwhile, Mr. Sandoval is developing the fisheries under his control as well as he can with French capital — not Japanese — and he hopes to bring fishermen from Europe. No one could object to a French cannery at Magdalena Bay or to a Japanese cannery or a Chinese any more than to an English railway from the city of Mexico to Vera Cruz. It is only the exigencies of the Armor- Plate Trust that lend magnitude to such netty ventures. But the "Armor-Plate Press" has a second holo on Magdalena Bay. The "Chartered Company of Lower California," managed by a California pro- moter and said to be financed by a New Hampshire lumberman, holds an option on a tract of desert about Magdalena Bay. This Is said, on dubious au- thority, to contain 8,000 square miles, or five million acres. Authority a shade better places it at two million acres. It is offered at a few cents per acre (10 to 25 cents according to the current newspapers). It is reported that an investigation made by an English syndicate pronounced the land worthless and the title doubtful. But recently a Japanese THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR 65 gentleman of San Francisco went down to look at this concession. This man is known in California mainly as one of the owners or promoters of a bank which failed through its efforts to secure friends by- making loans on inadequate security. In any event it is known that he had control of no capital and represented only himself. No purchase was made and nothing happened on his return. So far as I know the land title still rests with the Mexican Government. It might be presumed, without proof, that the promoter went on a pass, and that his visit was desired in order to advertise the lands in ques- tion. The incident may mark an apparent effort to induce some one in America to buy these worthless lands to keep out the Japanese. Already the writer has received one letter urging that the Carnegie Peace Endowment should undertake the purchase. How many letters the directors may have received can only be guessed. Perhaps none; perhaps the force of the effort may have been spent on Congress. But perhaps those who may hold this option on land had no idea of using Japan as a lever toward finding a purchaser. Perhaps the Japanese promoter went down on his own initiative. The low price may to him have spelled opportunity. His highly respected countryman, George Shima, "the potato king of California, " has become a millionaire by investments 66 WAR AND WASTE in overflowed lands in the Sacramento basin. But what of it anyhow? Suppose a certain tract in Mexico passes from American to Japanese control — or French or German or Chinese. What is there in the transaction to serve as a "menace" to the United States? But it "menaces" the Panama Canal, and the canal is nearly three thousand miles away. Moreover, in all this discussion it must be remembered that, whatever be the fact about per- sonal ownership, the Constitution of Mexico forbids the alienation of any of its territory. Although men of all civilized nations may hold land titles in Mexico as they hold land in the United States, not a foot of Mexican territory can ever be sold to another nation. And it is certain that nothing would induce Japan to buy a foot of it under any circumstances. With our senators, our newspapers, and our "Armor- Plate" patriots on the alert, it would doubtless prove a most costly holding. On this our "dock- yard strategists" are all agreed. The latest adventure to disturb the patriotic syndicates is that of the fishery concessions about Acapulco. These are a thousand miles from Mag- dalena Bay and reputed to be in "dangerous prox- imity to the Canal Zone, " to which they are as near as Havana is to Boston. From the best available authority it appears that THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR 67 the Government of Mexico has offered three fishery- concessions along this part of her coast, each of about 200 miles in extent, the one centring at Man- zanillo, the second near Acapulco, and the third at Salina Cruz. The rental price has been for each 3,000 pesos ($1,500) — this covering a period of ten years. The Toyo Hege Kaisha (Oriental Whaling Company) of Tokyo has obtained an option at a special and much reduced price for the three. The purchase has not yet been made, but a group, under direction of Mr. Okayama of the whaling company, has been formed to investigate the fishery possi- bilities of this region. It is understood that a com- mission is now (since January, 1912) in Mexico, assisted by a fishery expert, a diver, a ship's carpen- ter, with two or three stenographers and interpreters. These concessions involve the right to sell fresh fish in six Mexican cities — Mexico, Guadalajara, Puebla, Colima, and two others — at a rate not exceeding 12 centavos (6 cents) a pound. They carry no shore rights as to the building of wharves, nor any matter of possible interest to the Japanese Government. In spite of the abundance of fish, it is not clear that these concessions have any prac- tical value. Fish canning is a precarious occupation under the tropical sun. However, new possibilities may exist among the 68 WAR AND WASTE shellfish of the coast and perhaps something may be done with sea turtles. But, though wishing all success to the whaling company, we may well leave their operations to themselves. They need no advice from us. Still less is it worth our while to worry over the dangerous menace of their presence. Nor need we continue to throw millions on millions of good money after bad to be certain that our coasts are perfectly defended against imaginary foes.* It is no tribute to our "Yankee horse sense" that we develop our national defenses at the bidding of the armament lobby. It is no evidence of our pa- triotic forethought that we spend nearly a million dollars every day to ward off imaginary attacks from an outworn, bankrupt, and impotent medievalism which could not harm us if it would and would not if it could. Nor are we different in this from other nations. In Europe everywhere, in Japan, in South America, in Australia, and even in New Zealand, in every land which has an army and navy, actual or potential, the same story is told. The larger the actual army or navy, the more effective the war scares, because the number engaged in promoting them is correspondingly increased. But the stage is set. The play is on and war *Since this was written I learn that the Oriental Whaling Company has abandoned this investigation, the concessions being practically worthless. THE PERENNIAL BOGEY OF WAR 69 scares and war waste in time of peace will not end until we develop a robust public opinion which shall realize the fact that feudalism is dead, that war is dying, and that the time has come for nations to devote their mind and money to things more real and more pressing. CHAPTER IV TAXING THE COST OF LIVING I WISH to call attention to one of the causes of the rise in the cost of living: that is, the increase of taxation the world over, due to the world-wide increase of war waste and debt. • In most discussions of the " Cost of Living, " five or more different phenomena are more or less con- fused. These are (i) the "cost of high living," (2) the insistence on comfortable living on the part of the American people, (3) the increased cost of living in a new and rich country, (4) the cost of the protec- tive tariff and of the interests that find shelter behind it, and (5) the rising price of all articles as measured in terms of gold. This last is necessarily accompanied by a rise in interest rates during the period of transition to price levels. This in turn leads to a fall in value of government bonds and other securities bearing a low rate of interest. And this fall in the purchasing power of gold constitutes the real problem. The others are merely local incidents. 70 . TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 71 But the rising cost of living affects all parts of the civilized world more or less in the same way. It is most distressing in those regions where the body of the people are nearest the bread line, but it is just as real in other regions. The actual rise in cost may be greatest in amount when progress is greatest, as some have claimed, but it is no greater in its effect on the people. It has been asserted that it is most felt in Japan and in America. In Japan it causes greatest distress. In America most fuss is made over it. But it is just as definite everywhere else. That similar conditions exist the world over is a matter of common knowledge. In a recent address before the United States Senate, Mr. Burton has gathered statistical records and consular reports which show that a steady rise in nominal values of nearly every staple of life has been going on for about fifteen years, or since 1897. According to Mr. Burton the cost of a year's rations in the United States Army in 1897 was ^45.62; in 1900, $63.87; in 1912, $86.32. The "Englishman's dollar," according to Sauerbeck, with a purchasing power of 100 cents in 1897, fell to 97 in 1898, to 83 in 1900, to 86 in 1905, and to 78 in 1908. The American dollar, more nimble in its decline, fell from a level of 100 cents in 1897 to 96 in 1898, 81 in 1900, 77 in 1905, and 70 in 191 1. The average increase in ten years in those staple 72 WAR AND WASTE^ foods which cover the needs of the workingman is about so per cent. The reports from other nations indicate the same general increase of retail cost. It is necessary, therefore, to seek an equally world- wide cause. To ascertain the cause, we must first analyze our problem and eliminate those factors which are due to other than world-wide causes or which were equally effective more than fifteen years before. Mr. James J. Hill has said that the problem is not that of the "High Cost of Living," but of the "Cost of High Living." The automobile, for example, is a costly tool, a costly toy, a costly method of gaining or regaining health. Many a house has been mort- gaged to pay for an automobile. To live in general in a fashion typified by the automobile is high living, and high living the world over is and always has been costly. But the men who own automobiles find a way to pay for them. They could not keep them long on any other terms. Their use may wear out the aggregate of national wealth, but it does not wear out my wealth if I do not own one. That you own an automobile makes me none the poorer, unless the machine in some way gives you power to dodge taxes or in some other way to oppress your fellows. The automobile becomes an economic factor mainly as TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 73 the effort expended in building them is taken from other and more useful lines of effort. The growth of fine hotels, parallel with our growing wealth, does not itself make the things I buy more expensive, if I do not buy them in an expensive place. The ex- tended use of automobiles tends to make automo- biles cheaper, and the use of luxuries widens the range of industrial operations. The cost of high living falls on the man who lives high. It does not raise the cost of rice In Japan above the reach of the farmer who creates it. The "high prices he receives avail nothing if tax burdens rise still higher. There were in 191 1 only about two hundred automobiles in Japan, and the nation has not even built roads over which these may be run. High living has extended itself largely over our country since 1897 in conformity with the general prosperity, in which the people at large participate more fully than is the case in Asia or in Europe. And broadly speaking, the cost of high living is an American affair. The rest of the world has taken little increased part in It, but they have suffered equally from the continuous rise in cost of luxuries as well as of necessities. As to the ordinary cost of living comfortably in the United States, measured In commodity prices, It Is a matter of common observation that it is always 74 WAR AND WASTE higher than in Europe. It is likewise higher in some parts of Europe than in others, highest perhaps in Holland and in England, lower in Belgium, France, and the south of Europe generally. In all these countries it is easier to make economies, cheaper to get along if economies must be practised. But to live well, to be clean, comfortable, well housed, well washed, and well fed, the cost is not much less than in the United States. The difference which actually exists is In part due to the higher wages in America. Workingmen are less numerous, less oppressed, better paid, a condi- tion which in turn follows reluctantly the higher cost of living. Their scale of living is higher than in Europe and there is a far more widespread deter- mination to better the conditions whatever they are. Prices are higher in a new region, an exploitable region, a region of large opportunities, a region in which men have not settled into classes, class-con- sciousness, and class hopelessness. With all this, the American distinctly likes to be comfortable, to have good food well served, to live in new and clean houses, and to have attractive conditions when he travels and when he stays at home. Again, as there are no hard and fast lines of caste in America, the number of those who rise from self- TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 75 dependence to affluence or competence is far larger than in any other country. While we do not take seriously our hereditary aristocracy, and while we look askance on the very rich as doubtful of their methods, we are likely to attribute incompetence or aimlessness to a man who in middle life cannot give a certain degree of comfort to himself and his family, with a bit left over for the future. All this is part of the explanation of the high cost of living in America, but no part of the reason why this cost was higher in 191 1 than in 1897 or 1905. Other influences which make for a higher cost of living in America as compared with Europe are the waste of fire and the consequently additional cost of insurance, the lack of coordination in distribution of farm products and other matters, the cinching cooperation of dealers and distributors, the lack of banking facilities in the great producing West and the resultant high interest on farm mortgages, and various other features peculiar to a new and sparsely settled country. With this goes the lack of postal savings banks and of the disposition to use them, the lack hitherto of a parcels post, lack of open mar- kets and of many other contrivances which in Europe help a labourer's money to go farther than it does here. The waste of the toleration of fraudulent cor- 76 WAR AND WASTE porations and of get-rich-quick schemes is also a visible factor to our disadvantage. The demand for statutes which prevent the sale of imaginary values ("blue-sky laws") is an evidence that the people are awakening to a realization of the cost of tolerating swindlers and swindling operations. In the same connections though with a different emphasis, we may mention the financial manipula- tions of those agencies commonly designated as "Wall Street." The tariff for protection Is riot far away from these, and it is indirectly an agency not only in raising prices but in making them continuously higher. This is due to the shelter or leverage it offers to schemes for stifling competition. The primal purpose of the protective tariff Is to raise prices, in the interest of home producers. In some cases It fails to have that effect, as in the case of grain. In its grain supplies, Europe Is dependent on America, the price being fixed in Liverpool, the great storehouse, or In London, the great clearing house, of the world. In accordance with the exist- ing competition. The price at home is necessarily lower, in a degree proportionate to the cost of car- riage to London. In some cases, also, better methods of production, or the stress of over-production, render the price of TAXING THE COST OF LIVING ^^ some articles at home lower than that ruling in London. But in the case of most goods which are or which may be imported, the price in America is enhanced by the amount of the duty. The suit of clothing which the writer is wearing as he writes cost him $35 in London with an additional duty of $21 in New York. In San Francisco it costs about $60. A certain piece of dress goods known to me cost $30 in London, the duty is $18, and the article is offered in a fashionable store at $80. Part of the cost is chargeable to the element of fashion, and fashion, like fortune, is a fickle jade. So a high increment of profit is necessary, for a left-over garment of to-day's fashion may have no value at all to-morrow. In general terms, however, the protective tariff is the largest element in our American high prices, especially of clothing and of manufactured articles. No one can estimate how much it has operated to raise prices, for the details depend on the degree in which manufacturers and jobbers can use it as a leverage in forcing up the prices of their wares. But this does not explain the rising cost of living. The American tariff has not been materially changed in these fifteen years. It is even occasionally "re- duced downward, "as Mr. Dooley sagely observed " to the point where the poorest are within its reach." The reduction is so cleverly done that its pinch on the 78 WAR AND WASTE consumer has never been relaxed. Protection is a factor in the increased cost of living mainly in this way. The last fifteen years have enabled the beneficiaries of the tariff, through trusts and other similar agencies, to get steadily a firmer strangle- hold on the ultimate consumer: that Is, the people generally. In this way they have not only main- tained high prices but made them still higher. To do the one is to have power to do the other. It is not my purpose to discuss the tariff question further than to insist that from every point of view of good government the special privileges involved in "pro- tection" are violations of the American principle of "equality before the law," and opposed to the people's interests. But we need not deny that tariff protection has diversified our Industries, encouraged the uce of nat- ural advantages, and It may have even Increased the aggregate of national wealth. It does all this because its main function is to transfer money Into the pockets of the man of enter- prise. There are no other pockets from which to take It save those of the common man. To promote the wealth of the wealthy Is a most commendable thing in national finance. It Is in the hands of the rich that public wealth accumulates most rapidly. Wealth flows Into their hands, even without the aid TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 79 of privilege, but every special privilege helps. The fact that a man is poor shows that he is in fact not a proper custodian of funds. There is no doubt that a community is richer with one great corporation which bestrides the earth, and has kings and bankers, senates and churches, tributary to its power, than with a thousand business firms each striving simply to collect a living for the partners. The process of forming a perfect American Beauty Rose by pinch- ing off all competing buds has been commended as a model of financial development. By the same proc- esses we may develop a giant chrysanthemum, or a corporation of any sort which shall be hailed as "standard." The fact is plain. Wealth grows most rapidly when its components are in the hands of those who know how to develop wealth. If the purpose of government is to increase national wealth by the quickest and surest way, the method of protection and subsidy is the surest. It does not increase individual wealth, for the struggling little men must pay for the dominant big ones, but the method is sure and it is receiving a brilliant trial in Germany. While we investigate, harass, and dissolve our great industrial monopolies, Germany renders every assist- ance that governmental alliance, protective tariffs, and systems of rebate render possible. Every help 8o WAR AND WASTE that technical schools for managers, for experts, and for workmen can give is also at their service. The value of this feature to every element in the indus- trial world cannot be over-estimated. This phase of German administration is a model to the world, although in a democracy the theory and purpose of technical and industrial education must be different. In Germany, the work of the individual is intensified and encouraged in order thereby to exalt the State. In America, the State belongs to the people and still exists for their benefit. In England, the two ideas still struggle for mastery without complete victory of either. The primary business of a democracy is justice, neither to make money for itself nor to help its citizens to make it, but to see that all have an equally fair chance to do so. In this sense "America means opportunity," and nothing more. Old age pensions, enforced insurance, and the like at the most make slight amends for lost opportunity. But in the world at large, the world of dukes and barons, of generals and admirals, of kings of finance and lords of exploitation, the ideal of equality before the law does not yet obtain. Wealth calls for wealth, privilege for more privilege. It is plain, however, that if any one grows rich in a community the whole community is the richer TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 8i for it. The lustre of his prosperity is in a fashion reflected from every face. This creates as it were an atmosphere of affluence, and where affluence is, all the other charms of life soon gather. There is nothing so fascinating as the movement of enter- prise, and nothing accelerates it so much as govern- mental push, the transfer of the force of the many to the designs of the few. One feature of all this is a heightened cost of living. As the elements of prosperity gradually strengthen their hold on the articles they handle or create, we find that Senator Burton is right in claiming that this rise in cost Is greatest In the progressive countries of the world. When, In 1897, world prices began to rise, with them came the rise of trusts, industrial combinations, and enterprises extended and expanded by means of earnings based on false values — that Is, on watered stock. These are not peculiar to the United States, but have been more or less dominant throughout the range of the "Great Powers" and of their colonial dependencies. These are not altogether or even mainly an out- growth of the protective tariff, although in almost every case and In every nation their influence has favoured the extension of "protection" and from protection they have drawn increasing strength. 82 WAR AND WASTE This increase of monopoly, this accession of shelter and leverage toward the maintenance of prices, must be a factor in the rising cost of living. How great a factor this is, perhaps no one is prepared to say. Certainly prices would be lowered, and their continued rise afterward checked In some degree, if protection were withdrawn wherever It furnishes a check to competition. And every phase of protec- tion of wealth-producing through taxation must be of this nature. But rising cost is not confined to America alone nor to those countries which have most felt the bene- ficent influence of the protective tariff. The tariffs of England are laid for revenue only, and in that country as in the United States there has been a steady rise In price of all staple articles. The fact that the "Englishman's dollar" has fallen to 78 only, while the American's dollar stands at 70, may measure In part the effects of privilege in stifling competition. For world effects, we must look for world-wide causes. Free trade, fair trade, taxed trade and trade untaxed — these matters, . while entering into the total of money stress and money abundance, are more or less local and temporary in their chief effects. Preceding the year 1897, we had a financial panic especially severe In America, a period in which TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 83 liquidation was imperative and money as a con- sequence scarce and dear. The prices of almost all articles and notably those of farm products were abnormally low, and the farmer with the rest of us was in debt and distress. This same period of rising prices has been accom- panied by a great increase in the output of gold mining. In the fifteen years following 1897, the amount of gold in the world has been increased by half, from about $7,500,000,000 to $11,000,000,000. The average annual increment is now more than $400,000,000, about $100,000,000 of this being con- sumed in the arts. And these sums are cumulative, the amount each year being added to the previous stock. It is natural to assume that, as the price of gold as measured in other products has steadily fallen as the stock of gold has risen, the one fact has been the cause of the other. It is not clear to what extent this is true, nor even that it is true at all, although most economists admit it as a partial explanation of the rising cost of living. The rising rate of interest under the pressure of demands from Germany, Austria, and other over-taxed nations indicate that we have, not a surplus, but a real shortage of gold. If the over-production of gold is advancing beyond the demand it is clear that its value must fall. But 84 WAR AND WASTE it is not evident that the demand is much affected, the one way or the other, by the increase in quantity of its measure of value. Gold is the nominal basis of credit, and the total gold reserve of the world is very small compared with the bonded debts of civilization (about $60,000,000,000), and the debt increases more rapidly than the reserve. It is also uncertain what value, if any, we must give to another factor, that of waste in seeking for gold. Prodigious sums are each year wasted or transferred to undesirable hands through the exploitation of mines which do not pay or through the operations of swindlers. If these sums be added to the cost of gold there is not much aggregate profit in gold mining. It is not clear that great accessions to the gold stock in the past have materially or permanently raised prices. If this were an important element, it should not have been felt in 1897 nor in the years immediately following, but its force should be cumu- lative corresponding to the increase of the stock of gold. Apparently also the gold output of the future is likely to become less rather than greater. While not denying the reality of the gold increase as a factor in raising prices, we may well question its leading position in raising cost as distinguishe4 from prices and in effecting an abnormal distribution of the wealth it produces. TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 85 More important, it would seem, is the fact that under new processes of metallurgy gold can now be obtained at a cost lower than the cost fifteen years ago. The cyanide processes extract upward of 90 per cent, of the actual gold, while only about 60 per cent, was obtained by the cruder methods. The great mines of the Rand, it is said, with their output of about $1,759,000,000, could not have been worked by the old processes. The value of all gold must be affected by the cost of obtaining more. In so far as gold values are the result of cost of production, the better methods must tend to lower them. It is not clear, however, that the cost of production is the chief factor that regulates these values. What the value of the factor of the cyanide process may be in cheapening gold values, no one can say. But it seems certain that in this regard the climax is already reached. Not many new gold mines have been opened under the stimulus of cheapened methods. The impetus tO' mining speculation is already spent, and while it lasted it was productive of waste rather than of wealth. Most of the new gold has come from the working over of the abandoned dump heaps of earlier mining operations. The best mining engineers claim that the recent increase in gold production is "due to the discovery of a process, not to the discovery of mines. 86 WAR AND WASTE The enlarged supply comes from the old sources and the Increment is constantly lessened as the old material is worked over with the resources of modern science. To be sure, there may be a discovery of either still another process of extraction or of un- imagined mines, but one is as little likely as the other. Meanwhile, with the constant cheapening of gold, there is a constant tendency to lessen the frenzy of the attack upon the old stock of raw material of what may be called the manufactured article. For, in fact, the new processes are almost processes of manu- facture. So many yards of material, so much cost for working, so much profit, and ultimately an end." In any event, whatever weight we may attach either to the increased output of gold, or to the in- creased cheapness of production, there can be no doubt that in both regards the world has reached a practical equilibrium. There remains but one other important world factor in the world-wide cost of living. This is found in the increase of taxes since 1897, and in the withdrawal, as supported by these taxes, of millions of men from productive labour. This change followed the costly and calamitous Boer War, and was marked by the great increase in naval expenses, by the building of dreadnaughts costing ^6,cxx5,ooo apiece or more, and of super- TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 87 dreadnaughts ranging upward to ^15,000,000, with parallel increases of expenditures military and civil in all directions and almost everywhere. These expenditures were added to the rapidly growing interest charges on the bonded indebtedness of the world, the bulk of this being the debt for past wars, with a large and rapidly growing indebtedness for money borrowed for municipal and other com- mercial or industrial expansion. No matter who holds the bonds, interest must be paid, and to pay interest swells the burdens of taxation. A lent dollar, which has the certainty of being more and more heavily taxed with each succeeding year, calls for an increased rate of interest proportional to its prospective loss in value when it is to be repaid. Any article must rise in price when its value is measured in terms of a progressively reduced because overtaxed dollar. If our view is correct, the fall of gold is closely related to reckless financial administration of the leading nations of the world. Not one of these has any adequate check on extravagant appropriations on the part of its cabinets or legislative bodies. To spend money is a chief function of both these groups, whether in a monarchy or a democracy. Representative government is even more lavish than most kings could ever afford to be. 88 WAR AND WASTE In the Economiste Frangaise, M. Leroy-Beaulieu has lately declared that "the world at the present moment is excessively badly governed. It has rarely been so badly governed. It is in the hands of incurable prodigals and improvident experimenters. Public credit can be maintained by a vigorously strict financial management, full of foresight," and that no nation at present seems to possess. In 191 1, the bonded debt of the nations amounted to about $37,000,000,000. These sums were virtually pawn checks, the cost of wars already fought. The annual interest charge on these was more than $1,400,000,000. The annual naval expenses of the seven "most progressive" — that is, most waste- ful — nations rose from about $250,000,000 in 1897 to $629,000,000 in 191 1, approaching $1,000,000,000 in 191 3. The total annual expense for army and navy of these nations rose from about $900,000,000 in 1897 to $1,742,000,000 in 1911. The number of men withdrawn from productive work rose corre- spondingly. Meanwhile, municipal indebtedness rose in like proportions, with its burden of taxes and of officialism. The bonded debt of the British cities was in 1897 about $1,500,000,000, in 1911 about $3,800,000,000. In France the bonded municipal debt was in 1906 about $800,000,000, in 191 1 about $1,200,000,000. In Germany the municipal debt of TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 89 most cities has doubled every ten years for a long time. The aggregate in 1906 was ^1,8^5,000,000. It must now be at least $2,500,000,000. The municipal debts of the United States aggregate somewhat more. They stood in 1902 at $1,765,- 000,000. In San Francisco, for example, we had in 1902 a budget of $6,500,000 annually. In 1913 this budget is $15,000,000. The valuation of city property in 1902 was $413,000,000. In 1913, it is $510,000,000. It is estimated that in 1921 the valuation will be $753,000,000, the tax, $27,000,000. The total bonded debt of the world, war debt and municipal debt, is somewhat more than $60,000,000,- 000, or about half the estimated value of all the property in the United States, or about the same as the total wealth of Great Britain. The interest on this sum is not less than $2,500,000,000 per year. The cost of armies and navies with collateral expenses stands now at nearly the same figure. These sums are paid each year in one fashion or another. They are -paid by taxes, and about half of the sum of all these taxes is exacted in addition to all the taxes paid by the people in 1897. The severity of taxation varies, of course, with different regions, but the percentage collected on every dollar of working capital or income has its reflex effect on reducing the value of that dollar in 90 WAR AND WASTE the clearing house of the world. In the course of an argument to show that Germany is not suffering from tax-exhaustion, but has still the means to conduct "the next war" (the war against Great Britain), General Freidrich von Bernhardi thus discusses taxation in Germany: "That the German people should have reached the limit of their tax-paying ability is quite impossible. The taxes in Prussia have risen from 1893-4 to 1910-11 but 56 per cent, per head of population, from ^4.90 to ^7.67, tax and tariff together. In the rest of Germany the per cent, of increase is doubtless similar." For army and navy every individual in Germany pays yearly ^4, in France $5, in England $7.25. In this are counted direct expenditures only, ex- clusive of correlated expenses of interest, pen- sions, and the enforced idleness of thousands of men who might be engaged in productive indus- try. Meanwhile other thousands, unable to care for themselves through incompetence, drunkenness, vice, or congested crowding, are left at home to be likewise a burden on labour. To all this waste must be added the direct burdens of the two great wars of the last fifteen years, the Boer War and the war in Manchuria, their enormous waste going to swell the tax load of the world, for war anywhere is eco- TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 91 nomic waste which spreads sickness throughout the economic system of civilization. It is said that the total tax rate in New York is two and a quarter times as high as it was in 1897. The indirect taxation of protection which no one can measure has risen in still higher proportion. It then may be affirmed in round numbers that the tax expenses of the civilized world have doubled since 1897. The wealth of the world has risen, but not in the same proportion, and much of the apparent increase in wealth is due to this very fact, of the fall in the value of the measuring standard of gold, due in large part at least to excessive taxation. And the tendency of all these operations of debt, borrow- ing, tariff protection, and the like is to swell the wealth of the banker and the lord at the expense of the common folk. Many little streams of privilege join to swell a great river. All the nations of the earth are devising new methods of taxation: income tax, inheritance tax, syndicate concessions, government monopolies — liquor, tobacco, salt, camphor, railroads — without giving up the old forms of exaction. The population of the United States In 191 1 was 93,722,509 persons. The tax burden of city, state, and nation amounts to $38.50 per capita, "establish- ing a record of public expenditure which no other 92 WAR AND WASTE nation on the globe approaches or presumably is anxious to emulate. " All taxes, however levied, constitute a confiscation of private property for public purposes of greater or less importance to the individual. A large and varying percentage represents avoidable and there- fore harmful waste. All these burdens fall finally on those groups which have least power of resistance. All of them tend to reduce the future value of the monetary unit. As most of these imposts are made through indirect tariff exactions, proportioned not to wealth or income but only to consumption, they fall far more heavily on the farmer and the labourer than on the man of wealth. The wealthiest Ameri- can, as Mr. Fels observes, "can eat only one meal at a time and only three or four meals a day. " A poor man does not eat as much as a rich man, but the difference is less than the difference between their property holding. The increase of taxation falls on the middleman as well as on the others. He has, however, a certain power of self-protection by putting up his prices. If he can maintain them singly or in cooperation through monopolies or trusts, the producer or the consumer must suffer. In any event the ultimate incidence of increased taxation must fall on those social units which have least ability to strike back. TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 93 As matters are, these groups are the workingmen, the men on fixed salaries, and those dependent on annuities. As the purchasing power of a dollar will be less in ten years, the rate of interest tends to rise. It tends to fall with the settled civilization of a coun- try, with the relative decline in opportunities for special enterprise or successful exploitation. Since 1897 the tendency of interest rates has been upward. At the same time bonded debts bearing a low rate of interest have steadily fallen in value. It is recorded that the British Consols, once "the premier investment" of the world, at 2| per cent, stood at 113 in 1897. They are now quoted at 73 1. Calculated on a 3 per cent, basis, their real value in 1897 would have been ^123.28, their actual value at present $93.90. Similar depreciation has taken place in the values of the bonded securities of France and Germany, and in general in all "gilt-edged," low- interest bonds. This has turned public attention to the local mortgage which bears a higher rate of interest. People have been led into a reckless prefer- ence for securities with uncertain basis over the smaller but certain earnings of the low-priced bonds. But all recent national borrowings have been made at a higher rate. The Government of Prussia, for example, has paid 5.20 per cent, in New York on short period loans. 94 WAR AND WASTE To sum up: In the judgment of the present writer the primary factor in the rise of the cost of living the world over is the fall in the value of gold due to excessive and growing financial exactions. In other words, it is produced by the steadily growing encroachment of government on the individual through the Indirect Tax and the Deferred Payment, the two agencies of tyranny in the past, now used for the self-oppression of democ- racy. The function of government and government of- ficials is to spend and not to save, and each govern- ment has the medieval obsession of spending for show and for defense against imaginary dangers rather than for matters which directly concern and directly help the people. To state the problem in another form: The common man has too many mouths to feed besides his own and those of his family. The long roll of those fed by tax increments is steadily growing as grow the taxes which support them. It is estimated that one man in sixteen in France is a government official and one man in sixteen in New Zealand also. The percentage is not very much lower in England and Germany. The general fact that such oificials are often chosen through favourit- ism or for political reasons rather than for merit increases the burden on those who have no part in TAXING THE COST OF LIVING 95 the choosing. One cause of the spread of the social democracy in Europe is found in the exclusion in some countries of its adherents from the public service. To shut out of the public service any type of men on account of political ideas makes for ineffi- ciency, corruption, and discontent. To add to these burdens we have in all lands the hundreds of preda- tory rich and the thousands of desultory poor, equally a burden and a growing burden on society because their earnings are less than the cost of their yearly keep. A steadily increasing number of men are economically idle through employment in the extension of war armament. As the navies fade away after twelve or fifteen years of idleness, the effort expended on them is economic loss. It is said on good authority that one man in every six in England is in some way personally or finan- cially interested in the extension of the army] or navy. All these are so many more mouths to be fed by the common man of the nations. If the tax- payer had only his own to feed, the law of supply and demand would soon abate the rise in cost of living. The wealth of the world increases amazingly through scientific invention, through commerce, and through the betterment of social relations. Its nominal wealth is also rapidly increased through 96 WAR AND WASTE the fall in the value of its standard of measure. Still more rapidly rises the cost of administration, and the greatest of the items of expense are in lines which are wholly unproductive either of wealth or of well being to those who pay the taxes. At the best, these expenses constitute a vague insurance against evils which may never come, and which they help to create. If these views are at all correct, and they are presented tentatively and in a spirit of modesty, we find in this rising cost a dangerous portent in world economics. It is the sign of a condition that must be worse before it can grow better, for there is no visible sign that any nation, whether monarchy or republic, is likely to reduce its army of non-producers, to pay its debts or to abate its taxes. The enforced assessments of the governments are causing a great and growing unrest among the people. When we consider how persistently the ultimate citizen is imposed upon, under the guise of patriot- ism and protection, we can appreciate the remark of Bernard Shaw that "Man is the only animal that esteems himself great in proportion to the number and voracity of his parasites. " CHAPTER V THE INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE IN THE recent Pujo committee mvestigation of the Money Power of New York, one phrase came to the front, the "Interlocking Di- rectorate." We should hold on to this phrase, before letting it slip back into the dark vaults of the bank, for it has a wealth of significance, and it will have much more before the world gets through with it. In brief, the " Interlocking Directorate " is a device whereby one great financial institution keeps itself in touch with many others, insuring unity of action and preventing cross-purposes in the industry of making money. By placing an active member of a great banking house on the inside of each one of many large enter- prises or exploiting corporations it is possible to exert an effective influence on all financial matters as well as on questions of peace and war, these resting fundamentally on finance. It was shown in this investigation that "by means of interlocking direc- 97 98 WAR AND WASTE torates eighteen financial institutions in New York, Chicago, and Boston are dominant factors in the management of 134 corporations with an aggregate capital of $25,325,000,000." Five of these in New York through 344 interlocking directorates have relations with allied or subsidiary corporations hav- ing resources amounting to $22,245,000,000. Whether this great force of unanimity in finance is used for good or evil in our country, I do not pretend to say. It certainly makes for stability. It allows great facilities for money making without any actual increase of values. It provides machin- ery for a sort of financial suction. When the inter- locking directorates choose to work together, their simultaneous rise and fall bears a likeness to a gigantic pump, which draws up gold as well as water. In this Pujo investigation, the central figure of this combination is quoted as testifying that "a bank which should use its power for evil would promptly lose it by the withdrawal of deposits." This statement is true in a limited sense only. That banks are kept from over-reaching by the alertness of their depositors Is certainly not the fact. This statement, at the most, applies to one form of evil only — namely, the robbery of depositors. Of this the great bankers have never been accused. The question at issue is that of taking advantage INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 99 of the public at large, using the money of depositors to the prejudice of other interests. So long as banks or corporations make money for those on the inside, depositors and stockholders will certainly stay with them. The legitimacy of the "Interlocking Direc- torate" is to be tested by its effect on the interests of those who are outside. It is likewise not an answer to criticisms of Ameri- can conditions to say that the "Interlocking Direc- torate" is a successful method in Europe, that it is the avowed policy of all the other great nations of the world, that it is everywhere else "approved by governments and public sentiment as essential to the great enterprises of these days whether govern- mental or corporate." It is indeed the method of Europe. It is highly developed in Europe because it fits perfectly into schemes of imperialism. In Europe, as in America, it promotes financial stability. It also provides for the steady movement of money from "the careless hands of the public" to the vaults of the rich. It is especially the agency by which the resources of weak or barbarous countries are drawn to swell the wealth of the great centres of exploiting Christendom. The degradation of "World Politics" to the ape and tiger level is accomplished by such means. Through its agency war is no longer a matter of emotional- 100 WAR AND WASTE ism or of patriotism. Where war is permitted it is strictly a matter of business. Where war would interfere with business, it cannot break out. The French have a motto when a crime is com- mitted: Cherchez la femme — Find the woman. Now when war is threatened or a revolution breaks out — Cherchez le banquier — Seek the banker, more exactly the entrepreneur, the promoter of enterprise. Find out who makes money from the disturbance, and then trace the chain of interlocking director- ates which lead to the centre. The late Italian war had its motive, in a large part at least, in the speculations of the Bank of Rome. The seizure of Tripoli once decided upon, the unwilling king and the ever-ready populace were drawn into it. From Prof. R. G. Usher's studies it would appear that both British and German in- terests favoured or at least tolerated this war, as both sides hoped to win Italy to its side in the greater contest which is always impending and which can never come. In the final outcome, Italy was left on the side of the Triple Alliance, apparently be- cause Germany had the greater influence in abating the resistance of Turkey. The Balkan war was started with a fine stage- play of patriotic and humanitarian feeling in the foreground, while behind it was a plebeian per- INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE loi versity and intensity on which the powers had not counted. But this war was certainly tolerated and en- couraged by the masters of Europe. The initial suggestion came apparently from the Russian Minister (Hartwig) at Belgrade, but the plan of expelling the Turk by force found favour both in Paris and Berlin. The final victory rests with the French bankers: these were able to furnish war funds and war armament at a time: when Germany and Austria were verging on financial distress. Thus Austria at the end, through losing control of the Balkans, failed in the final aim of a half century or more of intrigue. "The Sick Man of Europe" has passed away at last, but the details of his demise are still conditioned on Servian and Bulgarian obstinacy, and on the necessity of safeguarding the many ventures and concessions which the Banque Ottomane and its French syndicates have in Macedonia and Thrace. And as French interests virtually control Turkey in Europe, so is Turkey in Asia dominated by the Deutsche Bank, that "nation within a na- tion," which replaces the Sultan as master of the rest of his domain. According to a Turkish writer, "Darius": "This bank drains for itself the riches of the land, exhausting not the working I02 WAR AND WASTE class alone, but a whole nation, which is dying from its operations. " A little war helps those who fish in troubled waters. A great war ruins credit, and may force rival interlocking directorates into unprofitable conflicts with each other. There is no profit in fighting lions against tigers or foxes against wolves. It is only in weak and succulent nations that a revolution may pay its way. Of the hundreds of revolutions, big and little, in the smaller countries of America, probably nine out of every ten have had behind them the money of some syndicate, American, German, English, or French, with a concession of some sort at stake. Brigandage pure and simple is not profitable nor possible for long, unless maintained by some interest working toward definite results. Most of the petty revolts in tropical America would come to a speedy end if foreign adventurers and syndicates should each and all confine themselves to legitimate business — that is, to affairs which will bear publicity. I find in a table bearing date of 1904 that the Deutsche Bank of Berlin was represented by inter- locking directorates in 240 different industrial, transportation, or exploiting companies. The Dres- dener Bank was represented in 191, the Bank of Schaaffhaussenscher in 211, the Darmstadter Bank INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATE 103 in 161, and the Disconto Gesellschaft In no. These figures may be doubled by this time, and each of these banks has many branches or minor establish- ments over which it has entire control. Doubtless, too, these and other banks in Berlin, Paris, London, and Vienna interlock with each other. They cer- tainly connect with the great armament syndicates, so powerful and so profitable, of Krupp, Schneider, , Armstrong, Vickers-Maxim, and the rest. Still more^ important and more significant is the fact that these various establishments, by interlocking arrange-l ments, stand very close to the ruling powers in their respective nations. In Germany we may fairly regard the emperor as the centre of a gigantic mutual investment organiza- tion, with its three branches of aristocracy, mili- tarism, and finance, all the powers of the state, military as well as diplomatic, being placed at the service of the combined interests. In so far as other nations are "Powers," the fact is due to the in- fluence of similar interlocking combinations. This is certainly true in England, France, and Russia, and the "Dollar Diplomacy" of the United States, now happily a matter of the past, was based on the same fundamental principle. By such means, the foreign policy of each of these great Powers Is directed to safeguard the ventures I04 WAR AND WASTE of those great banks which make a specialty of for- eign risks. In Europe the governments everywhere frankly make open cause with the interests. The foreign offices are therefore for the most part little more than the firm names under which these interlocking syndicates transact their foreign business. Whatever the virtues or the evils of the system of interlocking directorates, the evils at least are greatly accentuated when the Government becomes a part of the system, extending its operations in for- eign lands by means of secret treaties, by official guar- antees, by threats, and by force of arms. A large percentage^of the international troubles of the world arise from this one source, the use of governmental authority to promote private schemes of spoliation. Once rid of the "sphere of influence" and of the war machinery which upholds it, and once rid of the war-right of piracy at sea, we could look with con- fidence toward the dawn of international peace. CHAPTER VI THE HIGHER POLITICS THE "higher politics" of the day, the politics of international relations, seems to lie mainly outside the realm of morals. It runs on all fours with the ape and the tiger. The moral law would be fatal to its success. In its main function, its interest lies in helping to place capital of individuals in foreign lands, where by threat or persuasion it shall be made to yield better returns than investments at home. Whether the investment be in railways, forests, plantations, tobacco monopolies, armament, war loans, or war debt, the motive remains the same; private exploitation at the public cost. It means the profit for the individual, the risk for the nation. The chancelleries of Europe are the agents under the cloak of whose dignity the schemes are carried through. In some cases, it may be said with large truthfulness, the foreign office of the nation Is the firm name under which Its exploiters and loan agents carry on their own business. To lift the cloak would io6^ WAR AND WASTE give the world a new Idea of imperialism and its accessories. It might even bring about a revulsion which for a time would shake the strongholds of privilege. Referring to motives in the Balkan war, Prof. Francis Delaisi of Paris says : "The French public, which does not read the details, has an impression of the actual crisis which is singularly inexact. It imagines a France neutral, disinterested, preoccupied with the soothing of passions, with moderation of demands, and with the safe-guarding of peace. " Delaisi goes on to show that there is, instead, a very active France inside of France, a France behind the scenes busily turning the present crisis to its own financial advantage, a France which, In this period of destruction of life and property called war, Is playing a large and carefully adjusted part. , The debt of Turkey, for example, is mainly held by i French people represented by French banks. The Balkan allies are armed with French guns, and sup- ported by loans received from Paris. These in turn control the details of their financial affairs. The French Banque Ottomane at Constantinople Is a "sort of gigantic siphon which draws forth millions of the savings of Europe and pours them out on the Golden Horn. By its operations, ^200,000,000 of THE HIGHER POLITICS 107 Turkish bonds have been placed in Europe, two thirds of this amount in France. But such a bank does not stop with borrowings. It secures the best concessions of mines, railways, quays, ports, and enterprises of all sorts, Turkey is a land naturally rich and ill-exploited. The temptation is great to say to the sultan, always short of money: 'Grant us these concessions; if not, no loans.'" Thus French capital, according to Delaisi, controls most of the railways of Turkey, the Salonica-Con- stantinople road, the Smyrna-Cassaba road, the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and from Damascus to Hameah. It has the monopoly of the sale of tobacco throughout Turkey. It owns the quays of Con- stantinople, the port of Salonica, the mines of Heracleus and of Balia-Karandin, the water system of Constantinople, the gas and lighting systems of many cities, and a host of minor enterprises, the dividends, in most cases, guaranteed by the State. Turkey has thus become a tool for foreign exploi- tations of its properties and of its people; and this, over and above all the exactions of its own, with the fortunes of war which affect the people but not their exploiters, the relations of these companies will pass over the Balkan allies. The disappearance of sovereignty is not allowed to cancel debts. It is a triumph of diplomacy that the "Sick Man of io8 WAR AND WASTE Europe" is at last allowed to die, and this without discommoding his internal parasites, for whose sake he had been kept alive for the thirty-five years, since the Treaty of Berlin. But France does not stand alone in these relations. The Banque de I'Orient looks after the exploiting interests of Austria. The Deutsche Bank in Con- stantinople has furnished its part of the loans which have kept up the sultan's "internal deficit," receiv- ing in return not only the usury always demanded of derelict nations, but orders for Krupp arms, for rails, tramways, and the variety of concessions which marks the successful "dollar diplomacy" of a great foreign oflB.ce. The National Bank of Turkey of Sir Ernest Cassel has been founded to care for British "interests" in this process of disintegration. Most important of all the great concessions over which the powers are wrangling is the great Bagdad Railway from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf. The nations have come to diplomatic "blows" over this; nothing more, for great war would spoil every- thing. Sooner or later, no doubt, this concession will receive its due adjustment. By all the laws of audacity, the end should be that Turkey in Asia should become a German Egypt. There might be worse misfortune, for Turks as well as for their subject races. THE HIGHER POLITICS 109 Meanwhile the Balkan war goes on as a side issue, with its patriotisms, its horrors, and its sacrifices. The final result lies with the agents of the various conflicting interests. Usual desired ends are reached with war, or as in Morocco, by a war of such low intensity that the world hears little of it. The inside motive of the war in Tripoli seems to lie with the Banca di Roma and its real-estate investments. This war is perhaps a case of "now or never" as the close season for wars of spoliation is soon coming on. Norman Angell imagines an Englishman watching the coronation procession of soldiers of all races, and saying: "I own India, Africa, and the Antipodes, the islands of the tropic seas, the snows of the north, the jungles of far continents, and I am starving for a crust of bread. I rule all the black millions from which these legions have been drawn. My word is law in half a world, and a negro savage turned from me in disgust when I cringed before him for alms. " The reason for this is plain. Imperial England is not the Englishman's land. Those who rule the sea and those who pay the taxes are not on speaking terms with each other. It is the many that bear the burdens. It is the few who gather the rewards so profusely strewn on "the steep road of high empire." no WAR AND WASTE The governments of the world take the risks of imperialism. The great trading, mining, and ex- ploiting corporations receive the gains. In almost every large transaction of any government, there is ' this constant source of confusion. What the nation expends should be balanced by what the nation receives. It is not enough to estimate "our out- goes" on the one hand and "our receipts" on the other when the outgoes are drains on the public funds, and the receipts are private gains. This fallacy of administration may be found on every hand in con- nection with almost every item of public expenditure. Public expenditure turned to private gain is the very essence of privilege, and privilege wherever found is the betrayer of justice, the antithesis of democracy. Where privilege exists it violates the principle of equality before the law. In imperial exploitation a thousand little streams lead from home activities to swell the wealth drawn from overseas. The British navy among other things is supposed to safeguard the Indian trade. The actual profits of this trade cannot much exceed the part of naval expenditures engaged in insuring it. But this cost is paid by the British people, while the profits of trade accrue to just those few among all British citizens who are least likely to divide with the people at large, who have madegreatfortunes possible. THE HIGHER POLITICS iii The enrichment of a few at the public cost is in brief the purpose and the result of governmental promotion of outside interests. Such exploitation finds its comfortable environment in militarism, in aristocracy, in a great armament, in protection, in subsidies, in largess to the poor as a substitute for justice, in the limitation of war to commercial spoliation, in armed peace with "a sword in one hand and a withered olive branch in the other." It is not averse to arbitration, nor to a mitigation of the evils of war, using war menace at times as one of its tools of trade. Such exploitation is opposed to the spirit of democracy. Equality before the law, equal access to opportunity, the absence of privilege, and an even justice between men and interests are essentials of democracy. There is no wrong in exploitation as such. There is no reason why the people of the earth should not ultilize its resources. The evil lies in the use of the nation as a tool for private gains. This evil is in- tensified in proportion as private intrusion is backed up by armed force. A "six-power loan" represents not merely so much borrowed money, a dangerous factor in itself. It*opens a way for competing private interests to control, not for its good, the affairs of a struggling 112 WAR AND WASTE nation. The "sphere of influence" works double injury on the intruding nation, made a catspaw for private gain, and on the nation exploited in which the sovereignty of its own people is endangered. The spirit of exploitation contends against democ- racy just as vigorously in our Republic as in the states of Europe, but with this difference : our inter- nal trade vastly exceeds in importance all foreign ex- ploitation, and our people still hold the whip hand. "For, after all, this is the people's country," and still, as in earlier days, "America means opportunity." CHAPTER VII NAVAL WASTE A PETITION, bearing date of January 14, 1913, has been sent out by the Navy League of the United States, asking for "legislation of the utmost importance regarding the personnel of the navy, and for a Council of National Defense to decide on a continuing and consistent programme of naval construction." It is further stated that "to fix the country's standard, the proposed Council of National Defense should take into consideration the naval programmes and military strength of pos- sible opponents. " To this, as thus worded, there need be no serious objection, if a few modifying phrases are added. It certainly seems reasonable that a man qualified to be an admiral should reach that rank while still in the prime of life. Also there is no evident reason why a man unfitted to command a fleet should ever become admiral. It seems indeed desirable to have a Council of National Defense, but it should go much further than "3 114 WAR AND WASTE is suggested by the Navy League. For example, it should show why, how, and in what degree " national defense" by force of arms is necessary or justifiable. It]|should not merely consider "the naval programmes and military strength of possible opponents " — a very simple matter of statistics, when we agree who the "opponents" are. It should enter into the con- sideration of international relations, of the real or assigned causes of military extension in other nations, and of the financial resources from which each nation must draw its military exactions. For it is apparent that" the military strength" of a nation is not wholly nor even mainly gauged by the extent of its army or navy. In the end all such matters are determined by the sums of money which may be borrowed for military purposes or which may be exacted through taxation. The principal function of such a council should therefore be judicial, and its subject matter would lie mainly in the domain of international economics and finance. Military and naval strategy would necessarily be a secondary consideration, and the direction of these should, of course, lie in the hands of trained specialists. But the council itself should be composed primarily of statesmen representing the essential interests of the nation, the most important of which is the maintenance of international peace. NAVAL WASTE 115 Our council should therefore consider all possible sources of friction with other nations and the means of honourably removing them without recourse to violence or to the suggestion of violence. The strengthening bonds of internationalism, the in- fluence of common interests, and the rapidly growing opposition of commerce and of banking to war and warlike demonstrations should be estimated. These considerations belong to the domain of statesman- ship and but little to that of militarism. In any case, a wide survey of actual conditions should be the foundation of national policy. The mere con- sideration of "the military and naval strength of possible opponents" is but a very small side issue in the general problem. No decision of a Council of National Defense could be acceptable to our people unless based on the broad considerations indicated above. Attached to this petition we find "Sixty-seven Reasons for a Strong Navy." To these we turn with interest, and with disappointment. What "a strong navy" is, is nowhere suggested. Apparently we have never had one. Or perhaps strength is only relative, consisting In maintaining the second or third place among nations. But the vital question of to-day is, why our navy need keep its present size and cost. Why need It be made larger? I do not ii6 WAR AND WASTE find in the "sixty-seven reasons" a single one which seems to bear on either of these points. To the ordinary taxpayer, the United States navy seems very large already. Its columns of statistics indicate an amazing growth. Its cost, in expense, in round numbers, was, in 1881, $13,000,000 per year; in 1891, $22,000,000; in 1901, $56,000,000; in 191 1, $121,000,000; in 1912, $130,00,00, in 1913 in face of a strong movement toward economy $146,000,000. The Navy League does not state how much more is to-day necessary for "a strong navy," but from other sources we learn that $150,000,000 to $160,- 000,000,000 would be, for the time, an acceptable compromise figure. The British fleet, intended hitherto to double that of any possible opponent, cost, in 1881, $51,000,000; in 1891, $69,000,000; in 1901, $138,000,000, and in 191 1, $203,000,000. In Germany, under a very realistic threat of destruction of her commerce and under the spur of her all-powerful armament syn- dicates and military aristocracy, the navy expenses stood at $11,000,000 in 1881; $23,000,000 in 1 891; $38,000,000 in 1901; and $115,000,000 in 191 1. Thus the navy of the United States is now second in cost, whether in effectiveness or not, to the navy of Great Britain alone. With no super- fluous marine stations to care for, the German navy NAVAL WASTE 117 may have greater actual power. In any event, that of the United States is one of the most costly insti- tutions ever projected. Its yearly expenses exceed the endowment revenues of all the universities of the world — the foundations of intellectual advance- ment. They exceed the cost of maintenance of all industrial and technical schools of all grades, includ- ing all colleges of engineering and agriculture — the foundation of the world's industrial advancement. Now if a "strong navy" demands all this and more than this, there must be strong reasons in its favour, both absolute and relative. To give reasons for having "a navy" does not suffice. We must all admit that a seafaring nation requires a navy. It must do its part in international police, in removing the dangers of the sea, in rendering assistance to citizens in trouble abroad, in so far as this can be done without invading the actual sovereignty of other nations. Some thirty of the "sixty-seven reasons" would be met by the moderate and efficient navy of 1881, just as well as by the ten times more costly one of 1912. The fact that Great Britain spends still more than we do and that Germany has about overtaken us is likewise not an argument in itself. It is for us to show some very valid reasons why we should strive to keep in the race with these militant nations whose ii8 WAR AND WASTE problems and purposes are very different from ours. To argue that a navy Is useful does not prove that one twice as costly would be twice as useful. "The navy Is our main defense." This Is true in a military sense only, but waiving that point for a moment we ask for the completion of the sentence: defense against whom? Of the hundreds who use this phrase, no one has furnished a valid answer. The United States has not an enemy In the world. There Is apparently not a rival nation which could fight us If It would, or would fight us If it could. We are surrounded by peace, which cannot be broken except by ourselves. Apparently there Is not a nation which by naval attack could harm us, even without a "strong navy," to a degree In any way comparable to the injury to Itself, through the loss of our friendship, the loss of our trade. It Is said that once a Spanish commandant at the Presidio of San Francisco, wishing properly to salute a British ship, sent on board the vessel to borrow the necessary powder. In like fashion It would appear that the large nations In Europe or Asia, overloaded with debt and therefore short of funds, must first borrow money In New York before any of them could make war on the United States. Outside of New York the sole Important reservoirs of money are London and Paris. NAVAL WASTE 119 It is not clear that we should concern ourselves with what other nations are doing in this neck to neck Marathon race, which is entailing such risks on Europe, unless we are brought also into jeopardy. That the naval competition of Europe injures us is plain, not that it involves a war-menace to us, but that it threatens the destruction of credit, and that it has filled the world atmosphere with war talk and war scares — matters opposed to the well-being of all peoples. Because every dollar spent in armament strength- ens the financial interest in war, because it gives more volume to war scares and war talk, we believe that the war armaments of the world, so far from being a national defense, constitute in each of the armored countries the chief actual danger. We cannot say that increased armament makes for peace, when plainly, the world over. It makes for war. It makes for peace only as it brings about tax-exhaustion, and as the money-lenders of the world are no longer willing to consent to the dangers of conflict between any two of the great nations. The strained relations in Europe between the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente (due pri- marily no doubt to jealousy of rival exploiters) are being enormously accentuated by the tremendous array of armament the nations concerned have Li20 WAR AND WASTE accumulated under the guise of "national defense." Every additional ship adds to the danger of war. The great conciliating forces of internationalism — the real defense of civilized nations — have been strained as they have rarely been before. For all this, militarism and armament building have been mainly responsible. War is the business of armies and navies, and their aggregate influence the world over is for war. Great Britain has made the historic claim to the "Overlordship of the Sea," with the power, if need be, to destroy the commerce of rivals, as she once destroyed that of Holland and deranged that of France. Germany has expressed her resolve not "to lie down before this perpetual menace." This rivalry has become in itself and in time of peace "a great European calamity." Per- haps but one greater is conceivable — that of open war. The peace of dread and dreadnaughts saves men's lives, it is true, but it takes from them freedom aiid prosperity. The unthinkable cost of such a war has made it virtually impossible; no thanks, however, to army or navy. A better feeling appears lately in the councils of Europe. Apparently this is due to the fact that the Balkan troubles have shown somewhat NAVAL WASTE 121 of the depths of the abyss toward which militarism and exploitation were driving. The true defense of any nation worth defending must lie in the intelligence, alertness, and resources of its people. Along with this go the increasing power of internationalism, the ties of common thought and aspiration, and most immediately the innumerable bonds woven by trade and by the com- mon interests of business, small as well as great. We should look upon our navy as a contribution to the good order of the world. It is a natural part of a future international police which shall guarantee the safety of life and property at sea the world over. It should be as ready to protect shipping against icebergs and derelicts as to ward off an enemy from the coast. One of the first steps in this direction is to take away from the navy its present right of piracy in time of war. For while private property on land is now immune, the merchant ships under an adver- sary's flag may still become a prize or perquisite of a man-of-war. There is no justification for this anomaly. The relief to commerce by the abrogation of the "prize" system would take away much of the sting of international rivalries, and the commercial public would welcome the powerful help of the Navy League in achieving this. If we could also add the 122 WAR AND WASTE abatement of such protective tariffs as are inten- tionally obstructive, and of the use of force of arms to promote private spoliation in weak countries, there would not be much left for nations to wrangle over. But however desirable ultimately the absolute disarmament of nations as against each other, we cannot hope to reach it in a day nor in a generation. These matters proceed by slow progress, interrupted by reaction; we are in a period of relapse at present, when reactionary forces seem to be in the ascendant. But this very fact with its burdens and horrors may be counted on to turn the balance in the other direc- tion. Neither will there be a formal federation of nations in this era. Indeed, federation in fact will come long before it comes in name. A single unified world- government with centralized rule under one set of men at some one place. Is only a dream — and not a cheerful dream at that. What the world needs is more self-control, not more governmental machinery. Nevertheless, every step In removing Injustice, in eliminating sources of friction. In extending common interests, as the postal union, the telegraph union, international law, international police duties, Inter- national conferences and congresses, arbitration treaties and other agreements — are steps In the direction of the passing of war. To this end, three NAVAL WASTE 123 great contributing agencies are: the growth of the popular conscience, the interlocking of personal interests, and the ruinous expense which the progress of science has brought to every branch of military art. And by the same token each one of the six reasons of the naval circular headed as "national defense" is more or less fallacious. As already noted it is not true that "the navy is our main defense," that the navy has "21,000 miles of coast to defend," that "undefended resources invite aggression." All this implies a medieval relation among nations. And as to the second of these, do we infer that the need of defense is proportional to the length of the coast- line? If so, our coastline is nearly forty times as long as that of Germany. The United States, isolated by its geography, by its democracy, by Its freedom from entangling alliances, by its blood-kinship with all the European nations, by a commanding relation to European commerce. Is apparently beyond all need of such protection. There is, in fact, something primitive, outworn, and unprogressive In the spectacle of a civilized nation composed of millions of clever people trusting for Its defense to forts and ships. With all the resources of business, of science, of education, of thought, to depend on force seems a lazy, even cowardly, shrink- ing of the higher possibilities of national strength. 124 WAR AND WASTE To be surrounded by armed guards "holding the drop " on all commercial rivals is not a lofty concep- tion of a nation's greatness. This attitude has been as disastrous to England's own peace of mind as it has been menacing to the world's welfare. For the American Republic to follow needlessly an example like this would seem an ignominious surrender of democracy to medievalism. The eleven "reasons" drawn from history are either fallacious or irrelevant. In no way do they relate to the "strong navy" which the Navy League advocates. In history, no nation ever had such a navy. It is to-day making its own precedents. The navy did not "win the War of 1812." It was not "won" at all, by anybody. As to the war with Spain, the less said the better. But surely we cannot say that "the Spanish war would never have taken place had Spain known our navy's strength." The United States took the initia- tive in that war, and for motives of politics and busi- ness not connected with the military situation. This occurred after Spain, through our minister at Madrid, had agreed to grant every demand of the United States, including autonomy to Cuba and arbitration of all differences, including the loss of the Maine. In passing it may be remarked that much of the disor- der in Cuba at that time was stimulated in New York. NAVAL WASTE 125 The peace of Great Britain and that of Germany- has not been assured by navies, and only in part and for a time by armies. At the time Germany was overrun by the French she was split up into a number of petty warring states. In peaceful reunion and cooperation they have found strength. True, to a certain point the army of Germany for a while served as a protection from neighbours seeking revenge from humiliations arranged by Bismarck. But beyond this point, the overgrowth of army and navy has given an impulse toward war. This the firm hand of the Kaiser, with the caution of his bankers, has thus far held in check. The strength of Germany does not lie in her military domination, which is on the whole a burden, but in her system of education and in the industry of her people. The weakness of China hitherto has lain in the absence of justice, of education, of science, of interest in public affairs on the part of her people. China could have no greater misfortune than to develop, in her present condition, a great army and navy with the accompanying war atmosphere. The failure of Turkey lies mainly in the fact that she has little else than " war atmosphere. " Her hold in Europe as in Asia is that of military despotism, and her financial excesses, mostly for army and navy, have plunged her hopelessly into debt. 126 WAR AND WASTE ' Concerning the Monroe Doctrine, cited as a source of danger, if it be such, it should be reexam- ined and internationalized. Above all, it would seem that it might be merged into a joint pan-Ameri- can doctrine in which Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Canada and, it may be, Mexico and the lesser states should have part. It might well blend with the Drago Doctrine, most salutary, that national force of arms should not be used as an agency to uphold private interests in foreign lands. To invade a district because of a dispute over a more or less crooked franchise does not promote international justice. The United States has no vexatious "attitude toward possession or ownership of strategic alien har- bours and coaling stations. " The attempt to make an issue out of imaginary conditions at Magdalena Bay put the United States Senate in an absurd position. The preposterous resolution passed by the Senate was not signed by the President, and it is therefore null and void. "Battleships are cheaper than battles. " They are likewise Inciters of battles. Say also: "revolvers are cheaper than tombstones. " The cost of the navy Is not a "cheap insurance." Beyond a certain point it does not insure, and there is no evidence that the bulk of the property it insures NAVAL WASTE 127 could ever be in any danger whatever, even In time of war. As to the cost of automobile tires, the amount is not relevant, for the owners of automobiles pay for the tires, not the nation at large. Those who cannot afford them soon cease to use them. The cost of insect waste through the destruction of birds 'is, as Admiral Wainwright has shown, more than the cost of the navy. Yet when the nation asks for money to check such destruction, or for any similar purpose of conservation, sanitation, or econ- omy, the appropriations are most grudging — the army and navy must first take their share. We are told recently: "If the Republican party had allowed the navy to run down, there would be European battleships headed for the Mexican ports at this time." Does anybody believe this.? Does any one believe that the chief influence of the United States in international affairs is created by her warships? If this were true, it would certainly be most humiliating. That "a reduced navy would impair national credit," or that "a navy insures against unsettled conditions of trade and commerce," are assertions merely. " If they were true, they would be subject to limitations of reason. The credit of the United States is already higher than that of any of the 128 WAR AND WASTE great Powers. The financiers of the world can read figures of debt and waste, and are not fooled hy appearances. Outside the sphere of war, the actual duties of the American navy should mostly lie. In this field we freely admit it has had an honourable record; not the least of this has been the service of the good old steamer Albatross, which under the auspices of the navy has contributed more than any other single agency to our knowledge of the deep sea and its inhabitants. At the same time we must admit that most of these duties of special service have been thrown on the smaller and cheaper ships, such as those of the present Revenue Cutter Service and the Coast and Geodetic Survey. It is not easy to imagine a dreadnaught serving any useful purpose in time of peace. "The weight of a powerful navy gives force to diplomacy" — on the well-known principle of the "brass-knuckle." "National efficiency" as shown by a great navy is no evidence that our side in a quarrel is just. It may be true that treaties and agreements in the past have sometimes failed, especially where over- ridden by the military caste, and by the interests of exploitation. It may be that war is sometimes in- evitable, though not often when effort is put forth NAVAL WASTE 129 to make it a last resort and not a first. No nation has yet refused to accept a decree of arbitration. The interests of justice demand that no contestant be at the same time judge of his own cause. Arbi- tration treaties serve to clinch and hold public opinion — and in the long run public opinion rules. War is only a man-made convention — a coarse, brutal, and blundering way of settling disputes. It has changed its form and character all down through the ages, from the tribal raids to the "strangling of Persia." It is now passing because the taxpayers can no longer afford it; and in its last struggles it shows itself as hard, selfish, and venomous as it did in the days of Alva and Wallenstein. "Negative righteousness means abstaining from evil, but positive righteousness may require a fight against evil." There is no evil greater than war, and the one honourable fight of our times is the struggle to relegate this to "the place of last resort. As it recedes, the great navies of the world must recede with it. The way to peace lies through peace. "Power and Strength" conjured up by debts never to be paid, and maintained by intolerable taxation the world over, have no essential part in "the noble task of peacemaker. " There are two groups of motives behind the move- I30 WAR AND WASTE ment for naval extension, the one barely hinted at in the naval circular, the other not at all; but both more potent than any of the "sixty-seven." The circular refers to the fact that naval extension gives work to thousands of men. It also gives large revenues on many millions of capital. In Europe, there are few exploiting firms more powerful than the great "syndicates for war." In England, according to Mr. G. H. Perris, one man In every six Is In some way financially Interested in the business of war or war preparation. For the United States, we have no statistics; and our armour-plate industries are less In the public eye than those of the Krupps, Schneiders, Creusots,Armstrongs,Vickers,andMaximsof Europe. It Is, however, an axiom in economics that public money paid for labour Is money wasted unless the product be useful to the public service. That war- ships cost money and money Is paid to capitalist and to labourer, Is no argument for building them. Under normal conditions the same money and labour might run In useful channels. It might be used to restore our merchant marine, driven out of existence by our " protection " to shipbuilders. If warships are of public service, to build them is a productive indus- try. If they are not necessary, what is paid for them Is lost as much as though it were directly sunk in the sea. NAVAL WASTE 131 A second motive not indicated in the naval cir- cular is that of giant decoration. We may say that the richest nation in the world is entitled to the costliest and most showy accessories. The world- wide parade of our fleet seems to have had some such motive behind it. It has shown itself openly in the desire expressed by high authority to build the greatest navy in the world — just for greatness' sake. It appears in the decision of Congress to make the latest battleships — the Pennsylvania, for example — bigger than any other ships of the kind in the world. One might argue in this fashion: "We are young and strong and progressive; we will beat old Europe at her own game, and that whether or not the game be worth the candle. " There is no touch of greed in this view of naval greatness, and in so far we may view it with respect, even though we may, with an eminent British statesman, regard it as "sheer vulgarity." But it cuts across our democratic traditions of econ- omy and simplicity. It ill befits a practical people whose chief ambition is expressed in "Success." To sum up: Behind nominal reasons, we find the world over, three motives or groups of motives for naval expansion. The desire "to safeguard peace" is not one of these — words only, when used in this connection. Actual motives are (i) caution or fear, 132 WAR AND WASTE (2) business demands, and (3) love of display. The first of these has been much exaggerated in the interest of the second. The second and third, both unavowed, are very real and very human, and both must be reckoned with in all public affairs. There is also an element which favours extrava- gant appropriations as a means of obstructing tariff reduction. The United States stands almost alone among nations in having no responsible authority behind expenditures. It has as yet no formal bud- get, and its finances are at the mercy of shifting and log-rolling majorities. Our Republic is perhaps the only great corporation which can spend money with- out the consideration of its actual income. The navy of the United States stands near the parting of the ways. Shall it continue the honoured servant of a democratic people, or shall it develop into a special caste, unchecked as to expense, un- interested in any matters save pomp and war? Militarism, says John A. Hobson, survives in the world because it "is serviceable to the maintenance of the plutocracy. Its expenditure furnishes a profitable support to certain strong vested interests. It is a decorative element in social life, and, above all, it is necessary to keep down the pressure of the forces of internal reform." Thus far our naval personnel, as a whole, has been NAVAL WASTE 133 typical of our democratic citizenship. It has never appeared as a warrior caste claiming special privilege and authority, as has often been the case in Europe. In its feelings and purposes It has not stood apart from the body of the people. In a recent article on the "Psychology of War," Dr. Hugo Miinsterberg declares that "Inner waver- ing" as to righteousness of "relentless fight" should be "absolutely excluded from the officer's mind. He will not deny the harm and the losses war brings with it. But at the same time he will be deeply impressed by the tremendous moral power of a national self-defense which concentrates the energies of the whole nation In loyalty to its historical mis- sion. He must grasp the fundamental role of war in the history of mankind as the great vehicle of progress, as the great eradlcator of egotism, as the great educator to a spirit of sacrifice and duty." This represents an ideal alien to the spirit of democ- racy — and we trust that it may always be alien. An American soldier at the end of a great cam- paign spoke In a different tone. General Sherman, In 1865, used these words: "I confess without shame that I am sick and tired of war. Its glory Is all moonshine. Even success, the most brilliant, Is over dead and mangled bodies, the anguish and lamentation of distant families appealing to me for 134 WAR AND WASTE missing sons, husbands, and fathers. It is only those who have never heard a shot, nor the shrieks and groans of wounded, friend or foe, who cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation." And when, we may ask in passing, was war "an eradicator of egotism " in a conquering nation ? "Defense" at present certainly absorbs far too much of our national attention as well as of our national revenues. One cause of this lies in the initial mistake of making the control of the army and later that of the navy each coordinate depart- ments of the national government. In normal relations of civilization "national defense" might constitute a bureau of the Department of State, as national sanitation might constitute a division of the Department of the Interior. Surely Education, Sanitation, Conservation, Reclamation, Administra- tive Economy, are quite equal in importance to the need of physical defense against external foes. Our great Republic, above all other nations, should be rich in diplomatic resources, in proportion to its escape from the historical evils which led our ances- tors to leave the Europe of their day to form a nation of free men unhampered by caste, tradition, or privilege. Necessary expenditures In any line, we need not call into question. But it is well that the people NAVAL WASTE 135 should consider carefully what real' necessities are. Whatever goes beyond this is waste. All waste calls for more waste — and waste everjrwhere breeds corruption. What, then, are our motives for steady and enormous increase in naval expenditure? The "sixty-seven reasons" furnish no satisfactory ex- planations, no valid arguments. The fear expressed by the Secretary of the Navy that France or even Japan may get ahead of us has no pertinence what- ever. To know the purposes of France or the resources of Japan, information perfectly accessible, fully answers the implied argument. We should not go on building great floating fort- resses simply because we have so begun, nor be- cause England builds, or Germany builds, or France builds, or Austria, nor because we may fall to third place or tenth place in the rush if we do not build. There is no apparent rational motive in such action; and if valid causes lie behind it, it is fair that these should be made known. Moreover, wars do not come by accident, nor without warning, nor are they dispensations of an uncontrollable Providence. A war is a form of world sickness. It affects for ill every function of civilization. It is brought on by human blundering, and it is quite as amenable to sanitation as any other form of human disorder. CHAPTER VIII JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES IT IS now nearly sixty years since the modern history of Japan began. The arrival of Com- modore Perry at Kurihama, the downfall of the Shogun and the restoration of the Mikado mark the point of transition from feudal Japan to the Japan of to-day. In all this period, the Japanese nation has been the subject of intense interest to the cultivated people of America, and a warm sympathy has arisen between those people of each nation who have come to understand the character and the ideals of the other. This sympathy has been kept alive by the influence of Japanese students in America, on the one hand, and on the other by the interest of those who have gone as missionaries, as teachers or ad- visers in the affairs of Japan. In Asia there has existed for many years a division of the non-Japanese into two sharply defined parties, or one may say, attitudes of mind, the pro-Japanese and the anti-Japanese. The disputes of these two 136 JAPAN AND UNITED STATES 137 types of people have not come to our notice until very lately. Till within the last decade, American influence was almost wholly ranged with the. pro- Japanese. Contributory to this fact was our general tendency toward sympathetic interest in a nation which rose to constitutional government through influences from within. The Shimonoseki incident followed by the return of $750,000 annually ex- torted, the visit of General Grant marked by a modesty then without precedent among world- famous men, the aid of the United States in setting aside the obnoxious consular jurisdiction in the treaty ports, all these became expressions of the friendly attitude of America. The Japanese question, as it is now called, first rose to the horizon in 1899, the year of the final abrogation of consular jurisdiction. The needs of cheap labour on the sugar plantations of Hawaii was great and constant. Kalakaua, the king, had tried to meet this need by "blackbirding" expeditions among the islands of Polynesia. The steamship companies followed by strenuous efforts among the labourers in the rice fields of the region about the Inland Sea of Japan, the districts of Okayama, Hiroshima, and Yamaguchi. By their insistence and by offers of real wages their emigration agencies brought to Hawaii many men from the lowest 138 WAR AND WASTE stratum In Japanese life, next to the criminal and the outcast — the unskilled and homeless labourers In the rice fields. These have been called coolies, but their position in Japan was quite different from that of the coolies, the half slaves, of the continent of Asia. These labourers were treated essentially as slaves In Hawaii. They carried with them none of the cul- ture of Japan, they received none in their new homes. They did not go as colonists. The Japanese with homes did not willingly leave their homes where "their own customs fit them like a garment," to form new ones In another region. The Japanese are not spontaneously colonists. They will go to other lands for study or for trade or for higher wages. But they go with the hope to return. The coolies went to Hawaii solely under the incentive of higher wages. When Hawaii was annexed to the United States the shackles of their slavery was thrown off, and the same impulse of higher wages carried them on to San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver. A large per cent, of the Japanese farmers and of Cali- fornia farm hands have come over from Japan through Hawaii. In 1899, Mr. W. W. Scott, of Honolulu, a former resident of Japan, warned the Japanese authorities of the dangers Involved In this movement of Japanese labourers to California. JAPAN AND UNITED STATES 139 Their lower standard of living and of wages would make them exploitable. This would bring them in conflict with labour unions. Economic clash would beget race prejudice, and Japan could not afford to be judged by her least attractive and least effi- cient representatives. Influenced by these and similar considerations, the Japanese Government, in 1899, refused passports to all unskilled labourers, and since that time none has come from Japan direct to the Pacific States. But in response to the continuous demand of Hawaii they were for a time allowed to go there. Japanese people already constituted the great majority of the population of these islands. Even after passports were refused to labourers going to Hawaii, the immigration of coolies from Hawaii to San Francisco still continued. There was and is a very great demand for Japanese help among the orchardists of California. No other labour has been adequate and available, and it is not easy to see what the fruit interests are to do without Japanese help. In this work the European labourer has scarcely entered into competition. The prices paid the Japanese are not less than the wages of American labour in the same lines. The demand for Japanese workers in household service and in canning establishments has also been great and unsatisfied. I40 WAR AND WASTE From the fisheries which the Japanese have almost monopolized in British Columbia and in Hawaii, they have been virtually excluded by statutes limiting the fisheries of Oregon and Washington to citizens of these states. Unless born in the United States the Japanese cannot become citizens under the inter- pretation of the uncertain wording of our outworn naturalization laws. A large portion of the Japanese labourers avoided the orchards and established themselves in the cities, where, as laundrymen, restaurant keepers, draymen, carpenters, and the like, they entered thus into com- petition with the American labourers, the most Qf whom in San Francisco were recent immigrants from Europe. Their lower scale of living and their peculiarities In other ways soon brought them under the con- demnation of the trade unions. Anti-Japanese societies were formed and much effort was spent to the end of the exclusion of Japanese and Korean labourers as the Chinese had already been excluded. The profound bitterness and the personal violence which accompanied the anti-Chinese campaign of twenty years before was practically absent from this. The Japanese were better able to take care of themselves and, also, In spite of much reckless talk and exaggeration of language, there was very JAPAN AND UNITED STATES 141 little real enmity toward the Japanese with any class of their opponents. Most of the unfriendly talk has been for political purposes, and the main cause of opposition was economic, although at- tempts have been made to give it a racial signifi- cance. An exclusion act like that directed against the Chinese could not be considered by our Government. It would be a needless affront to a friendly nation, and a nation willing to do anything we may desire, provided it could be done with dignity. The Chinese exclusion act finds its excuse perhaps In the fact that China Is not yet a nation. No absolute monarchy can be a nation, in the modern sense. When China finds herself at last, this exclusion act must wholly change its form. In this condition of affairs, a definite agreement was made in 1907 with the Katsura Ministry of Japan, that no passports for America were to be issued to Japanese labourers, that the responsibility for discrimination should rest with Japan, and that all holders of Japanese passports should be admitted without question. This agreement has been loyally and rigidly kept by Japan. A bit too rigidly, per- haps, for It is growing Increasingly difficult for Japanese students to come to America. The diffusion among our American universities of 142 WAR AND WASTE Japanese students, eager, devoted, and persistent, has been one of the most important factors in main- taining the mutual good-will and good understand- ing of the two nations. For everywhere these Japanese graduates of American universities give a good account of themselves, standing high in the estimation of their people at home, while retaining keen interest and intelligent sympathy in all Ameri- can aifairs. The present settlement of the immigration ques- tion is the very best possible, so long as restriction of any sort is regarded as necessary. It is in the interest of both nations and of all concerned, and the occasional efforts to supersede it by a general "oriental exclusion" bill are prompted by no con- sideration of the public welfare. To be grouped with the inchoate nations of Asia as "orientals" is particularly offensive to the proud, self- governing Japanese. In their thoughts and ambi- tions, in their attitude toward peace and justice and toward modern civilization, the Japanese are in full harmony with the nations of Europe. As an Asiatic nation Japan stands alone. She has no real affiliation with China or Russia, and India is not a nation. Her relations must of necessity be closest with the Caucasian group of nations, and especially and for many reasons with the United States. Com- JAPAN AND UNITED STATES 143 mercially Japan is dependent on the United States as much as Canada is. The main justification of the exclusion of Japanese unskilled labourers must be found in the economic conditions on the two sides of the Pacific. It is our theory in America that there should be no permanent class of unskilled labourers, and that it is the duty as well as the right of every man to make the most of himself. In most other nations, a permanent lowest class which must work for the lowest wages and do the menial service of society is taken for granted. This theory is affirmed in the Chinese proverb, "Big fish eat little fish, little fish eat shrimp, shrimp eat mud. " It is no part of our policy that shrimps should remain shrimps forever. Cheap labour is exploitable to the irjury of labour of a higher grade. There is then a degree of justice in the contention for the exclusion of the cheapest and most exploitable type of labour- ers, whatever their race or the country from which they come. There is also legitimate ground for fear that a wide- open door from Asia would crowd our Pacific coast before the natural population of America has found its way there. Such a condition would add to the economic wealth of the coast at the expense of social and political confusion. 144 WAR AND WASTE Many honest men fear the advent of large numbers of Japanese as likely to provoke racial troubles similar to those which exist in the South. I do not share this opinion. No race is more readily at home in our civilization than the cultivated Japanese. That the rice-field coolie does not assimilate at once is because of his lower mentality and his lack of training, either Japanese or American. This is broadly true, though among these people are many of fine instincts and marked capacity. The con- dition of mutual help and mutual tolerance in Hawaii shows that men of a dozen races can get along to- gether if they try to do so. The problem of the South is the problem of slavery; the problem of the half-white, the man with the diverging Instincts of two races, this status changed in an instant, by force, from the position of a chattel to that of a citizen. It is the problem of the half-white man given politi- cal equality when social equality Is as far away as ever. No bar sinister of this sort nor of any other kind separates the European from the Japanese. It is true that many good men urge the limitation of Japanese activities on the ground that these will prove the germ of a race problem like that of the South, only the more virulent because the Japanese are industrious, ambitious, self-reliant, and they will not suffer indignities. But these are the very rea- JAPAN AND UNITED STATES 145 sons why the race problem of servility will never arise through their presence. Social reasons for exclusion have a certain value. The Japanese are the most lovable of people with the fine art of adjustment of personal relations. This fact makes them the most clannish when in an un- sympathetic environment. They have the faults of their virtues, and the uneducated Japanese some- times show these faults in unpleasant fashion. There are still more urgent reasons why the Jap- anese themselves should insist on exclusion of their unskilled and ignorant labourers from Canada and the United States. The nation cannot afford to have America know it by its least creditable ex- amples . A hundred Japanese rice-field hands are seen in America, to one Japanese gentleman. Thousands of men who never knew a Japanese merchant or artist or scholar have come in contact with Japanese draymen or laundrymen. They have not always found these good neighbours, although not worse in this regard than many immigrants from Europe. The present conditions are not permanent, per- haps, but as matters are to-day it is to the interest of Japan, even more than to the interest of California, that the present agreements should be maintained. Just after the Russian war, when America's sympathy was almost wholly on the side of Japan 146 WAR AND WASTE because the attitude of Russia was believed to be that of wanton aggression, a series of anti-Japanese articles were published in various American news- papers. Who wrote these articles and who paid for them, I do not know, but their various half-truths and falsehoods had an unfavourable effect on Ameri- can public opinion. All sorts of half-forgotten slanders were revived and followed In their wake. Among these Is the ancient falsehood that Japanese banks employ Chinese tellers because they cannot trust their own people. Of all the 2,117 banks in Japan, only one, the Yokohama Specie Bank, which does a considerable business among the local Chinese in Yokohama, has ever had a Chinese employee. The employment of Chinese for any purpose is virtually unknown in Japan. The school affair In San Francisco was unfortunate, although in itself of no significance whatever. In the great fire of 1906, the Chinatown of San Francisco was entirely destroyed. After the fire a temporary schoolhouse was established in the neighbourhood. There were no Chinese children in this school and the teacher, perhaps fearing loss of position, asked the School Board to send the Japanese children in the neighbouring region to her. The School Board, apparently ignorant of possible international results formed of this an "Oriental School." There were JAPAN AND UNITED STATES 147 no Chinese children concerned, nor is it at all clear that Japanese children would have suiFered even had such been present. Under our treaty with Japan our schools, as every other privilege, were open to Japanese subjects on the basis of "the most favoured nation." To send Japanese children to an "Oriental School" was prob- ably a violation of this clause of the treaty. It is not certain that this was a violation, but it appears as such on the surface. So far as I know, there has been no judicial decision involving this point. In any case the apparent remedy lay in an injunction suit, and in a quiet determination of the point at issue. It was a mistake, I believe, to make it a matter of inter- national diplomacy. Neither the nation nor the State of California has the slightest control over the schools of San Francisco, unless an action of the School Board shall traverse a national or state law or violate a treaty. A treaty has precedence over all local statutes. But the meaning of a treaty can be demonstrated only through judicial process. The extravagance of the press in both nations stirred up all the latent partisanship in both races involved. On the one hand the injuries to the Japanese children were grossly exaggerated. On the other hand, gratuitous slanders were invented to justify the action of the School Board. Among 148 WAR AND WASTE these was a series of photographs in which grown Japanese boys from the upper classes of the Clement Grammar School were brought down and seated with little girls from the primary classes and then photo- graphed. The action of the Board was finally rescinded at the request of the President of the United States, who uttered at the same time a sharp reprimand to the people of California. This again was resented by the state, as only five of its citizens were responsible for the act in question, and the people of the state as a whole had no part what- ever in anti-Japanese agitation nor any sympathy with the men temporarily in control of affairs in San Francisco. The net result of the whole affair was to alienate sympathy from Japan. This again was unfair, for the Japanese nation as a whole had no responsibility for what, at the worst, was an error of judgment on the part of a few of its immigrants. Since this affair was settled I have not heard a word as to the relation of the Japanese to the school of San Francisco, and I presume that this difficulty, like most others, has disappeared with time and patience and mutual consideration. It is not likely to be heard from again. Only a word need be said of other matters which have vexed the international air. War scares are heard the world over. The world over they are set JAPAN AND UNITED STATES 149 going by wicked men for evil purposes. In general the design of purveyors of international slanders is to promote orders for guns, powder, and warships. There are other mischief-makers, who hope to fish in troubled waters. A few years ago it was suggested in America that the Manchurian railways, built on Chinese territory by the governments of Russia and Japan, should be sold to China. To this end China should borrow the money of an international syndicate under whose authority the railways should be managed. This line of action was for various reasons impossible to China. The suggestion itself was very unwel- come to the Japan authorities as well as to the Japanese people to whom the leased land between Port Arthur and Mukden is hallowed ground, holding the graves of a hundred and thirty thousand of the young men of Japan. The suggestion itself was personal only. It was never acted upon, never approved by the American people, no official action was ever based upon it, and it should not be a sub- ject of worry to either Russia or Japan. The fur seal question has been under discussion for more than twenty years, ever since the wanton killing of females at sea first threatened the destruc- tion of the Bering Sea herds. By the pelagic sealing of Canada the number of breeding seals in the ISO WAR AND WASTE" Pribllof herd was reduced from about a million to about 180,000. The entrance of Japan into Bering Sea, for the protection of the herd, disregarding the regulations of the Paris tribunal, inadequate as these were, soon reduced these numbers to about 30,000. Last year a treaty was concluded, Russia, Japan, Canada, and the United States being parties to it, by which the matter was honourably and justly settled and the continuance and restoration of the three herds, American, Russian, and Japanese finally assured. There is not now (i9i2*)a single cloud above the official horizon as between the United States and Japan. There have never been any real difficulties and the apparent ones are no greater than must appear wherever great nations border on each other. As the Japanese are fond of saying: The Pacific Ocean unites our nations. It does not separate. War talk on either side is foolish and criminal. Japan recognizes the United States as her nearest neighbour among western nations, her best customer, and most steadfast friend. Her own ambitions and interest lie in the restoration of Korea, in the safe- guarding of her investments in Manchuria, and in the part she must play in the unforetold future of China. *The anti-Japanese land legislation arose after this was written. It is dis- cussed elsewhere. JAPAN AND UNITED STATES 151 For her own affairs she needs every yen she can raise by any means for the next half century. For the future greatness of Japan depends on the return of "the old peace with velvet-sandalled feet," which made her the nation she is to-day. War and war demands have made her, for the time being, relatively weak, she who once was strong in her persistent industry, her unchanging good nature, her spirit of progress, her freedom from debt, and in the high ambition of her people. Thirteen hundred millions of dollars in war debt is a burden not lightly carried. Through peace, and peace only, Japan will gain her old strength, and none know this better than the men of the wise and patriotic group who now control Japan. CHAPTER IX THE FEDERATION OF EUROPE THE great nations of Europe are now engaged in what has been called the race toward the abyss, "la course vers I'abime." Its end is the whirlpool plunge from debt into insolvency — from waste to ruin. The driving forces in this race are suspicion and greed, and the first of these is largely the deliberate work of the latter. There are agencies which find their profit in the cultivation of international dis- trust, and their noxious influence has grown in malignant parallelism with the growth of friendly relations. In the last forty years Europe has come into a new world, the world of interlocking associations. The advance of science and of the arts of industry and commerce which spring from science, have given a new meaning to international relations. The inter- locking of interests of all kinds, incident to these days of rapid transit and safe residence, favour the welding of closer and more lasting friendships. At the same 152 THE FEDERATION OF EUROPE 153 time it has brought the clash of exploiting interests, and the resulting accentuation of international sus- picion. Little Europe now controls great Africa and greater Asia, and the trials and jealousies of far-off lands are transferred to the populace at home. And at the same time, the science which is giving us comfort and safety at home, with commerce and intercourse abroad, has mightily enlarged the ma- chinery of force to the disturbance of both safety and comfort. The steadily growing cost of this machinery, and its use as a tool in financial enter- prise falls on the patient many, while the gains of the exploitations it serves everywhere inure to the few. And all these conditions join to form the bewilder- ing fact, that at this time, when the nations of the , world are linked in closer and more friendly bonds j than ever before, we see the most gigantic expendi- ' ture in the machinery for international strife. Now when the visible interest of every nation is bound up in peace with every other, the war lord holds the 1 whip hand and exacts a greater toll than the people \ of any previous century ever paid. 1 In world government, the two ideals which stand as opposites are force and law. Peace is the dura- tion of law. War is its blind and brutish denial. The peace of Europe to-day is not far removed from the ideal of war. It is merely frustrate war. It is 154 WAR AND WASTE war, which, from its cost and its risks, cannot be con- summated, though all the means for its consumma- tion are provided with disastrous completeness. This is not peace. It is but an armed truce, and one of its worst features is that it stands directly in the way of the real peace, for which all the people of civilized Europe are actually prepared. For these people have become an economical unit, all waste or loss or misfortune of the one being felt by all and shared by all. The rising cost of living due primarily to the doubling of the burden of taxa- tion in the last fifteen years, is felt by the whole civ- ilized world alike, and the doubling of taxation is a necessary accompaniment of the race for the abyss. In like manner, the civilized world is becoming an intellectual unit, a moral unit. The cross-waves in human affairs are merging, for good and for ill, into the larger streams. Languages, customs, morals, religions of the feebler peoples give way to the influ- ence of the strong, and that this influence should be wholesome and hopeful, the strong must be at peace among themselves. In dealing with each other those nations fare best which are most considerate and just. "It always pays for a nation to be a gentleman." No civilized nation has anything to fight for with a sister nation. It has nothing to gain in war, and everything to lose. THE FEDERATION OF EUROPE 155 The belief that war is inherently glorious, that it is n^orally or physically invigourating, that it has a sanction in religion or in righteousness is passing away. The democratic world can see in war only a hideous calamity, moral, physical, financial, a world-sickness harmful to every part of the body politic of civilization, and to be avoided as other fevers are avoided by the most rigid of personal and political sanitation. The essence of the peace move- ment is that war should be the last resort, the last thing to be talked of in case of differences between nations. And in the degree that these ideas are worked out in practical national policy, we have already an ap- proach to a federation of the civilized world. The postal union, the telegraph union, the international interlocking of the banking systems, the interna- tional congresses of men and women having all kinds of common interests, all these matters involve a de- gree of federation, a recognition of common trust and of common friendliness. In every nation there Is a group which makes for war, but this war party would be everywhere in pitiful minority, its hatreds, its suspicions, and its ambi- tions ridiculous were it not reinforced by the power- ful influences of traditional militarism. These have in the main three roots, the traditions of war and iS6 WAR AND WASTE glory, the hold of the aristocracy, and the direct and sinister influences which come from the great war syndicates. For centuries, the killer of men has been the hero of the populace, and even religion has been per- verted to be an agency of that form of patriotism which is a cowardly name for international hatred. The aristocracy through the ages has known no profession save that of arms, and military glory is the chief support of its waning prestige. The movement toward peace and law is but a part of the larger movement of democracy, the move- ment toward the valuation of the individual man. Under democracy, the man is no longer the property of the state, to be coddled or manhandled as its offi- cials decree. The state exists for the benefit of the individual men. Its officials are the servants of its people. By cooperation, men can secure the chief benefits a state can give, without sacrifice of their own freedom. These are mainly justice, peace, education, and sanitation. When the state attempts to secure more than these for a part of its citizens, it must correspondingly oppress the others. The privilege of the few is the burden of the many. Aristocracy and militarism both find their essence in privilege. For this reason, a democracy cannot be military. For the "race toward the abyss" THE FEDERATION OF EUROPE 157 consists mainly in paying tribute to the dying spirit of war. In the old days, the motive of war being plunder, ' the robber barons of Europe sallied out from their,' castles in search of booty. The unfortunate mem-| bers of their caste who fell into unfriendly hands were saved by the payment of ransom. Ransom, pillage, and booty were the chief incentives to war. But at last the weaker princes found it cheaper to make their payment in advance. This saved the wear and tear of murder and pillage, and cost less in the end. Thus arose the custom of tribute, and by this system, peace within the confines of the nation was secured. The modern nations arose through the federation of princes and of cities as against law- lessness and pillage. Federation was the only remedy for baronial wars. Federation has built up nations, and the essential character of the nation is that it should be at peace within itself. Early in the history of the American Colonies rose the cry of "millions for defense, but not a sou for tribute." This cry was taken up by the civilized world. The robber barons took us at our word, and thereafter their exactions were called no longer "tribute" but "defense." Each took up his sta- tion within the tributary nation, and "Defense not defiance" became "the international code signal," IS8 WAR AND WASTE under which they enforced their unceasing toll, the price of armed peace, exactions as unscrupulous as any demanded in the middle ages. The weapons of their exactions are still suspicion and fear, the war scare and the resultant spasm of miscalled patriot- ism. Through these agencies, the war syndicates have waxed rich and powerful within each of the leading nations. Their wealth and greatness have been at the expense of the long-suffering people they assume to shelter and protect. As each group of war syndicates succeeded in stirring up its own nation, Its rivals were able to fasten themselves still more fifmly on the others. It Is perfectly clear that the nations of Europe are taxed beyond endurance in their tribute to national defense. It Is also clear that there exists no national hatred and no hope for plunder on the part of any nation of such importance as to justify In any degree either its present war scares or war expenditures. It Is clear that the remedy lies with public opin- ion with the recognition by each nation of common reasonableness, common friendliness, and common sense as existing in other nations. In so far as this recognition is not actual, it be- comes the basis of a kind of federation. An "en- tente cordlale" — a friendly understanding Is pos- sible between any two law-abiding nations. It THE FEDERATION OF EUROPE 159 should be established as readily between England and Germany as between England and France. It ought to be possible on every side. Such an under- standing involves all that is essential in the idea of international federation. And such federation is the remedy for the ills of to-day. The destructive toll of national defense would be absurd with the disappearance of international suspicion. Disunion finds its natural remedy in federation. It may not be essential to insist on a formal recog- nition of "the United States of Europe." There seems no real need of a formal central government, an official capital or a ruler of any kind. The court at The Hague serves every essential purpose, and through the p*recedents it sets, it will do its own law- making. It is not necessary or desirable to unify the details of European procedure. Each group of people should control itself, so long as none infringes on the peace or the liberties of another. The United States of America, the most perfect example of federation, contains within itself mem- bers of all the nationalities of Europe, as well as of Asia. In general, this multiplicity of races brings no havoc or confusion to the nation which enfolds it. The forty-eight states from East to West, from North to South, cover interests as wide and varied as those of all Europe. This fact is scarcely an in- i6o WAR AND WASTE convenience In national administration. Each state is sovereign within itself. The general government is concerned mainly with those matters affecting states as a whole or in groups, and with the rela- tions to other nations. Above all, it ensures that between one state and another there shall be no war, no barriers of armies, nor of tariffs, nor any institu- tion which has Its origin in suspicion or hate. When Europe is ready for a general entente cordiale, when her states are prepared to cast aside distrust, and the tributes this exacts, when each section will do its part for the mutual good, we shall have a revival of industry, of courage and enlightenment, with no parallel since the revival of learning. Those only gain from the present condition who are the common enemies of all, the promoters of distrust and of hatred In the Interest of war and of the sale of war's accessories. And the essence of the whole matter lies in our definition of peace. There are many different ideals covered by the same noble word, and some- times these stand in sharp contradiction. We con- trast the Peace of Force with the Peace of Law, the Peace which is temporary — upheld by the strong arm or the balance of power — with the "Old Peace with velvet-sandalled feet," eternal, so long as it rests on the balance of justice. THE FEDERATION OF EUROPE i6i It may be well to work for the Peace of Force, when nothing better seems possible. It may be wise to spend the earnings of toiling millions to se- cure It. It may be better than no peace at all. It saves men's lives while robbing them of prosperity and of freedom. But at the best It is only a tem- porary truce threatened by each fluctuation of the "higher politics." The Peace of Force demands that each and all shall be fully armed. Before It is the vision of universal discord, held In check by fear. The Peace of Law looks forward to universal order. In the long run It has no need of force, for with advancing civilization rises the power of self- control, In peace and friendliness, the final glory of men and of nations. CHAPTER X WHAT SHALL WE SAY? I PEACE AND THE BALKANS WHAT shall we say, as lovers of peace, in face of the Balkan war ? Is it true that while Serbs are Serbs, and Greeks are Greeks, and Turks are Turks, there is no way out save war? Is it not true that while Turks rule aliens for the money to be extorted, there can be no peace between them and their subjects or their neighbours ? It is not necessary for us to answer these questions. They belong to history rather than to morals. The progress of events will take our answer from our lips. The problem comes to us too late for any act of ours to be effective. The stage was set, the actors chosen, thirty-five years ago, at Berlin in 1878. Our part is to strive for peace — first, to do away with causes for war; second, to lead people to look for war as the last and not the first remedy for national wrongs or national disagreements. Most wars have their origin in the evil passions of men, and no war 162 WHAT SHALL WE SAY 163 could take place If both sides were sincerely desirous of honourable peace. No doubt, the Balkan situation could have been controlled for peace by the "concert of Powers" in Europe, were it not that no such concert exists. The instruments are out of tune and time. So long as for- eign offices are alike controlledby the interests of great exploiting and competing corporations, they can never stand for good morals and good order. If they could, theTurkish rule of violence would have'ceasedlong'ago. Those who fight against war cannot expect to do away with it in a year or a century, especially when it is urged on by five hundred years of crime and discord. The roots of the Balkan struggle lie back in the middle ages, and along medieval lines the fight is likely to be conducted. "The right to rule, without the duty to protect," is the bane of all Oriental imperialism. Meanwhile our own task is to help to modernize the life of the world; to raise> through democracy, the estimate of the value of men's lives; to continue through our day the endur- ing revolt of civilization against "obsolete forms of servitude, tyranny, and waste. " The immediate purpose of the peace movement is, through public opinion and through international law, to exalt order above violence and to take war out of the foreground of the "international mind" i64 WAR AND WASTE in the event of disputes between races and nations. No movement forward can succeed all at once. Evil habit and false education have left the idea of war and glory too deeply ingrained. Men, law-abiding and patient, willing to hear both sides, have never yet been in the majority. Yet their influence stead- ily grows in weight. The influence of science and arts, of international fellowship, of common business interests — small business as well as great — are leading the people of the world to better and better understanding. Left alone, civilized peoples would never make war. They have no outside grievances they wish to submit to the arbitrament of wholesale murder. To make them prepare for war they must be scared, not led. No soldier, we are told by experts, not even the fiercest Cossack, wants to fight, after he has once tried it. Those who make war never go to the front. Were it not for the exaggeration by interested parties of trade jealousies and diplomatic intrigues, few peoples would ever think of going to war. The workingmen of Europe suffer from tax- exhaustion. The fear of war is kept before them to divert them from their own sad plight. This diver- sion leaves their plight still the sadder. The bread-riot, in all its phases, is the sign of over-taxation, of governmental disregard of the lives and earnings of the common man. Anarchism is the WHAT SHALL WE SAY 165 expression the idle and reckless give to the feelings of those who are still law abiding. The peace movement must stand against oppres- sion and waste. It must do its part in removing grievances, national and international. It must give its council in favour of peace and order, and it must help to educate men to believe that the nation which guarantees to its young men personal justice and personal opportunity has a greater glory than that which sends forth its youth to slaughter. II SHALL THE TURK GO i What shall we say of the expulsion of the Turk from Europe.? Most of us say let him go, and he seems to be going. But we would not have him driven out because he is a Turk nor because he is a Moslem. Those are not good reasons. Difference in race or in religion is no valid cause for war. Nor is it really the habit of massacre to which the Turk seems addicted and by which he has stained the soil of Armenia and Syria as well as that of Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Greece. The Turk has a long list of massacres because he has had a long lease of opportunity. The fault is not with the Turk but with the system. He has held alien lands in military i66 WAR AND WASTE servitude for 500 years. Others have done as he does when the opportunity or the necessity was forced upon them. Military pacification and military control over people who do not manage their own affairs spells always massacre. Massacre is war, the very worst side of war. It is war unrelieved by any lofty purpose. But more blood has been shed in the Balkans in a month than the Turks have shed in a century before. Yet there Is a difference. There is real force in the Macedonian proverb, "Better an end with horror, than horror without end. " There is a Mexican proverb, "The grass grows over the graves of those who fall in battle, but not over those slain by military order." The evil does not lie with the Turk as Turk. Turks are much like other people. Like other good soldiers, those who have tried it have no love for war. They would rather not kill nor be killed. But military occupation is irksome. A soldier Insults a woman. This has been a soldier's privilege in most countries through the Insolent ages. An Insult is resented. An alien insults a soldier. A trader refuses to pay his taxes. A civilian complains of ill treatment. A boy shoots a soldier from behind a cactus hedge. The soldier seeks revenge. His comrades stand behind him. Whatever the provocation, "shooting up the town" is no novelty in history. Insolence begets resistance. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 167 Resistance to the soldier is "treachery." The pen- alty of treachery is "massacre." This story has been told over and over again wherever there is military pacification and military occupation. It has been told in our day in Armenia and Adana and Mace- donia. It has been told in the Oasis of Tripoli, in the Transvaal, in Samar, in Peking, in Bessarabia, in Korea, in Finland, in Zululand, in the Soudan, in the Congo, in Yucatan, in India, in Indo-China, in Arabia, in Egypt. It is not the soldier's duty to stand patiently under abuse. It is not his part to respect the rights of men. It is not the civilian's part to take in meekness the soldier's insults. And it is not the expulsion of the Turk that we hope for. The Turk is the least of our problems. We would put an end to the whole system which involves "the right to rule without the duty to protect." And in the long run, there is no protection for any people who have not some voice in their own affairs. Sooner or later comes the end to all imperial domination that strikes no deeper roots than force of fear. HI WHY THE TURK FAILS What shall we say of the failure of Turkey in the test of war.' We are told by a leading military ex- i68 WAR AND WASTE pert that "Turkey is being defeated because of her lack of preparation for war." Others have said that it was because her armies have been under German drill and armed with German guns, her adversaries being equipped in France. Others say that her armies contain too many Christians, who will not shoot nor fight their friends. Others, with a similar thought, say that she "has misgoverned Macedonia and Albania, and these in the crisis become inevitably and properly her enemies and not her friends, a source of weakness and doom instead of defense and strength. " May it not be that Turkey's failure in war is because of too much preparation, because she has pre- pared for nothing else? Nothing else grows under military occupation. Turkey's old war debt of $509,000,000 is crushing to all her industries, prohibitive to all her hopes. As "the Sick Man of Europe" Turkey has been kept alive only by the persistence of his creditors. "In- stead of being extinguished in the struggle for politi- cal existence because too weak to pay his debts, he had to be kept artificially alive in order to pay them." The reputation of the Turk as a fighter comes down from the days when he was a wild frontiersman. For centuries he has been kept in garrison-towns, the worst possible school for physical vigour, giving a WHAT SHALL WE SAY 169 lassitude which even the drill of a German field marshal could not overcome. Perhaps this is not the true explanation, but it is as likely as the others. The Turkish army, it appears, was short of arms and powder and rations. But the soldiers may have had all there was. Too long prepared for war, the provisions for it had long since given out, and there was no money to get any more. Chesterton tells us of approaching a distant shore, covered with dark forest. As he came nearer he saw that this forest had no roots in the ground. It was made up wholly of hovering vultures. It was Turkey. Professor Sumner of Yale once said: "There Is no state of readiness for war. The notion calls for never-ending sacrifice. It would absorb all the resources and activity of the state. This the great European states are now proving by experiment. Make up your mind soberly what you want, peace or war, then get ready. What we prepare for is what we get. " For hundreds of years Turkey has been preparing for war. She has always had on " the fighting edge. " The "fighting edge" grows rusty. The standing army grows stale. But successful war depends on other resources. Other resources Turkey has not got — can never get, because war is her business. I70 WAR AND WASTE Her people have not taken root — not in Europe, not in Asia. They live in barracks, in encampments. not in a "continuing city." IV THE FATE OF ARMENIA What shall we say of Armenia in this crisis of the Balkans.? Is Turkey in Asia to be left to its fate with the redemption of Turkey in Europe ? Is the military Turk a different man on the other side of the Dardanelles.? There is no difference. Only this: the shrieks of victims grow fainter as the square of the distance increases. The military Turk is at home nowhere; and his rule is just as intolerable in Armenia, in Syria, in Adana, in Arabia even, as it is in Macedonia and Crete. It is not the Turk as Turk who is primarily at fault. The Turk as trader, farmer, artisan, is likely to be a good man, a good citizen, according to his lights. The fault lies with the system. Irresponsible military occupation is the same the world over. That of the Turk has been longer continued than most others. It is so much the worse for that. Anything else is to be preferred, even the control of Russia. "There are degrees, even in hell," so an Armenian patriot writes me. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 171 And the people of Armenia look hopefully forward to a Russian invasion as a relief from the evils they suffer now. The process justly known as "the strangling of Persia" is to Armenia a prayed-for relief. The strangling of a nationality, though brutal to the utmost, pinches less than the outrage of one's family and kindred. But no rule of force unrelieved can be enduring. The right to govern must accept the duty of coop- erative protection. The "wide-flung battle lines" of the world can hold nothing worth keeping if there grow up no other ties as bonds of empire. The best army in the world becomes an instrument of tyranny if it cannot touch the hearts of the people. Kipling's "thin red line of heroes" and Thackeray's "red-coat bully in his boots" differ mainly in the point of view. There is no end to the Balkan crisis which does not include Armenia. The troubles cannot pass until tyranny passes. The minor questions of politics, Servia's needs, Austria*s ambitions, Roumania's deals, are of no consequence in comparison. The exploiters behind the foreign offices may quarrel over the spoils. They can arrange the map as they please. The essential thing is the redemption of the peoples. What the Armenian wants is to be allowed to live as people live in other countries, "immunity from 172 WAR AND WASTE slaughter, plunder, torture, and outrage on the soil of his own fatherland. " I give below a condensation of twelve demands from an Armenian appeal to the world (the work of Diana Agabeg Apcar, an Armenian lady resident in Yokohama) : (i) The Armenians should be allowed the right to bear arms and to establish a local militia in all the Armenian villages for self-protection against the raids of Kurd, Circassian, Turk, and other Moslem robbers who are allowed the possession of arms and ammunition. (2) The Armenians should be allowed the right to bear arms and to establish Armenian volunteer corps or local militia for protection against Moslem destruction of their homes, churches, schools, shops, and industries. (3) The Armenians should be allowed the right to bear arms in order to defend their own bodies and the bodies of their women and children from Moslem murder and outrage. (4) The lands of the Armenians, filched from them by the Turkish authorities and made over to Moslems, should be re- stored. (5) A judicial committee of twelve members, composed of six Armenians elected by the Armenian National Assembly and six Moslems deputed by the Government, should be appointed for the examination of title deeds of lands and for the restoration to the rightful owners of their lands. In the event of disagreement over the disputed properties between the Armenian and Moslem members of the judicial committee, the case should not be re- ferred to any Turkish court, but submitted to the arbitration of two foreign Consuls, the Armenians choosing one for themselves and the Moslems another. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 173 (6) That Moslem officials should not be employed to collect taxes in Armenian villages, but the taxes in all the Armenian villages should be collected by Armenian tax-gatherers appointed by the Armenian National Assembly. (7) That the Armenians should be allowed to establish their own courts of justice for the purpose of administering justice and conducting litigation between Armenian and Armenian, and for deciding all questions relating to marriage, divorce, estate, inheritance, etc., appertaining to themselves. (8) That the Armenians should be allowed the right to estab- lish their own prisons for the incarceration of offending Armen- ians, and in no case should an Armenian be imprisoned in a Turkish prison. (9) That irrespective of the office of the Turkish Governor, an Armenian Governor elected by the Armenian National Assembly should be appointed in every province of Lesser and Greater Armenia for the protection of the Armenians. (10) That the Armenian Governor should be assisted by an Armenian legislative council composed of six Armenians elected by the Armenian National Assembly. (11) That the Armenians should be allowed the right of send- ing their own delegate to the Hague Conferences. (12) That no reforms in Armenia should be left to the promises, the control, or administration of the Turkish Government. (All Turkish reforms are the prelude to Turkish massacre.) THE GREAT WAR OF EUROPE What shall we say of the Great War of Europe, ever threatening, ever impending, and which never comes? We shall say that it will never come. Hu- manly speaking. It is impossible. 174 WAR AND WASTE Not in the physical sense, of course, for with weak, reckless, and godless men nothing evil is impossible. It may be, of course, that some half-crazed arch- duke or some harassed minister of state shall half- knowing give the signal for Europe's conflagration. In fact, the agreed signal has been given more than once within the last few months. The tinder is well dried and laid in such a way as to make the worst of this catastrophe. All Europe cherishes is ready for the burning. Yet Europe recoils and will recoil, even in the dread stress of spoil-division of the Bal- kan war. Behind the sturdy forms of the Bulgarian farmers lurks the sinister figure of Russian intrigue. Russia and Austria, careless of their neighbours, careless of obligations, find in this their opportunity. And the nations of Europe in their degree are bound to one or the other of these malcontents. Neither Russia nor Austria can be trusted to keep the peace even in her own interest, for both, through debt abroad and dis- content at home, are in a condition of perpetual crisis. The financial exploiters of Europe which control the "Great Powers" are very active behind the scenes. The huge debt of Turkey is mainly held in France. French financiers arm the Balkan troops and pay their expenses. French concessionaires WHAT SHALL WE SAY 175 strive with English, German, Austrian, for every- thing worth holding in Turkey. The " Sick Man of Europe" owes his continued existence as well as his final demise to these industrious parasites. But accident aside, the Triple Entente lined up against the Triple Alliance, we shall expect no war. Some glimpses of the reasons why appear daily in the press. We read that German and that Austrian banks try in vain to secure short loans in New York, even at 8 per cent. We learn that great bankers refuse absolutely to lend on any terms for war. We learn that on the day of Montenegro's declaration of war, the nominal value of stocks and bonds in Europe fell to the extent of nearly ^7,000,000,000. The loss of France alone, the creditor of Europe, is given at $800,000,000. The decline in England in three years is set down at $9,250,000. At the same time the house of Krupp, the greatest builder of war tools, reports a surplus for the year of $12,500,000. A 12 per cent, dividend was declared, besides the setting apart of $4,006,000 for welfare work and capital reserves. The armament builders of France can doubtless show a like profit, but the details are not yet public. The gains of war and war talk go to the vultures. The cost falls on the people. Whatever else happens, the common man stands to lose in war. 176 WAR AND WASTE The expenses of the proposed general war are thus tabulated by Prof. Charles Richet of the University of Paris: Austria 2,600,000 men England 1,500,000 " France 3,400,000 " Germany 3,600,000 " Italy 2,800,000 " Roumania 300,000 " Russia 7,000,000 " 21,200,000 men If these nations — supposed to be diplomatically ; concerned in the question of whether the obscure | Albanian port of Durazzo should fall to Servia or to Austria, neither of the two having the slightest claim to it — should rush into the fight, the expense would run at ^50,000,000 per day, a sum to be greatly increased with the sure rise of prices. The table of Richet (here translated from francs to dollars) deserves most careful attention : Daily Cost of a great European war. 1. Feed of men . . $12,600,000 2. Feed of horses . 1,000,000 3. Pay (European rates) 4,250,000 4. Pay of workmen in arsenals and ports (100 per day) 1,000,000 5. Transportation (60 miles 10 days) . . 2,100,000 6. Transportation of provisions . . . 4,200,000 7. Munitions: Infantry 10 cartridges a day 4,200,000 8. Artillery: 10 shots per day 1,200,000 9. Marine: 2 shots per day 400,000 WHAT SHALL WE SAY 177 10. Equipment 4,200,000 11. Ambulances: 500,000 wounded or ill ($1 per day) 500,000 12. Armature 500,000 13. Reduction of imports 5,000,000 14. Help to the poor (20 cents per day to i in 10) . 6,800,000 15. Destruction of towns, etc 2,000,000 Total per day ^49,950,000 To all this we may add the horrors of the air, the cost of aeroplanes and of burning cities which this monstrous abomination of murder may render in- \ humanly possible. The nation which uses instru- ments like these against a sister nation can boast no advance over the red Indian and his scalping knife. In this connection we must remember that Europe still owes $27,000,000,000 for old war debts, that in all her banks and vaults there exists but seven or eight billion dollars of actual coin or bullion, a third of this locked up or tied up in vaults from which it cannot escape. The total of coin money and bullion in circulation in the whole world is not far from $1 1,000,000,000. The growth of credit in the last forty years has been without conceivable precedent. The movable credit of Europe in 187 1 did not exceed $40,000,000,- 000. The masters of credit are staggered at the hazards 178 WAR AND WASTE of present day war. Wars of a certain class may be tolerated, others may be connived at in the interest of local exploitation, but the great wars ending per- haps — whoever is victorious — in the total de- struction of European credit, present appalling risks unknown to any earlier generation. The people are slowly reaching the conclusion that no nation nor group of nations has the right to place the world in such danger. The bankers will not find the money for such a fight, the industries of Europe will not maintain it, the statesmen cannot. So whatever the bluster or apparent provocation, it comes to the same thing at the end. There will be no general war until the masters direct the fighters to fight. The masters have much to gain, but vastly more to lose, and their signal will not be given. It is not alone the paralysis of debt which checks the rush of armies. The common man is having a word to say. While the waning aristocracies are everywhere for war, and while the man with nothing to lose — the man of the galleries in the music hall — repeats the echo, the good citizen sees the world In a new light. He is not so ready for a fool's errand to Durazzo as he was a couple of generations ago for a similar mission to Sebastopol. The cause of peace has moved forward in these years, and in the only WHAT SHALL WE SAY 179 way in which real progress in civilization can be made — through the enlightenment of the people. VI TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND AT PANAMA What shall we say of the demand for 25,000 soldiers at Panama ? We are told that 25,000 men are needed to guard the great canal from " the enemy. " Uncle Sam, as we know, is still a very young man. He hasn't yet got his business head. But he has Yankee blood in him and he is beginning to figure. A new ^400,000,000 canal ought to yield ^16,000,- 000 a year in net returns. Uncle Sam doesn't expect this, for he is an idealist and would help on the com- merce of the world. Besides, he has already given a sixth of his receipts to build up his cherished "Coastwise Shipping Trust." But he figures that 25,000 soldiers at Panama may cost ^25,000,000 a year. Forts and fleets and fighting mosquitoes may cost him how much he does not dare to guess. Al^ this amounts to the interest on ^1,000,000,000 and more. One of Uncle Sam's most faithful teachers and most loyal friends has figured most of this out for him. Prof. Emory R. Johnson, canal commissioner, i8o WAR AND WASTE estimates the total cost of the canal at $375,000,000. All this, interest and principal, must be paid from taxes or from canal tolls. For the first two or three years, the most that can be expected in returns is about $12,600,000 per year, if all vessels pay. If coastwise shipping is exempted, this will fall to less than $10,500,000. In ten years it is hoped that the toll receipts will rise to $17,000,000 yearly. The coastwise exemption will reduce this to less than $15,000,000, unless that useless grant of special privilege to "the most heavily protected in- terest in the country" should be repealed. "It is estimated that $19,250,000 will be required annually to make the canal commercially self-sus- taining. This total is made up of $3,500,000 for operating and maintenance expenses; $500,000 for sanitation and zone government; $250,000 the an- nuity payable to Panama under the treaty of 1903; $11,250,000 to pay 3 per cent, on the $375,000,000 invested in the canal; and $3,750,000 for an amortiza- tion fund of I per cent, per annum upon the cost of the canal. " When Uncle Sam sees the plans for fortifications, for ships for long range and short range defense, the bill for soldiers and officers, and the cost of creating a military instead of a commercial atmosphere, he will finally conclude that it is cheaper and may be WHAT SHALL WE SAY i8i better to let "the enemy" seize the canal, furnishing all the fortresses, fleets, and soldiers for its protection^ while he puts his own money into better ventures. But Uncle Sam cannot escape so easily, because there Is no "enemy." No nation on earth would take the Panama Canal as a gift, if the gift Involved defense by land and sea, or If it involved the loss of the friendship (that is, the commerce) of the United States. VII THE CANAL AND ITS ENEMIES What answer shall we give to the demand for a greater navy because the Panama Canal weakens our line of defense.^ The men who make this demand tell us that the Panama Canal, once built and provided with costly fortifications, so far from strengthening our position In the militant world (at the best, precarious), adds still further to our weakness. Of our whole coast "It Is through Its Isolation the most exposed. It Is Intrinsically the weak link of the chain. " "The fortifications and associated troops are to ensure this hold on the canal while the navy may be absent on its mission of action in either ocean, but neither works nor troops will secure ultimate security If the navy be Inferior to the enemy's. " 1 82 WAR AND WASTE These people do not state who the enemy Is whose imaginary attacks we are spending so much good money to repel. They dream of war, but only of war against "the enemy." We may Infer, how- ever, that it is Japan who is on the watch for this, our weakest spot. They tell us that "the population of our Pacific States is less than twenty to the square mile, while that of Japan is over three hundred." They further clinch their purpose with reference to an utterance some years old of that fine old Japanese gentleman, Count Itagaki, who has spent his last years trying to remove the element of heredity from titles of nobility, and, thus far without success, to get rid of his own title of Count. Only the em- peror can cancel an honour of this sort. Count Itagaki believes that the people of the world are entitled to access to any part of It, and that the doors of America should not be closed to Japanese who may wish to take their part in the building of the West. Perhaps he Is right. It Is a question of social philos- ophy, and this noble-spirited old man has a broad outlook. But this is far, very far, from advocating an armed attack by Japanese ships and soldiers on the Isthmus of Panama. It is Infinitely far from ensuring feats of arms, or deeds of violence. Some excellent men in the United States have thought that Canada should have accepted our views of reciprdc- WHAT SHALL WE SAY 183 ity. To say this is very far from committing armies to invade Canada, putting reciprocity through by force of arms. The purposes of Japan are very simple. She wishes to hold her own at home, to build up her industries, and to pay her debts; and meanwhile to make good her ventures In Korea and Manchuria. She has passed through the terrible calamities of the war of Russia, and her tremendous burden of debt cannot be lifted for half a century. She would not fight us if she could. She could not If she would — • and there Is nothing in the world to fight about. It would be easier for us to seize any Japanese port than for her to seize Panama. There will be no seizing done on either side. When information as to Japan's history, purposes, and resources Is so readily accessible It Is not easy to be patient with those belated war experts who talk of Japanese invasions, whether in America, Australia, or New Zealand. VIII "our ships" and our money What shall we say as to "free ships" and the Panama Canal? If our Nation has agreed to treat all ships alike. Including our own, let us stand by i84 WAR AND WASTE that agreement. Of violation of treaties we have been more than once accused and justly so.* If we know what we have promised, let us stand by it, even though it seems strange that we cannot "throw our money to the birds" while every other nation is free to vote subsidies whenever they please. But why "throw our money to the birds?" Do "the birds" require it or appreciate it? Why should we grant a further subsidy to the more highly and variously "protected" of all our industries? What claim have coastwise steamships of the United States to use our canal at the expense of the Ameri- can people? But these are "our ships" we say. Since when have they become "our ships?" Have the New York and London capitalists who own them ever turned them over to us ? Have they ever agreed to divide their profits with those who make great profits possible? The great enemy of democracy is privilege. To grant a concession of any sort having money value without a corresponding return is "privilege." The granting of privilege in the past is the source of most of the great body of political evils from which the civilized world suffers to-day. '"Treatien, in fact, only bind the polity of the United States as long as they are convenient. They are not, really, worth the labour their negotiation entails or the paper they are written on. It is as well that this position should be realized, as it may save a "great deal of fuss and disappointment iathefuture." — Sir Harry Johnston, "Common Sense in Foreign Policy," p. 89. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 185 While declaiming against privilege, even while exalting its curtailment as the greatest of national issues to-day, we start new privileges without hesita- tion. We throw into the hands of an unknown group of men, to become sooner or later a shipping trust, a vast unknown and increasing sum of money ex- torted by indirect taxation from the people of this country. No accounting Is asked from them; no returns for our generosity. We give them yearly, to begin with, as much as an American labourer can earn In 4,000 years; In other words, we place at their service and at our expense 4,000 of our working- men. From our tax-roll we pass over to them the payments each year of 10,000 families. And all because these are our ships. "Our ships" — we have here the primal fallacy of privilege, a fallacy dominant the world over, and which is the leading agent in the impending insolvency of this spendthrift world. In Europe and America taxes have doubled in the last fifteen years, and half of this extra tax has gone to build up "our ships," "our banks," "our com- merce," "our manufactures," "our promoters," "our defense" in nation after nation while the man lowest down who bears the brunt of these burdens has no share In the benefits. The ships that bear "our flag" In order to go i86 WAR AND WASTE through our canal at our expense are not our ships. By their demand of free tolls, we know them for the ships of our enemy — for the arch-enemy of de- mocracy is privilege. IX THE OPEN DOOR AT PANAMA What shall we say to the suggestion that tolls be free on the Panama Canal for a certain period of years to the ships of all the world ? Why not.'' The cost would not be burdensome. We have already given away a large part of our ex- pected receipts. We have done this in spite of our treaty agreement that we should do nothing of the kind. In giving free passage to our coastwise ships, why not make it free to all the world.? It would be a most gracious act, an act most characteristic of a great nation which values generous action above money. It would show that our occupation of the Canal Zone had In part at least the altruistic desire to help the commerce of the world. It would tend to justify this occupation. It would " save our face," and save us from facing the Hague Tribunal to answer for the violation of a treaty. It would save us from our folly of a special and needless subsidy to WHAT SHALL WE SAY 187 vessels engaged in our coastwise trade. It would make easy and natural the neutralization of the Canal Zone. It would relieve us from the worry of the ruthless militants who would make the Canal Zone invulnerable on land and unapproachable by sea. It would save us the monstrous cost of the fortifications they have already coaxed us or scared us to begin. It would cost us something, to be sure, this world-embracing generosity. Let it be so — we can afford it. We have already paid more money for less worthy purposes. It would restore our self-respect and the respect of other nations. We are losing both under the statutes as they stand. Why not declare the open door at Panama and keep It open at our own expense for half a dozen years ? Experience may bring wisdom; we can act better later. Besides, in the fine words of Mr. Roosevelt, "It always pays for a nation to be a gentleman!" X WHAT SHIP GOES FIRST? What shall we say as to the first ship to pass through the Panama Canal ? Let It be an American ship, bound on foreign commerce. If possible, let it be a merchant ship on its peaceful way to one of our sister republics. 1 88 WAR AND WASTE The date of the opening of the Panama Canal is approaching. A certain symbolism of the thoughts and purposes of the people of the United States will be associated with the character of the first vessel which shall pass through the Panama Canal. May this symbolism be one of international peace and good-will, and of that alone. The main function of the Panama Canal is one of peace. It is to link nations more closely by bonds of travel and of commerce. To symbolize this purpose should be chosen a vessel engaged in the activities of peace, one sailing under the flag of the Republic, bound to or from the shores of this nation; one which shall bear the friendliness of the United States of America to the nations of the world, wher- ever its course may tend. These purposes of the United States could not be fitly symbolized by a ship of war, however great her excellence and however perfect her equipment. The existence of war vessels may be a necessity in an age in which international war is still legalized through the absence of intelligent means of settling interna- tional differences. But the people of the Republic need not glorify this necessity. They should hope that war may be made the last, and not the first, resort when international problems arise. At the best the warship harks backward to the history of the WHAT SHALL WE SAY 189 past; while the ship of travel and commerce points forward to our nation's ideals of the future. This great democracy will find its future greatness not in conquest, not even in self-defense against would-be conquerors, but in friendly cooperation, the brotherhood of men and nations, the ennobling of the individual man, and in increasing recognition of the worth of human life. The historic trip of the Oregon was made on an errand we trust may never be repeated. XI THE MONROE DOCTRINE What shall we say of the Monroe Doctrine as an incitement to war? In an address before the Har- vard Union a leading general is reported as saying : "We are the only- nation which stands for definite policies which are almost certain to bring us into conflict with other nations which are expanding. The Monroe Doctrine and our policy of not allowing even commercial coaling stations of other powers in American waters are practically sure to cramp for- eign nations at some time." It is further assumed that this will force these nations into war with us, hence the need of 450,000 more men who may be mobilized as soldiers in case of need. I90 WAR AND WASTE ^ The Monroe Doctrine has never been made part of the policy of the United States except by the tacit acceptance of the dictum of Monroe. President Monroe declared "that the United States will regard as unfriendly any attempt on the part of European powers to extend their operations in the Western Hemisphere, or any interference to oppress or in any manner control the destiny of governments in this hemisphere whose independence has been acknowl- edged by the United States. " This is a reasonable proposition enough, provided that we do not push it to offensive conclusions. South America has been saved from the fate of Africa, though it has had its own troubles of an- archy and waste. In so far the Monroe Doctrine has served its useful purpose. No European nation intends to violate it. None could afford to do so even if it had not to reckon with the United States. Individuals in Europe may scoff at it, as we some- times speak disrespectfully of the "Spiked Helmet," but talk like this may not be taken seriously. It is only where our claims go beyond Monroe, when we seem to patronize our neighbours or to use them for our own benefit,, when we assume special rights in Latin America, "spheres of influence" or other claims that suggest possible schemes of spoliation, that opposition arises. And this opposi- WHAT SHALL WE SAY 191 tion is not from Europe but from the South Ameri- can republics. These people, confident in their own resources, naturally resent anything that looks like an assumption of superiority on the part of the United States. Patronage, as such, is not acceptable as a substitute for friendship. Insistence on an ex- treme interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine has developed the very reasonable Calvo Doctrine that South America is quite capable of taking care of herself. Attempted forcible collection of bad debts has given rise to the Drago Doctrine that no nation should collect money for its subjects by force of arms. The Monroe Doctrine does not object to the docking privileges or other conveniences of friendly commerce. As it was promulgated before coaling sta- tions were ever dreamed of, it involves no objection to friendly transfers which do not subject the people of a republic to the rule of a monarch. Dr. Manuel de Oliveria Lima, a leading statesman of Brazil, has recently declared that South America is utterly opposed to the Monroe Doctrine as it stands. "Not that they do not appreciate the protection of the power of the United States, but that they are resentful of the assumption by this country of the power of a protectorate. " He suggests that this doctrine be made, not a 192 WAR AND WASTE decree of the United States alone, but a principle of pan-America, the "communal opposition of the nations of the Western Hemisphere against encroach- ment, on the principles laid down by President Monroe. " Why not ? This would blend the Monroe Doctrine, the Calvo Doctrine, and the Drago Doctrine into one broad and reasonable principle, acceptable to all really concerned. We should be large enough, generous enough, broad-minded enough, to forego our national leader- ship in this matter for the general good-will of the continent. If our Monroe Doctrine as bluntly or acridly stated is a cause for war, it will be very easy to do our part in making it a cause for peace. And the way to do this has been well indicated by the statesman of Brazil. A recent eflFort to add to the Monroe Doctrine a clause including occupation of American territory by foreign syndicates does not affect this problem in any way. The recent Senate resolution, itself based on misinformation, has no validity whatever. The President of the United States, being better acquainted than the Senate with the facts concerning Magdalena Bay, did not join in this declaration. It is therefore null and void. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 193 "The Senate cannot declare the policy of this Government, at any rate, because it cannot make it. It is only part of the treaty-making power and only part of the legislative power and only part of the executive power. " The President is therefore under no obligation to follow the dictates of such a resolu- tion, and no President would do it unless such action was clearly required by the public benefit. If, therefore, the Monroe Doctrine makes for war, it is not necessary to repeal it or to modify It, but only to share it with our sister republics. Then it will again make for international peace in accordance with the original purpose of President Monroe. XII THE SIZE OF THE NAVY What shall we say of the size of our navy? How many warships do we need? Can we do without any? The answers to these questions belong to experts — experts in world-civilization on the one hand, in ship-building and ship-using on the other. Perhaps we have no such experts in this country. In any event they have never come together, and our people have never had a rational answer to these questions. Let us analyze the conditions. For offense, we 194 WAR AND WASTE need no ships. There is no other land we wish to rule, no nation we wish to injure. For defense, just as little. There is no power which hopes to rule over us, no enemy that dares or cares to attack. The business of America is linked with all other business. The commerce of America enriches all our customers. It is not good for busi- ness, as Benjamin Franklin once observed, "to knock our customers on the head. " We care not to waste our money on mere rivalry. We are in no Marathon race to see who can pile up the largest fleet or who can excavate the biggest deficit. We care not a straw, when we are in our senses, whether our navy in speed or size or weight of iron stands first or tenth or twentieth. Those who stimulate this rivalry have never given to us the slightest reason why we should feel it. We do not build ships to awe the world. If we did we should fail, for the world is too busy with its own affairs to be afraid of a self-respecting republic, no matter how terrible its disguise of power. To call a great navy an instrument of peace is one of the giant jokes of the century. The way to lasting peace Is not through fear nor through bankruptcy. The world knows — and we ought to know — that we lie outside the sordid and selfish game they call world politics. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 195 The most worthy reasons for a navy in the United States, so far as I can read, are these : The need of a certain dignity in public occasions on the sea, and the need of a speedy way to help our American citizens who through no fault of their own may find embarrassment in foreign lands. The mission of the Tennessee and the Montana to the shores of Turkey is a legitimate duty of a nation, and the nation wants ample and adequate means to fulfil such duties. But a fleet to rival the swollen navies of the great Powers is not needed for this purpose. If ^13,000,- 000 per year was a generous allowance for our navy in 1881, covering amply all demands, it is not clear why, in 191 1, with no greater or different duties, this cost need rise to ^121,000,000. A larger popula- tion, a few more helpless dependencies, a more costly type of ship — all these we may allow, making a twofold or threefold increase perhaps. But no one has suggested a reason why the cost should be ten- fold — and there is no reason. The navy, like the army, should be just as efficient as possible, and just as small as its actual need permits. Surely we want nothing more. For the cost and upkeep of the four superdreadnaughts now asked for, we could build at Washington the one great national 196 WAR AND WASTE university of the world: one of which every scholar or investigator the world over must make use; one which could bring to its halls almost every teacher, investigator, or inventor of the first rank the world over; one by the side of which Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, or Wisconsin, Oxford, Cambridge, Berlin, Leipzig, Paris as well, would seem like fresh-water colleges. And this would not be for twenty years at most, the life of a warship. It would give to America the intellectual leadership of the world, perhaps for all time. There is no university in the world which spends on its teaching force a million dol- lars a year. A million is the interest on only twenty- five millions. How much will sixty millions yield? Or if the money were used in another way, such a sum would go far toward doubling the area of the South and West; to restrain the flood waters, to pour them out on the arid lands, to gather the power increment of all falling waters. No one can foresee the extent to which these enterprises would add to the wealth and to the effective happiness of our people. It is worth our while to consider relative values, to spend generously where spending counts, and to refrain from spending when the only motive is rivalry or inertia, the inability to break loose from an evil fashion, a fashion set in other nations and in other times. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 197 XIII AT THE DROP OF THE HAT In the movement for the "Big Navy" we face mainly two arguments. The one is the fear that we shall be left in fourth or fifth place in the "Race for the Abyss," now on among the mad nations of Europe. The second is that the Monroe Doctrine is so perverted that it leads us straight toward war, while at the same time, and even though we have " little or nothing to fight with, all of us Americans are ready to fight at the drop of the hat, " for this same doctrine. If this is true, it implies a sickly state of public opinion. If we are ready to fight for wrong or folly "at the drop of the hat" the sooner somebody takes away our weapons the better. Our Navy League, aiming at national welfare, should help us to correct this spirit. The remedy is twofold : Let us sanitate our Monroe Doctrine, making it worthy of an hon- ourable nation. Then let us teach our people to look to war as the very last resort of all in inter- national differences, not to be evoked "at the drop of the hat. " If we give a rigid and persistent trial of every other agency, we will never come near war. If we offer fair play, we are likely to get it, for it is 198 WAR AND WASTE overwhelmingly to the Interest of every other nation to be on the good side of the United States. Admiral WInslow has well said: "No matter is so trivial that nations will not go to war over it, if they want to go to war. No difference is so weighty that it cannot be quietly settled if nations do not wish war." It takes two to make a quarrel; and the honour of the Republic demands that she should not be one of the two, If there can be any other way out of it. We have seen clearly that the military leagues of Europe want war and not peace. We have seen the insistent rise of danger with the growth of armament. We have seen how war taik spreads as armies and navies grow. The more money spent in war prepara- tions, the greater the danger of war. Something of this kind appears In America. As our navy increases, so rises the demand for more soldiers and more ships. Our version of the Monroe Doctrine, our conception of the "Open Door," our talk about immigration grows more un- reasonable, as our military strength increases. To the lay mind, the army and navy leagues are gradually putting the chip on Uncle Sam's shoulder, and for this chip they encourage us to be "ready to fight at the drop of the hat. " They have not conjured up any enemy as yet. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 199 Our war scares are based on rumours of the most trivial character, not rising even to the dignity of lies, and having little currency save in barrack-rooms and in the "Armour-Plate Press." The alarming feature of it all is that some of those prominent in military affairs — men to whom we would naturally look for guidance — make the most of these petty canards, exaggerating their importance, emphasizing their irritation, as arguments for swell- ing the army or navy. Referring to the perversion of the Monroe Doc- trine, Admiral Kimball, in a late address at Toledo, says frankly: "In its ninety years of life, the Monroe Doctrine has grown from an expression to Europe of 'Hands off of Spanish-American territory' to a clear intima- tion that European nations are not to interfere, as we may and do, in the affairs of Latin-American re- publics, and that in the Western Hemisphere our interests are paramount. "Judging from the recent insistent demands for armed protection to American property abroad and from the expression of our public opinion upon those demands, as voiced by the press of our country, the Monroe Doctrine seems to have come to mean this : " Foreign-owned property located within the limits 200 WAR AND WASTE of the United States Is American property; American- owned property located within the limits of Latin- American nations is American property also, and must be given the same protection as would be due it were it located within the limits of the United States, but must remain free from any direction whatever either by the United States or by the unhappy Latin-American nation within whose limits the property may be located, especially if, as is so often the case, the title to such American property lies in a fraudulent or violated government This touches a vital question of national honour, a matter vastly more important than a big navy or a little navy, and one which no war can settle. What does our Monroe Doctrine mean? What is its honourable interpretation? — our Republic can- not be guilty of any other. We must free it from all suggestion of selfishness, of patronage or contempt. We are great enough to be magnanimous. We must not go forward with any threat of exploitation backed with the force of arms. We are not a brigand nation, even though some of our acts have brought on us this accusation. The method is plain. Let us join with our great sister republics in a pan-American agreement to WHAT SHALL WE SAY 201 hold America still free from all extension of imperial- ism, claiming no rights for our citizens not granted to all others, and standing as a unit against all "Spheres of Influence," all forcible collection of bad debts, and all the rest of the machinery of conquest which the great Powers of Europe have devised. Before we discuss naval extension let us, as good citizens, try to get at realities in our inter- national relations. Let us have sanitation where sanitation is due. Let us see that our own higher politics is sound and just, and free from needless irritation. Then let us agree not to talk of fighting anybody till we have tried all other methods of adjustment. Let us see that there is no fighting "at the drop of the hat" while we use every rational means of making our geographical isolation, our prosperity, our freedom, our absence of debt, and the general intelligence of our people count for all they are worth in the measure of our diplomatic strength. XIV THE UNREADY NAVY What shall we say of the plea for more ships while those we have are still not ready for war? In the recent session of the Navy League, it was 202 WAR AND WASTE declared that our array of warships was not still ready for war, not "fit for fighting." This seems at first a bit discouraging, for these same ships are built for war and are "fit" for nothing else. If war is what we expect of them the outlook is dark indeed. Fortunately, It Is not: All we ask of our ships is decoration. To make them "fit for fighting" would be to change our temper, not to change our ships. And so no more ships and no more money will change the situation. As a matter of fact, it Is of vital interest to us that our navy should never be ready for war. If it were. It would become more dangerous than "the enemy" It Is to face. A navy which Is ready is fit to bring trouble of Itself. It is like an enormous pistol always cocked, and so always liable to explode. If we had a navy in which every gun was loaded, every ship In commission, every officer eager for the fray, every sailor and marine on his toes all the time, we should be ready for war, and most likely we should get it. The awful danger which persists in the relations of Germany and France does not lie in any quarrel between these peoples, nor even in the crushing load of arms both nations carry. It lies In the fact that their armies are ready for war. Real war neither nation has seen for a generation. Their valiant WHAT SHALL WE SAY 203 soldiers are thus far heroes of the parade alone. Now they cry for blood and glory. All these "peace establishments," as they call themselves in the hideous humour of the day, are straining at the leash. It is taking all the forces of internationalism on both sides to hold them back. The forces of common thought, of common interest, of common business are all opposed to war, and to the war-lord the bottom of the treasure-chest is plainly visible. But he is ready, and when one is "fit for fighting" he is apt to scorn all consequences. So while Germany and France race toward the abyss, it is well to slacken our own speed a little. We are not ready for war. When we are ready It will be time for us to fix up our fleet. And we do not care to do this now. Mob tactics will not sweep us off our fee't again. We have no differences with foreign nations; we never have had any of any great consequence. We have learned better ways of adjustment than to go to war. It Is simpler, wiser, more honourable and more effective to try other methods first. If we hold war as a last resort, the Hague Court goes before it; and the whole cost of this court to all the nations which support it Is less than the cost of an hour of a great war. To trust to arbitration or to trust to war — the contrast of these two policies makes the difference 204 WAR AND WASTE between barbarism and civilization, between an- archy and law, between absolutism and democracy. No foreign war is possible for us now except as a culmination of an inconceivable series of criminal blunders for which our history gives no parallel and no expectation. Our navy will not force war on us, for the navy, like ourselvesj is not ready. If the navy wanted war it would be ready. It has money enough to get ready on. In the last two administrations, generous, not to say lavish in appropriations, we have spent more than a billion dollars on our navy. This is a sum greater than the monstrous indemnity Bismarck exacted in his effort forty years ago to -"bleed France white." Just now, we are putting in $146,000,000 a year. This is $400,000 per day, or, if you like, $2,777 psr minute, the wages each year of 276,210 average American workmen, and about ten times as much as our forty-eight States spend yearly on their State universities, their technical colleges, and indus- trial schools — the backbone of our national progress. But even this, as our naval guides often tell us, is cheaper than war. We could well afford to pay double for our navy (as we doubtless shall in a dozen years or so, for patriotism and log-rolling go hand in hand) if we could be assured that it would never be "fit for fighting." WHAT SHALL WE SAY 205 The best assurance of this would be a deter- mined effort on the part of the spokesmen of the navy to forestall war, to help us to broaden and humanize those American policies which in their judgment are heading us straight toward war. We may not share their fear, but we would be grateful for their powerful help. Perhaps from the crow's nest of the dread- naught they can see things beyond our narrow civil- ian horizon. Meanwhile we are sure that we have plenty of time to get ready. No nation wants to attack us. The militarists of the old world find their own buga- boos nearer home. We have no grudge that craves satisfaction in blood. In this age of science, of business, of travel, of law, of enlightenment, there is no place for the ordeal of war flatly opposed to all these influences. It is not for war and not for peace that our navy exists. It really stands for giant decoration. For this it is always ready and for this an old historic Ironsides or a worn-out spectacular Oregon Is quite as useful as the latest dreadnaught. As Mr, Bryce sagely observes : "It seems to be thought nowadays that the dignity and status of great nations require a big aaa* just as in the sixteenth century a nobleman of high rank was expected to travel about with and maintain a crowd of useless retainers, " 2o6 WAR AND WASTE XV MILITARY CONSCRIPTION What shall we say to the efforts of military experts in Great Britain, the United States, and in the great British colonies in behalf of universal compulsory military service? Only this: we will have nothing of it. It is not American. It is not democratic. It is not whole- some. This service has been the curse of continental Europe. That no man is a soldier against his will is the badge of freedom in Great Britain and the United States. "Every Englishman's house is his castle." Every Englishman's body (except as freedom is lost by conviction of crime or of incom- petence) Is secure from official manhandling. The primal evil of compulsory military service is its onslaught on personal freedom. The political evil is that, its purpose being war, it keeps the air filled with talk of war. War would vanish if people could only "forget it." It is in itself so Irrational, so costly, so brutalizing, that we would have none of it if we could separate it from ideas of "patriotism" and of glory. The conscripts think of war as the ultimate end for which they are "doing time." "The conscripts hope for war," writes a Bavarian WHAT SHALL WE SAY 207 sharpshooter, "because they look for a chance to get even with their officers." The petty officers, swarming in naultitudes, have no other thought than war. The higher officers (not all of them) look forward to actual war for exercise, for promotion, or for the test of their unverified theories or of their weapons rusting through years of peace. All these men idle or malemployed pile up the taxes, giving the workingman more and more mouths to feed. We need not deny a certain value — physical, mental, or even moral — to military drill. We need not deny that a standing army may be made in some degree a school for the betterment of the individual. We should not in the least ^Kffpreciate the work of those men who have given their lives to the upbuild- ing of the character of boys in military institutes. To act together, to act promptly, to obey orders — all these may constitute the best of training for young men. All this has a value wholly outside of war. It has nothing to do with unwilling conscrip- tion. Enforced military service of grown men bears the same relation to military discipline of willing students that stoking a furnace bears to building one's own campfire in a forest. The successful military school has sympathetic teachers, men to whom the end of the work is character-building. It deals with boys 208 WAR AND WASTE at that age in which order and obedience furnish the best lessons. It is as far away as possible from the atmosphere of barracks and brothels, the chief features of the idle standing army. Military service considers only the purpose of war. Its discipline the world over is under incompetent, narrow-minded, irresponsible, often profane and brutal teachers. As a school it is at the best most costly, inefficient, and belated. Its work is begun too late in life to have educational value, even were the war authorities anxious to give the individual soldier industrial or other training to lit him for civil life. Besides this, the standing army has been for centuries the reservoir of the " red plague " parasites. Under the most favourable conditions physicians have been able to reduce the number of victims of venereal disease from about one in three to one in six. In tropical service the proportion of men ruined or half ruined is far greater. The "white slave traffic" of to-day is an outgrowth of the standing army. Requisitions have been published, signed by commanding officers, and frankly drawn on associations of pimps. The term "white slave" was first used by Napoleon III, who applied it to his conscript soldiers, those whom Napoleon I called" chair pour le canon" — ^'meat for the cannon. " WHAT SHALL WE SAY 209 In 1867, the great journalist Emile Girardin wrote : " If war is to be suppressed in Europe, this must be done gradually. The first step is the abolition of the * white slave traffic ' — that is, of military serfdom, the suppression of the drawing lots for men. It is here that a beginning should be made." Now that the conscriptionists are hard at work in England, active In the United States, and successful in New Zealand, It Is time to stand for individual freedom and individual peace. We make no criti- cism of military drill in schools or other well-guarded establishments, when it is voluntary and part of a well-planned course. We pledge ourselves to a permanent fight against the military conscription which burdens Continental Europe. We find our answer in the words of Runciman, In the House of Commons, spoken at Elland In opposition to the plans for manhandling In England: "Lord Roberts knows little of the north of England If he Imagines that it would ever submit to conscription. War is only inevitable when statesmen cannot find a way around or through difficulties that may arise, or are so wicked that they prefer the hellish method of war to any other method of solution, or are so weak as to allow soldiers, armament-makers, or scaremongers to direct their policy. " In any international difference, war should stand 2IO WAR AND WASTE as the last resort and not the first. If force is kept in the background and all other methods are tried out first, there will not be many wars In your day or mine. The few that we shall see will have the motive of rob- bery of the weak, or else the motive of revolt against age-long operations of "military pacification." XVI THE ABOLITION OF PIRACY What shall we say to the plea of Dr. Frederick Harsley at the University of Berlin, that all war operations at sea should be confined to the three-mile limit of territorial jurisdiction? Why not? This would be a great move forward, and in the line of the efforts of Sir John Brunner and many other good men to safeguard private property at sea. Private property on land, if not used for war purposes, ' is immune from hostile seizure. It has been so since 1899. But private property at sea may be seized by the crews of hostile vessels and taken as prizes for their personal benefit. This right to plunder has been supposed to stimulate officers and men to patriotic activity. By this means England once destroyed Holland's commerce; and those who forget that we live in a changing world have wished to hold on to the legalized piracy, as a WHAT SHALL WE SAY 211 means, some time, of doing the same thing with Germany. This, it was said, "ensures not only England's overlordship of the sea, but also her su- premacy of trade for all times." This is no longer true, and England's insistence on the right of piracy is plunging the world into insolvency. It is this vicious claim which explains, if it does not excuse, the huge naval armament of Germany, for "it is impossi- ble to take, lying down, such a perpetual menace." But the cruelty and folly of legalized piracy has become apparent to wise and just men in England. The next Hague Conference will see a determined effort to do away with it, as we have already done away with legalized pillage on land. Now why not go a step further and make the sea an open highway on which all sorts of vessels shall be safe from all form of attack? Why not make belligerent nations confine their brawls to their own shores? All the sea outside the three-mile limit belongs to all the world. Let it be made immune from war. And let It be provided, at international expense, with ships for the protection of commerce — not for its destruction. Let us have, as Doctor Hars- ley urges, a life-saving patrol for warning and for help when the icebergs come down from the north. Let us join to destroy all derelicts. Let us find the dangers of the open sea, and jointly remove them, 212 WAR AND WASTE without adding to them the dangers involved in the operations of ships of war. The naturalists of the world, led by Paul Sarasin of Basle, have already made a plea for the prohibi- tion of the killing of the great seagoing mammals, fur seal, sea otter, walrus, sea-lion, whale, outside of the three-mile limits of the coasts where these creatures breed. On no other terms can these splendid animals be preserved for future generations. Why not do the same by Man, the greatest of all seafaring creatures ? Why not let his path at sea be free from all dangers from his f ellowmen ? Why not recognize the supreme value of the right to trade and travel? If men must be killed on a large scale in international rivalry, why not take the matter out of the world jurisdiction, and confine the slaughter to the territorial waters of the nations concerned .'' The navies of the world must melt away. The taxpayers of the world cannot stand the drain much longer. Why not take away their chief excuse and build up the merchant fleets instead? XVII ENTANGLING ALLIANCES What shall we say of Washington's warning that we of the United States should keep free from WHAT SHALL WE SAY 213 "entangling alliances?" Do we realize how sound this advice was, and that the provision of our con- stitution which prevents secret treaties is one of the most valuable clauses in that noble document? In it, we may remember, it is provided that an international treaty originating with the executive must be approved openly by the Senate before it can have any value. No minister, no President, can secretly pledge the nation to any line of action. No President, no Senate, no Congress, acting alone, can make any declaration of national policy. For these reasons, the United States must stand outside of the tangled snarl of concessions and intrigues which we call "world politics." It must play its international games with open hands. It cannot be the secret friend of any other nation. It cannot be a secret enemy, because all acts of friendship or of hostility are open to all the world. In the present crisis in European politics the peo- ple in no nation know where the nation stands. By the law of "continuity of policy" Sir Edward Grey, in London, is bound to the international agree- ments made by his predecessor in office, his oppo- nent in politics. No English citizen knows how far he is pledged to France, or to what degree he is to be blind to the designs of Russia. He knows that there is a "triple entente," a three-cornered 214 WAR AND WASTE understanding, and that this entente pledges England to inaction in Morocco, Persia, or Mongolia, and to acute and active protest should Germany attempt to extend her control by force. In like fashion Ger- many is bound to Austria, to Italy, to Turkey, in varying degrees; and no German knows when his empire's responsibility in the renewed Triple Alliance may leave off. Germany may suspect Austria of a desire to fight, in order to secure unity at home. She may disapprove of Italian greed and folly. She may deplore the fate of Turkey or she may recog- nize it as just or inevitable. No good citizen of Ger- many cares a straw whether Durazzo is in Servian or in Austrian hands, or in the hands of its own peo- ple to whom it really belongs. The very existence of Durazzo is no concern of his. But the secret treaty may force him to give up his life somewhere in the blood-washed Balkans, that Austria may block Servia's hope^ for a "window to the sea." He can only guess at the future. He must await the out- come of the secret treaty before he can define his own patriotism. The secret treaty is a relic of the military state. The civilized world is still organized on the medieval theory that war is a natural function to be expected in the normal course of events, not a hideous moral, physical, and financial catastrophe. In the old the- WHAT SHALL WE SAY 215 ory as expounded by Machiavelli, the king has no other business but war. It is the duty of his minis- ters to find weak places in the defenses of other kings through which war may be successful, and to find, after the fact, excuses by which war can be justified. The late Italian war was begun and continued on strictly medieval lines. The secret treaty, the con- cession to a friendly power, the artificial interference with a rival — all these belong to the days of Mach- iavelli. If all parties concerned could come out into the open, where the United States Is forced to stand, we should soon have an end to the Anglo-German struggle, to the rivalry between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. Outworn ideas of national glory, outworn figures of speech as to national purposes, outworn medieval- ism in our conception of the state — all these find expression In the "secret treaty," the "entangling alliance, " which is a chief obstacle in the way of the conciliation of nations. XVIII THE PEST OF GLORY What shall we say of the progress in the art of killing in these centuries of Christian civilization .'' Benjamin Franklin, in 1782, after the battle of 2i6 WAR AND WASTE Martinique, wrote thus of what he elsewhere called the "Pest of Glory": "A young Angel of distinction being sent down to this worldon some business for the the first time, had an old courier spirit assigned him as a guide. They arrived over the seas of Martinico in the middle of the long day of obstinate fight be- tween the fleets of Rodney and de Grasse. When, through the crowds of smoke, he saw the fire of the guns, the decks covered with mangled limbs and bodies dead or dying, the ships sinking, burning or blown into the air, and the quantity of pain, misery, and destruction the crews yet alive were thus with so much eagerness dealing around to one another, he turned eagerly to his guide and said: 'You blundering blockhead, you, so ignorant of your business; you undertook to conduct me to Earth, and you have brought me to Hell.' 'No, sir,' replied the guide; *I have made no mistake. This is really the Earth, and these are men. Devils never treat each other in this cruel manner. They have more sense and more of what men call hu- manity.'" Gustaf Janson, of Sweden, in 191 2, one hundred and thirty years later, after the battle of the Tripoli Oasis, wrote thus of what he calls "Lies," and which others have paraphrased as "The Pride of War." WHAT SHALL WE SAY 217 "The bird-man had returned from his flight into the desert where the bombs he threw had stirred up the sands about the Arab encampment. "The general shook him warmly by the hand once more and stood for a few minutes sunk in thought. 'Gentlemen,' he began suddenly, turning to the offi- cers, 'it is incredible how the technique of war has changed. Telephones, telegraphs, wireless commu- nications — war makes use of all these. It presses every new invention into its service. Really, most impressive. I have just been reading the latest aviation news from Europe. Our ally Germany and our blood-relation France possess at this mo- ment the largest fleets of aeroplanes in the world. The distance between Metz and Paris can be covered in a few hours. The three hundred aeroplanes which Germany possesses at this moment, all con- structed and bought in France, could throw down ten thousand kilos of dynamite on the metropolis of the world in less than half an hour. This is a positively gigantic thought! In the middle of the night these three hundred flying-machines cross the border, and before daybreak Paris is a heap of ruins ! Magnificent, gentlemen, magnificent! . . . Un- expectedly, without any previous warning, the rain of dynamite bursts over the town. One explosion follows on the other. Hospitals, theatres, schools, 2i8 WAR AND WASTE museums, public buildings, private houses — all are demolished. The roofs break in, the floors sink through to the cellars, crumbling ruins block up the streets. The sewers break and send their foul contents over everything . . . everything. The water pipes burst and there are floods. The gas pipes burst, gas streams out and explodes and causes an outbreak of fire. The electric light goes out. You hear sound of people running together, cries for help, shrieking and wailing, the splashing of water, the roaring of fire. And above it all can be heard the detonations occurring with mathematical precision. Walls fall in, whole buildings disappear in the gaping ground. Men, women, and children rush about mad with terror among the ruins. They drown in filth, they are burnt, blown to pieces in explosions, annihilated, exterminated. Blood streams over the ruins and filth ; gradually the shrieks for help die down. When the last flying-machine has done its work and turned northward again, the bombardment is finished. In Paris a stillness reigns, such as has never reigned there before. " 'We can imagine, on the other hand, that the French have carried out this same operation against Berlin, or possibly London. Who knows what political combination the future may have in store? But be that as it may, it only remains to us gratefully WHAT SHALL WE SAY 219 to dedicate ourselves to the new and glorious task now set before us. Gentlemen, I bare my head before the marvellous and unceasing progress of mankind.' The general removed his cap, and his voice vibrated with gratitude to the merciful Provi- dence which would perhaps grant that he would live to see this vision come true; and he continued: 'In the face of this triumphant progress which I have just described I am not overstepping the mark when I say that we are approaching perfection. " In 1912 Israel Zangwill, in "The War God," writes: " To safeguard peace vie must prepare for war" — / know that maxim; it was forged in hell. This wealth of ships and guns inflames the vulgar And makes the very war it guards against. The God of War is now a man of business, With vested interests. So much sunk Capital, such countless callings. The Army, Navy, Medicine, the Church — To bless and bury — Music, Engineering, Red-tape Departments, Commissariats, Stores, Transports, Ammunition, Coaling-stations, Fortifications, Cannon-foundries, Shipyards, Arsenals, Ranges, Drill-halls, Floating Docks, War-loan Promoters, Military Tailors, Camp-followers, Canteens, War Correspondents, Horse-breeders, Armourers, Torpedo-builders, Pipeclay and Medal Venders, Big Drum Makers, Gold Lace Embroiderers, Opticians, Buglers, Tent-makers, Banner-weavers, Powder-mixers, 220 WAR AND WASTE Crutches and Cork Limb Manufacturers, Balloonists, Mappists, Heliographers, Inventors, Flying Men, and Diving Demons, Beelzebub and all his hosts, who, whether In Water, Earth, or Air, among them pocket — When Trade is brisk — a million pounds a week! In "Beyond War," 191 1, Prof. Vernon L. Kel- logg, living on the Bay of Carmelo, in California, writes as^ollows; "There has been a good deal of going and coming at my neighbour's. Just now a second physician has driven up rapidly with a tank of oxygen in his carriage. I know enough of my neighbour's affairs — as one does in a village where we live humanly interested in one another — to know that he is dying this morning. He is a simple, sweet, very tired old gentleman of eighty-nine, and rather wishes to die. He exemplifies that pleasant condition that Metchnikoff looks for- ward to as a desirable probability of our evolution and our triumph over untimely disease and death, where we shall all come to the desire of death, not through disappointment or morbid despair, but through having fulfilled life. And we shall welcome the cessation of life just as in our great days we wel- comed its continuance. "But my neighbour's friends and his two phy- sicians, rich in the present knowledge of science and WHAT SHALL WE SAY 221 medicine, are prolonging the vegetative life of the moribund old man with oxygen and stimulants that rack his body and defeat his great need. This need is simply that of ceasing to live useless, painful, and mentally empty, therefore superfluous, hours. "Punctuating these sounds from my neighbour's dooryard come some from farther away: low, heavy, distant, but repeated, insistent sounds that strike the ears with muffled blows, and are perfectly recog- nizable to me for what they truly are, because I have investigated similar ones before. They are the sounds of the shots of the soldiers at the Monterey Presidio in the pines on the hill slope over the ocean, firing singly and by platoons at man-size and man- form targets in the forest. The hilltop over the ocean looks toward Japan, and the man-form metal targets, that fall over dramatically when struck above the middle, seem to me of rather small man- size. "The Monterey Presidio, although of ancient his- tory as America reckons ancientness — for there the soldiers and priests once guarded and prayed over the old Spanish capital of California — is a modern garrison with modern administration. The well- trained officers teach the well-cared-for soldiers all the hideous secrets of modern scientific warfare. They have them practise assiduously with smoke- 222 WAR AND WASTE less powder cartridges in wonderful guns at man- form targets scattered realistically among the trees and bushes of the hillside. "If these targets were replaced by Japanese men between the ages of twenty and forty, men in the very bud and unfaded blossom of life, especially picked indeed for the fullness and purity of the blood in their bodies, each time one went over because struck above the middle, a human being would be put by the success of modern science as applied to war into the condition of my neighbour who is dying. "And yet oddly enough the modern science of be- nevolence is doing all that it can to prevent my used-up and death-desiring and death-needing neigh- bour from dying. " It is said that, for a century or more after the death of Jesus, no follower of his was enrolled in any army or took part in any battle. This may not be literally true, but it was true in spirit. The cen- turion, Maximilian, we are told, "threw down his military belt at the head of his legion, saying: *I am a Christian, therefore I cannot fight!'" and these words, says Harnack, became a common formula with men who believed in a brotherhood not to be achieved through killing. It was only under Con- stantine (A. D. 312) that the Cross was brought into the service of war. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 223 XIX THE FORCE OF ARMS What shall we say to the claim that the stability of a nation must rest on compulsion; that in the last analysis authority means force of arms ? In America, we have thought that in the free will of a free people there lay a force of union greater than the power of any army. We have supposed that the real force behind our institution lay in public opinion, the collective judgment of free men. This is a force, we know, with which we all must reckon ; a force that stands at the opposite pole from the force of arms — the force of public opinion. Is there not a fallacy somewhere in our use of the word " force " ? The "force of arms" is not a "force" ; it is a fear — the fear of being murdered. It has no potency among the fearless, the resolute, the desper- ate. It is operative only when men consider their chances, as of sudden death, against their devotion to the line of action, right or wrong, against which the force of arms may be directed. Once perhaps the force of arms may have been really physical force. The power of muscle and of fists may have brought some refractory family or tribe to order. Struggle is inherent whenever men 224 WAR AND WASTE are brought together. Nowhere do men in the large have like interests, like purposes, like feelings. But struggle is not force of arms, and the normal rivalries of men do not involve the necessity of killing. The power to kill without redress and the fear of killing are both involved in the force of arms. And as military affairs progress we go further and further from the idea of force. Modern war takes no account of normal courage or personal strength. Torpedoes and lyddite recognize no heroes. The strong are led forth to slaughter, not as abler fighters but as better able to bear the strain of camp or march, as looking better in a uniform. The end of war is exhaustion on both sides. Not exhaustion of physical force, but of loans and taxes. When war decides, in the last analysis, it is not force but fear which determines the solution. And fear was never the foundation of the stability of any nation. If China, for example, should build up a great army, to promote internal stability, the effort would be sure to fail. A great army may hold communities in awe, It may fill the air with war. It may egg on the spirit of glory, It may Inflame ambitions and anti- pathies. But no nation can build Its Institutions upon It. It Is no factor in a great republic; It Is no bond of union among self-respecting men. To found WHAT SHALL WE SAY 225 a nation upon force of arms is to build on sand. Even Germany's unity is not one of blood and iron. It rests on the widespread intelligence of the German schools, the well-planned training of her industrial- ism, the "wide-flung" justice of her code of laws. "Dominion over palm and pine" avails nothing unless dominion has its real root in the hearts of a grateful people. The" far-flung battle-line" can hold nothing worth keeping unless there grow up ties of common thought and common interest which in time will banish all need of lines of battle. XX THE FIGHTING EDGE What shall we say of the dangers we run by losing our "fighting edge"? A military expert is reported to have declared at the Harvard Union: "When a nation becomes large and rich and inert it is certain of annihilation by other powers." Shades of the Goths and Van- dals! When did all this happen.'' When did an inert nation become rich? When did a rich nation ever become inert? There is only one way. This was the Roman way: To become rich by plunder; to become inert by the loss of strong men, by the loss of the great widening wedge of those who should 226 WAR AND WASTE have been their descendants. This is the way of the armed host; and in history, each nation dependent on force of arms has found in it its final undoing. Rome seized the fruits of other people's industry. Her strong young men were sent far and wide, over the accessible world, never to return. They left no offspring at home. Her leaders fought each other back and forth in Rome, until, in the words of the latest and best of her historians, "Only cowards remained, and from their brood alone came the new generations." The Romans conquered the world; and the Romans at home sprang from the man who was left — from the man whom war could not use. The city of Rome filled up like an overflowing marsh, but her people were not true Romans. They were sons of slaves, scullions, peddlers, sutlers, adven- turers, get-rich-quick men from the ends of the earth. To cultivate the Roman fields, the historian tells us, "whole tribes were taken." "Out of every hundred thousand strong men eighty thousand were slain; out of every hundred thousand weaklings, ninety to ninety-five thousand were left to survive." Even at the best, or the worst, Rome was not rich. It was only the few who controlled the wealth of the Eternal City. It was only the Caesars and the favourites of Csesers who found place on the Palatine WHAT SHALL WE SAY 227 Hill. For the mob there was no participation. Their part was bread and circuses. No nation is really rich unless it grows rich evenly. No nation grows rich evenly save by industry and trade. No nation, rich or poor, ever grew inert through industry. The only exhaustion history has known is war exhaustion. This is expressed in terms of waste and debt: crushing taxes on the one hand, and reversed selection — the survival, not of the fittest, but of the weakest. This shows itself in loss of initiative, in over-caution and undue pa- tience in facing the ills of life, in corruption, in des- potism, in dependence on violence instead of reason in meeting the national crisis. For all force of arms is a confession of weakness. It is a confession that the cause it represents is not founded in reason, in justice, not fixed in the hearts of the people. "You cannot organize a pirate crew until its members drop the use of force one against another. " The weapon of force "produces the very evils it was forged to prevent. " The force of arms as a cement- ing influence is the badge of political inefficiency. The mailed fist is the dependence of the weak nations, not of the strong. Strong men are "too self-willed and too independent to allow any one to rule over them but themselves." 228 WAR AND WASTE It was this thought that led Martin Luther to declare that no League of Princes could help on the German Reformation of religion. "God is a righteous but marvellous judge," he said. "Sickingen's fall is a verdict of the Lord that the force of arms must be kept far from matters of the Gospel. " There is no Orozco, nor Zapata, no Alva nor Tilly, nor Wallenstein, no Goth nor Vandal nor Moor nor Hun who can overrun our nation so long as we thrive in the arts of peace. To be large and rich and courteous and reasonably honest is to make all other nations our friends and our debtors. It is the business of a sentinel on the watch towers of the outer gate to keep us alert to every pass- ing shade. It is the business of good citizens to keep their heads and to trust their neigh- bours so long as they know these to be good citizens too. "The soldier is not to be blamed for doing his work. It Is the civilian who should be blamed for not adding the proper supplement. " The citizen should size up the situation. It is his nation. He pays the bills. He suffers from the waste. If you live In a fireproof house, no use to spend two thirds your income on fire insurance. And don't depend on the insurance agent to set you right. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 229 XXI THE NET OF THE USURER What shall we say of the net of the usurer, which we are told stifles all activities of Europe in war or peace? Men have been made free by war. Why not again ? Why not break the net in which we are confined ? Because it will not break by war, for in war it was woven. Mr. Cecil Chesterton (not the real Chesterton, his brother, whose name is Gilbert) first coined this phrase, the "Net of the Usurer," another name for the "Unseen Empire" of finance. With a mixture of metaphors worthy of a greater humourist, he looks to war to tear this usurer's net, because a costly war may rip the usurer's purse as well. That the banker may lose money does not ease up on the banker's creditors. For old wars, we have pawned our free- dom; and war will not, on further borrowed money, restore it. Mr. Chesterton would have France fight this war of release, and that against Germany (although the usurer mostly lives in France), the purpose being to save Europe from the infection of German ideas, especially "the idea that you can make a nation strong by making its people behave like cattle." 230 WAR AND WASTE This idea may be a bad one, but it cannot be sup- pressed by killing Germans or being killed by them. It is itself purely a war idea, and more war will not cure it. Our nets were all woven by war, not by any usurer. More war will only draw the net tighter. If we cannot find freedom in self-government, in peace, we cannot find it at all. The first step toward freedom is to get out of debt. Only thus can we "break the net of the usurer." How is this done? Not by more wars, more waste, more corruption, more military occupation — with their legacy of more wars, more waste, and more corruption. By such means the net was spread in the first place. There is but one way to break it. It is by mending our own ways, by moving away from the pitfalls over which the net was spread. It is by patience, frugality, limitation of governmental expenditures, the elimination of privilege, by the "humble and contrite heart" in public affairs, by preparing for peace and not for war, by stimulating science, edu- cation, sanitation and industry, by national justice, economy and solvency — methods in national ad- ministration that would bring about the desired result in the affairs of the individual. The double standard in morals of the man and the nation — the idea that what is wrong for the man Is right for WHAT SHALL WE SAY 231 the group — this has led only to evil. Equally evil is the double standard of economics, that what would bankrupt the man would cover the nation with glory. If the system by which men and races are grouped in nations is to succeed — and it is still on trial — the administration of nations must follow the same laws of ethics and economics which control the actions of men. "My country, right or wrong, " is a principle as dangerous as the braggart assertion of the "superman" that he will do whatever he pleases regardless of the laws of man or of God. There is no such right of man or nation. Whatever mistake either may make in matters of ethics or of economics brings, in its degree, its sure penalty. And "the net of the usurer" is the prison in which nations which waste their people's substance in whatever way will find themselves presently confined. The road leads through insolvency and violence. The sole escape is to turn about and go the other way. XXII THE FERTILE DREADNAUGHT What shall we say of the advocates for peace who stand at the same time for a great navy and corre- sponding military expenditures? We shall say that we believe that they are mis- 232 WAR AND WASTE taken. Without other reason we may not doubt their sincerity. But we may question their judg- ment. Nothing is more important than the main- tenance of peace. But the show of force does not seem a good means to this end. Besides, it is most costly. If one fourth of our present expenditures were more than adequate twenty years ago, half of the expenditures of to-day are on the wrong side of the account. The peace of Dread and Dread- naughts has little in common with real Peace, the Peace of Law. War instruments are built for war. Their in- fluence tends toward its destined end. Those who make wars are not appalled by them. Reckless dare- devils, these warriors, they fear nothing; they have nothing to lose. It is the plain man who pays the cost. And cost multiplies cost. Once started on the line of war preparation and the expenses pile up with mathematical certainty and with no regard to real needs. Whatever movement has money behind it calls for more money. No nation has any system of checking expenditure. Debt breeds debt, and waste breeds waste. That war expenditures are four times as great as twenty years ago implies no increase of danger anywhere. It means only that four times as many people are making a living by them. That the taxes of the world have doubled in WHAT SHALL WE SAY 233 fifteen years rests on the fact that twice as many- people are tax-eaters. It is a fine saying of Norman Angell, that "War is futile but not sterile." Most wars settle nothing, accomplish nothing; but each is descended from some ' other war, and each tends to become the parent of new conflicts. Just so with all schemes for expendi- ; ture. The dreadnaught is futile enough: no returns' of good in any land can be traced back to it. But It is not sterile. It gives birth to new dreadnaughts, | at home and abroad. English dreadnaughts breed German. German dreadnaughts are the parents of , the American fleet. Our navy is the parent of the i growing fleets of Brazil, Argentina, and Japan. Each avoidable expenditure calls for more expense. Even worthy expenditure has the same bad habit as ' the number of persons interested in it expands. The wedge of the well-earned pension of the maimed soldier has opened the door of something for nothing for thousands of other soldiers, the gift culminating but not ending in the demoralizing service pension of to-day. Forty years ago the Germans exacted from France the unheard of indemnity of a billion dollars. In fifty years our Southern States have paid about double that sum in pensions. There is under consideration at Washington a bill 234 WAR AND WASTE which proposes to pay national money to the nailltia of the various states. The sums suggested range from $45 to $360 yearly for each individual. This is for service hitherto taken as an honour, a patriotic duty, or a healthy recreation. One of the evil effects of such a proposition (and all its effects appear to be evil) is this : that such expense breeds more expense. It is the beginning of an attempt to create a standing army, neither soldier nor civilian, its reason for exist- ence being the money that is in it. As more and more persons become financially interested, the method of log-rolling will increase this largess from a few to many millions. It will go the way of the pension bills. What was originally a sacred duty of a grateful nation has become one of the scandals of the century. The money in it demands more money. It will be the same with the militia bill. Futile but not sterile are all our preparations for war in a time of trebly assured peace. War money makes war talk. War talk perverts public opinion. It increases the possibility of war by making war seem easy and familiar, even inevi- table. More warships, more soldiers, do not allay this. They mean more war money, more war talk, more expenditure. The way to peace lies In the opposite direction. It lies in friendly relations and In friendly commerce, WHAT SHALL WE SAY 235 in the extension of international law, in the patient removal of possible stumbling blocks, the loyal ignoring of real differences if such exist, and making war never the first resort, but always the very, last resort in every real crisis of the nation. XXIII THE SHIPS AND THE TENSION What shall we say as to warships as a relief from tension ? In a recent article, an American admiral uses these words: "Only a few years ago the people of the Pacific Coast, by their treatment of an Oriental nation, brought about a tense situation in which the possible use of our fleet required no great stretch of the imagination. Had the fleet been in the harbour of San Francisco at that time there would not have been many who would have looked upon it as a burden and a danger." Nevertheless, it would have been both: An over- weighted navy is a burden on the taxpayer at large. Tension becomes danger if aggravated by display of forqe. Without artificial stimulus such petty and un- justified excitement will soon subside. Moreover, it is never right to put pressure on the scales of Justice. In this case the tension was kept alive by agitators on 236 WAR AND WASTE both sides of the ocean, and its echoes are heard yet in mess-rooms and barracks. It arises in one form or another at each recurrent session of the Legislature of California, But its original motive in 1906 and 1907, to a great extent at least, was not related to Japan. One purpose was to divert public attention from schemes for robbing the City Treasury. The needed remedy was to be found not in warships but in prosecuting attorneys, and certainly those inter- ested in national honour and international peace desired anything in that juncture rather than more ships or men. It was not "the people of the Pacific Coast" who were concerned at this time. It was simply the School Boaid of^one city, who, for reasons not con- cerned with international affairs, tried to establish an "Oriental School." Whether this act if carried out would have been a violation of a treaty or not no one yet knows. No one took the trouble to carry it before the proper court — the only sure way to find out. If it was a violation, the ordinance would be null and void, as national treaties override all local statutes. If not a violation of the treaty, it was no business of anybody outside of San Francisco. It could not be a violation of a treaty until some United States court should decide it to be so. The whole WHAT SHALL WE SAY 237 matter should have been taken to the nearest federal court and there disposed of. It was tried, however, in the newspapers of Japan and the United States instead. This naturally made tension, and both nations being armed, the discussion degenerated into war talk. But it is hard to conceive that a rational person in either country should dream of going to war for such a reason. Nor had any person at all familiar with Japanese affairs the slightest concep- tion that any ministry would commit suicide by an attack on its best market, a seaport of its staunchest friend among the nations. It is true that a large section of San Francisco was, and is, eager for defense of army and navy; but the motive is not fear of "an Oriental nation." Quite the reverse. It would welcome a Japanese fleet as warmly as our own if it had as much money to spend. A recent military journal states that "Uncle Sam is San Francisco's best customer." Five millions of dollars was spent by the Commissary for supplies in 1912. For 1913, it is estimated by the Quarter- master's office that the business Uncle Sam "will transact in San Francisco in the fiscal year which will end June 30,1913, will be 70 per cent, greater than that of last year." This would aggregate $8,500,000. "Ninety cents out of every dollar of this not inconsiderable sum" will "swell the bank 238 WAR AND WASTE accounts of San Francisco merchants, civilians, mechanics, labourers, and others to whom Uncle Sam pays living expenses. " I make no criticism of these expenditures, and certainly none of the careful officers responsible for the details. I wish only to call attention to the general fact that the coastwise cities crave "defense" not because of any fear of foreign attack but because Uncle Sam is notoriously " a good spender. " Almost any city would feel the need of "national defense" if it had San Francisco's opportunity. And yet eight and a half millions is a very large sum of money. There are two universities of the first class in the vicinity of San Francisco, one gener- ously endowed by the state, the other by private interests. In salaries of teachers, these two spend little more than a million dollars a year, and their supply account in San Francisco approaches two hun- dred thousand more. The Commissary will spend in 191 3, therefore, if our figures are correct, more than a dozen such universities. It is proper to keep up fortifications and fleet at San Francisco, not for defense, but for conformity. Forone thing, this is in accord with a long-established old-world convention. But we know that these defenses are, in fact, as useless as the buttons on the back of my coat, because they do not defend us against WHAT SHALL WE SAY 239 any real enemy. The buttons on the coat are re- tained in accord with a good old-world convention. We must wear these buttons until the world agrees to cut them off. In the same way, until the nations agree to raze their fortresses, we must hold on to ours, and we must spend our money freely for the defense of the Golden Gate. xxrv FORT GRAFT What shall we say of the defense of Los Angeles ? This enterprising city was, until recently, twenty miles from the sea, and being unfortified was im- mune from attack under the laws of war. Recently, however, it has annexed to itself the seaport of San Pedro and the lots and farms between. Near San Pedro and dominating the harbour of Los Angeles is the fine large hill called the Palos Verdes. It Is reported that this hill has been bought by the Government of the United States at a cost of, as stated, $249,000, not as a park, for which nature nobly fitted it, but as a coast defense to be made. It is claimed, into a second Gibraltar. About $328,000 is now asked for as a beginning, and some $2,500,000 is expected to follow. By this means Los Angeles will lose her war Im- 240 WAR AND WASTE munlty — which matters little, as there is not, never has been, and apparently can never be, an enemy on the outside which will do her any harm. For the same reason, this fortification will certainly be impregnable. A leading general is quoted as saying: "Certainly, Los Angeles Harbour must be fortified, but you folks out here must get behind It and shove. The money must come from Congress and it Is your duty to see that Congress appreciates your need. . . . The situation is a live one, for wars are not over and never will be so long as men are men. . . . It is not a simple proposition of placing soldiers. The problem goes way back of that, and the people of the coast must play the game. " It is suggested that the fortress be known as Fort Graft, in honour of its founder. XXV THE DREAM OF UNIVERSAL WAR What shall we say of those in search of fighting chances who still fix their eyes on Japan .? We who know Japan as a nation of patient, lovable people, intent on their own affairs, hopeful, sensitive, eager for the good-will of their neighbours, burdened to the utmost with the cost of their experiences in WHAT SHALL WE SAY 241 Korea and Manchuria — we can see no reality in their signs and portents. We cannot conceive of a war between Japan and the United States. We would feel in such a condi- tion the most intense humiliation; but we cannot imagine It as anywhere within the range of human possibility. If such a horror were to come to pass we should have to imagine the following series of incidents in our future history: (i) The abandonment of our unchanged tradition of national friendliness toward Japan. Thus far, whatever may have been done or said by individuals, our Government has preserved for sixty years an unbroken attitude of courtesy and friendliness. (2) That such breaches of this rule as might arise in Washington should be of such a character as to arouse an Insatiable feeling of humiliation and an uncontrollable spirit of revenge on the part of the Japanese people. This spirit must be so strong as to overturn the patient and conservative ministry which desires and must desire, above almost all other things political, to retain the good-will of the United States. (3) That this supposed outbreak should take place before the American advisers in the Japanese Government could make their influence felt to- ward mutual understanding and before the friends 242 WAR AND WASTE ' of international decency in America could exert a similar influence. (4) It would further be essential that the rulers of Japan should be determined on national suicide in the face of this assumed provocation. To send an armada to attack on her own ground 6,000 miles away a nation of twenty times her wealth and practically out of debt, with a population half greater, would be self-destruction. (5) It would involve, further, the necessity that the cause of war was so flagrant as to give Japan the sympathy of the civilized world, and especially of the world of finance. This sympathy must be deep enough to induce the bankers of London and Paris to give to Japan outright the $1,000,000,000, more or less, necessary to equip this armada and to carry on the war. They Could not lend the money, for to Japan to-day, lending would be giving. Japan already owes more than $1,300,000,000, and to duplicate this debt would make her securities worth- less. In Japanese affairs to-day almost every other interest is subordinated to that of keeping her credit good. (6) The coast of Japan itself is no better defended than that of California. "It would be compara- tively easy for an enemy of any strength to land" at Matsushima In order to overrun northern Japan, to WHAT SHALL WE SAY 243 land at unprotected Kamakura to flank and starve Tokyo, to land at Sakai to march on Osaka, and to isolate Kyoto. In fact, no nation with a long seacoast can ever raise money enough, no matter how grinding the taxation, to have every foot of it pro- tected from invasion. On the other hand, no such invading army, in the heart of a hostile country, with- out a base of supplies, could ever finally escape. (7) As the United States must be responsible for provocation, whatever that may be, why do we assume that she will act only on the defensive.? Is not our monstrous naval expenditure based on the theory that we shall " meet the enemy in the middle of the sea " ? 1 have assumed, of course, that provoca- tion would necessarily be on the part of the United States. It is not conceivable that it should be other- wise. No other nation is so careless as to civilities, though we have not often shown real insolence. Any one familiar with affairs in Japan must know that all her resources, and more, are devoted to holding on to what she now has. The occupation of Korea is a costly and perilous experiment, perhaps necessary as a defense against Russian aggression, but never- theless involving the nation in many dangers which unexpanded Japan would have avoided. The lease of the railways of South Manchuria, with the cities of Dairen and Port Arthur, further greatly extends 244 WAR AND WASTE the danger line of Japan. The United States receive more than a third of the exports of Japan. Among nations with stable government she is Japan's nearest neighbour and most steadfast friend. What- ever the petty flurries on the Pacific Coast, the small rivalries of the European labourers with the rice-field hands, the determination of the Japanese Government to cultivate friendship with us in every honourable way cannot be shaken. If any great insurance company of the world ever underwrites against war, a policy covering our whole Pacific Coast could be had for half the present cost of maintaining the Presidio of Monterey. Men sometimes speak of the "dream of universal peace" as a most desirable but quite impossible ideality. But it is a reality so far as it goes, and it goes farther and farther every year. Almost any nation could attain it at once by substituting in part a civil tongue for its reliance on army and navy. The real obses- sion of the world is "the dream of universal war." This is the noxious dream of our times. XXVI THE DEFENSE OF THE PACIFIC What shall we say to the demand on the part of army experts for the "establishment of three large WHAT SHALL WE SAY 245 mobile forces" for the defense of the Pacific Coast: one at Seattle, one at San Francisco, and one near Los Angeles? An American general is quoted as saying at Berkeley recently: "We are prepared to cope with the situation so far as the bombardment of cities and towns is concerned, but we are not prepared to protect our people from the landing of a hostile force beyond the reach of our coast artillery. The seacoast defense is useless without a mobile army. Now, how are we to get men for this army? At present there are approximately 130,000 to 140,000 men in the various stations of the army service in the United States. We have need of 450,000, more. It is imperative that a reserve be established, as we wish to train the citizen to defend his country in case of war." [If this figure is correctly reported, some 50,000 of reserves or militia are included, besides the regular army of about 82,000 men.] Elsewhere military experts have told us that if a large Oriental army should without warning sail to our coasts, we should be helpless without these three great forces. Must we take all this seriously? And must we stand the expense of all these military visions ? It is not stated how large these mobile forces ought to be. It is hard to fit figures to a warrior's dream. Ten thousand men in each of the ports is 246 WAR AND WASTE an easy figure on which to calcalate. That means another twenty naillions a year just for pay and board and keep. The great National University to which Washington gave his fortune more than a century ago could be built for that. We could do wonders in storing and distributing our flood waters for an annual sum like that. And there are other expenses totaling no one knows what. The individ- ual cost of a soldier averages about $600 a year — more than double the cost in other nations. But we do not begrudge this. We are willing that the boys should be well cared for. According to the Army and Navy Journal the total expense per man, for food, clothing, and keep, is about $600 per year. "The authorized strength of the army is 81,500. The amount of their pay, including longevity pay, is $20,236,230. For clothing, subsistence and trans- portation the total is $16,047,080. Adding this to the pay, we have for our army a grand total of $36,283,140, which divided by 81,500 gives $445. Adding for what are known as 'overhead charges' gives us our $600 rate. " But, for some unexplained reason, this cost is but one third of our total army expenditures per year, even after deducting the cost of the engineer corps, an institution of Peace though under direction of the War Department. Our people are ready, no WHAT SHALL WE SAY 247 doubt, to pay what is really necessary, but whatever is in excess of this is waste or graft. The total military cost for 1910-11 is given by Arthur W. Allen as $162,357,000. Deducting the expenses of the Engineer Corps and dividing this by the number of soldiers (85,000) we have an annual cost of about $1,300 per year for each. Army preparations would be futile without soldiers. Yet it would appear that if the nation should discharge them all, the saving would be relatively small. The balance of nearly $75,000,000, besides interest, pensions, and the time of those who might be employed in gainful occupations, represents still a huge military estab- lishment, more than half as large as the annual cost of the whole regular army of Great Britain ($138,800,000: 262,000 men), and as large as the ai my expenses ($122,709,000) of Austria ($73,513,000: 396,000 men), and half greater than that of Japan ($49,196,000: 225,000, men). Only in Great Britain, Russia, Germany, and France is the army so costly as in the United States to-day, although all the principal nations have a larger fighting force. With us the establishment costs vastly more than the men. What shall we say of the moral effect of these garrisons on our coast cities and of our coast cities upon them.^ However well disposed and well con- 248 WAR AND WASTE trolled, every idle garrison of idle men the world over is in its degree a standing menace to virtue, a stand- ing target to vice. At the best a standing army should be a school, a school in which two or three years brings graduation, a school in military drill if it must be, but in industrial training as well, to fit its graduates for useful civil life. It should not be a life profession for men debarred from marriage. The humble cottages of "Washerwoman's Row" disturb the neatness of our army posts, hence married soldiers are not wanted. But the choice remains — marriage or vice — and vice goes with barracks the world over. Our own army officers and post sur- geons have in late years done their best to alleviate these conditions, yet the tendencies remain still true. The Secretary of War, with more emphasis than 1 have dared to use, speaks of our forty-nine army posts as "adjoined by dives and ill resorts of the vilest character." It is these conditions, he believes, "which make the record of the army in this respect shameful beyond that of the army of any other civilized nation." This actual supremacy we may doubt, for like conditions produce like results in every nation, whenever idle men are gathered together to wait for the action that may never come. The purpose of this added force is to defend the Pacific Coast from an "enemy's attacks." We ask WHAT SHALL WE SAY 249 again, What enemy? It is plain that no such enemy exists. "The large Oriental army" which shall slip away from Asia, running the gauntlet of hundreds of reporters, American and European, to land unsus- pected at Monterey, could come from nowhere. There is no such possibility outside of the land of dreams. A hundred thousand men is perhaps a "large army." This would require an armada of more than fifty ships, sailing six thousand miles, to land on a very unwelcome coast. The average yearly cost of the Japanese soldiers has been underestimated at $219 per year. Pro- visions come higher in California, and this supposed landing would exhaust a good deal of ammunition. But at the lowest estimate it would cost very many millions in cash to equip and start this army. It could not be done from funds in hand in any Oriental nation. It could not be borrowed in London or Paris or New York, for every yen securable by the issue of bonds was exhausted in the war with Russia, for which Japan has $1,325,000,000 yet to pay. Japan has reached the limit of taxation. She can borrow no more. She would not fight us if she could. She could not fight us if she would. The United States still is, as she always has been, Japan's most stead- fast friend and her best customer. Japan's outside ISO WAR AND WASTE interests lie in Asia, all of them — in Korea and Manchuria — and her hold on these regions is absolutely conditioned on her friendship with the United States. The coast of Japan, for that matter, is far more vulnerable than our own. "A large army" could land almost anywhere in Japan. But, six thousand miles from its base of supplies, it could never get away again. No coast of any nation could ever be ideally and perfectly protected. There is always room for more men, more ships, more forts. If it were perfectly defended, the cost of protection, and the presence of these thousands on thousands of idle men, would be a menace worse than an enemy's invasion. "The Dream of Universal War" with which some of our military experts have become obsessed has no foundation in any needs of the United States. It is a natural result, perhaps, of the existence of great armies and great navies maintained in idleness. The leaders of these armies and navies find in their dreams a world where soldiery is not play but action. We listen to them, and we open our treasuries at their behest because their art is one we do not understand. Everywhere the people's money is spent as money was never spent before on the " great illusion" — that of ideal defense against imaginary dangers. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 251 XXVII PEARL HARBOR What shall we say of Pearl Harbor, our new stronghold of the sea ? We have been told that Hawaii has dangers both within and without. As a coaling station it com- mands the Pacific. As a community it is commanded by Japan. There are nearly four Japanese to every Caucasian on the islands. This is no surprise for the same relation existed when their white rulers turned these islands over to us. One military expert soberly declares that there are 35,000 Japanese ex-soldiers on the islands, each ready to rise at a signal from home. This we know is not true. There are not 35,000 ex-soldiers in Hawaii, nor any other number worth considering. If there were, it would signify nothing, as they have neither money nor arms nor ofl&cers, nor any understanding with the Japanese Government. They are former rice-field hands, now labourers on the sugar plantations. The mutual relations of the many races in Hawaii are singularly amiable. Honolulu Is the cross-roads of the greatest ocean. All races meet there in the most cosmopolitan of societies. Mutual knowledge breeds mutual respect. The ortilnary police of the 252 WAR AND WASTE most peaceable of towns suffices for all internal de- fense of Honolulu. Moreover, whatever the census may show, the people are all, of choice, American: English, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians even. There is not the least doubt of that. But what of the other menace from without? Do not Oriental nations look with envious eyes on our Gibraltar of the Pacific .'' Surely that need not worry us. What they might do if they could is only a matter of conjecture. What they cannot do if they would is a matter of simple mathematics. Once in a century a nation can fight as Japan fought in Manchuria. That was the last time. Before the next century comes, the combined work of commerce, civilization, and finance will put an end to inter- national struggles. One impulse in the recent wars in Europe has been the certainty that the close season for war is soon coming on. Surely our fortifications about Honolulu and Pearl Harbor would prove ample as defense were there anywhere an enemy. Our Secretary of War, the least exacting of our military experts, speaks of the great strategic im- portance of Pearl Harbor, of more value for "the protection of the entire Pacific Coast from attack than any one of the positions on that coast now so WHAT SHALL WE SAY 253 strongly fortified. No naval enemy could make a serious effective attack upon any portion of the American Pacific Coast unless it had first reduced the position at Oahu, threatening its flank. " This is doubtless perfectly true; but vastly more important is the fact that there is no such enemy, and there can be none. The enemy's flank is already turned. It is turned by the crushing debt of past war and by the grinding residue of present taxation. It is turned by the friendship and justice of civilized nations, by the interrelations of business, by the great banker's hatred for war and waste. Magnif- icent as is the naval station at Pearl Harbor, im- pregnable as is its Gibraltar-like defense, these is- lands lie in the zone of peace. They are centres of no present struggles, no future outbreaks of ferocity. To the student of world affairs, their people of many races live in noble harmony, and an armed garrison is no more needed there than in Kokomo or Kalamazoo. Japan has earned the right to be let alone, while she works out her own distressing problems of tax and debt and malemployment of men, all these with their necessary results in the rising cost of living. When the writer was in Japan not long since, an editor came from Osaka to meet him at Nagoya to ask the cause of the rise in the cost of living in Osaka. 254 WAR AND WASTE Why is it that the farmer about the Inland Sea of Japan can no longer afford to eat the rice he raises, but must sell it to buy cheaper rice, meanwhile living on three-quarter rations? He cannot use his own crop, because he must sell it to pay his taxes, that his nation "may keep her place among the great Powers of the World." In the Japanese journal Shin Nikon, Mr. Nagai Ryutaro presents the case of these people; an "appeal in behalf of those unable to appeal": "Thousands upon thousands of our compatriots," says Ryutaro, "are on the verge of starvation. 'What little value is set on human life!' Mencius once asked King Yeh of Liang (China) : ' Is there any difference between killing men by the sword and by means of government?' 'None,' replied the King. If future historians accuse modern statesmen of the slaughter of people by maladministration, what grounds will there be to deny the charge? I appeal on behalf of those who are unable to appeal!" XXVIII MAGDALENA BAY What shall we say of the Magdalena Bay incident, a pure hoax at best, and of its treatment by the American Press? WHAT SHALL WE SAY 255 Here is the story as told in headlines of leading newspaoers in New York : Japan in Mexico stirs Senate. Ultimatum sent to Madero. Senator Lodge asks President for information on the Jap- anese plan to put a big colony on Magdalena Bay. In secret note a year ago Great Britain demanded that U. S. stop activities of the Mikado's Government. Alarmed by the plan of Japan to obtain an official foothold along Magdalena Bay, where she will be a direct menace to the United States, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to-day intro- duced a resolution calling on the President for all informa- tion in the possession of the Government relating to the purchase of the land in that vicinity by the Japanese Government or by a Japanese company. The resolution wa» adopted. Warning to Japan on Magdalena Bay. Cabinet members be- lieve Taft's reply to Lodge will end her schemings. Steam- ship line as a cloak. Potential gravity of the situation not known. Land long owned by Americans sought. Japan's designs against U. S. to be revealed by inquiry under Lodge's resolution. Open charge of bad faith in acquiring foothold in Magdalena Bay based on information that Nippon government is backing the venture. Mikado is determined to test the Monroe Doctrine in Mexico. Move- ments of Japs to Magdalena began immediately after Diaz cancelled arrangement with the U. S. for use of the place. Engineers recently prepared plans for a Japanese city. Our old friend, the Japanese "War Scare," as a friend of ade- quate Naval increase. The Herald might be expected to be tempted to join the chorus of the "The War Scare" which is sure to be raised over the reports that the Japanese have made arrangement with the Mexican Government for a naval base on Magdalena Bay, but as an enemy of sham and 256 WAR AND WASTE a promoter of good international relations it is compelled to say bluntly that the whole matter is an attenuated fraud, with its hair a little thinner and its beard a little whiter than when it made its last appearance, just a trifle more than a year ago. There is always some ulterior motive connected with the revival of this absurd report. Those who foster it seem to imagine that it might influence this country to intervene in Mexico. The theory is that unless the United States takes and annexes Mexico the Japanese will get such a foothold before the Panama Canal is opened that this country will have to fight the armies of Japan just across the Rio Grande. Not even a necessary evil. The last time this precious imposition was fostered by the. interests that desired intervention, General Madero was leading a revolu- tion against President Diaz. Then the Japanese naval base was to be in the Bay of Todos Santos, in Lower Cali- fornia. The yarn went clear around the world, and was scotched and killed by the Herald, which interviewed the most prominent statesmen of Japan. It was buried by President Taft on March ajth, concluding with the state- ment, "I am most happy to be able to reciprocate those assurances. " It is not necessary to get up a Japanese "war scare" to show the country how its interests are being im- perilled by the action of the house democrats in rejecting any battleships increase this year. The country knows that unless we have an adequate navy any dream of this sort that any coterie of adventurers might invent could come true. New warning to the world and to Japan. President will restate our determination to enforce Monroe Doctrine. Hands off the hemisphere. Taft's reply to the Lodge resolution will thwart Magdalena Bay negotiations. Magdalena Bay quest in senate. President asked to tell what he knows of Japan's intentions. Lodge pushes inquiry. Re- cent reports have caused revival of coaling station story. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 257 Denials by Mexico. Information that a steamship com- pany first seeks a foothold. Move thought a cloak. No advantage in the Bay for commercial vessels, but ideal for warships. Japs tried to buy Magdalena Bay land of Yankees now holding it. American owners dickered with Orientals who wished to use fishing concessions, found colony of Japanese labourers, and form Japanese-American steamship line. President will say in his reply to Senate resolution U. S. State depart- ment advised against sale. Proposed scheme, in which Japanese Government did not appear, fell through. This country could get land but doesn't want it, as Mexico won't cede sovereignty. The strip of land is five hundred miles long and sixteen wide. Find evidence of Japan-Mexico deal. Commercial company seeks 2,ooo,cxxJ acres on Magdalena Bay. Ideal coaling station. Site has little value except for naval purposes — Lodge resolution goes to State Department. Navy's head sees warning in issue. "This agitation over coaling stations and the Magdalena Bay affair would not excite so much apprehension if the prospects were good of keeping up a strong navy in the future. " — George von L. Meyer Secretary of the Navy. Magdalena Bay story " merest buncombe, " says chairman Sulzer of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House. No foun- dation in fact. Taft's reply to the Lodge resolution will be reassuring in regard to our relations with Japan. Japan's Premier tells the Times there is no Magdalena Bay incident. Fishing rights have been obtained by the Orien- tal Whaling Company of Japan. Far from Magdalena Bay. Not in Lower California at all, but along 750 miles of the mainland. Others have same rights. Senators and mem- bers of House deeply impressed by the message. Call plot •tory exploded. Senator Lodge is gratified with statement 2S8 WAR AND WASTE that seems to explain. Marquis Saionji's statement to the Times. The New York Times having invited Marquis Saionji, Prime Min- ister of Japan, to explain the reports that Japan was nego- tiating for a naval base at Magdalena Bay, in the Mexican territory of Lower California, Marquis Saionji cabled yester- day a reply to the Japanese Ambassador in Washington, by whom it was delivered to the Times. Marquis Saionji says there have been no negotiations for Magdalena Bay, but the Oriental Whaling Company of Japan acquired fishing rights, in common with citizens and subjects of other countries, not at Magdalena Bay, but on the mainland of Mexico, along a strip of coast 750 miles long between the states of Tepic and Oaxaca. This Magdalena Bay is a hamlet on the shore of the desert part of Lower California. Its roadstead is an excellent harbour, well suited, no doubt, for a coaling station if Mexico had any need of such stations. The land about it is worthless, the region being virtually rainless. Its empty sand dunes fit it well for target practice, although the shock of big guns has killed its shellfish on the bottom. On one island is a village of one hundred people, clustered about a crab and turtle cannery owned in Los Angeles. The foreman of the cannery and five crab-catchers are Japanese. On another island is a brackish spring rising among the sand dunes, the only available water for scores of miles. Government lands and everything else available WHAT SHALL WE SAY 259 for exploitation in Mexico has been parcelled out in concessions, these mostly held by foreigners. The fishing concession of Lower California is held by a Mexican resident of Los Angeles. Such capital as is associated with him in this concession is French. An option on the desert land concession about the Bay is held in the United States. No attempt has been made by the Japanese Government, nor by any Japanese capitalist, syndicate, nor corpor- ation to secure anything in Lower California, One Japanese gentleman, without capital and rep- resenting nobody, once went down to look over Magdalena Bay, and that is all. Other Japanese have examined the fishing concessions below Tepic and have abandoned the proposition as not worth while. What shall we say of the newspapers ? Only this, perhaps: our country has no monopoly of spurious news. Great London journals may pervert the truth with more dignity; great German journals may obscure it with more ponderosity; great French journals may twist it with more vivac- ity. But the fact remains that crooked journal- ism is crooked journalism the world over. True, there may be some choice as to methods, but there certainly cannot be much as to motive or result. 26o WAR AND WASTE XXIX THE SAMOAN PRECEDENT What shall we say of our operations in Nicaragua ? No one seems to know. Our marines have fought bravely against somebody, and good men have lost their lives. The Department of State gives no clear explanation, but it is stated in the press that it finds a precedent in our intervention in German Samoa in the year 1899. It may be remembered that the natives in Apia were "doing politics" rather warmly, but in their own fashion, when, without orders and on their own initiative, a British and an American warship in the harbour began to shell the town. The single Ameri- can property owner on the beach, Mr. H. J. Moors, told me that he supposed that the ships were firing salutes until the shells fell about his hotel. He had asked for no intervention or protection. Afterward marines were landed from both ships, and these, according to the record, "fought shoulder to shoulder against a savage foe." The "savage foe" was led by the genial and pious and, in his degree, scholarly Mata'afa. The machine gun of the invaders became "jammed," and some of the men were killed. One of the "savages" showed me the road the invaders WHAT SHALL WE SAY 261 took while Mata'afa's men were hidden in the "bush" alongside. They could have killed all the marines except for the orders of their chief. After- ward this matter of "armed intervention" was brought before the king of Sweden as arbitrator, and it was decreed that the United States and Great Britain are "responsible for the loss caused by their military action." The decision asserted the prin- ciple that a nation "has no right to land troops in order to preserve the property or the lives of her na- tionals." The United States agreed to pay the dam- ages assessed, at the same time refusing to recognize the principle involved. In any event, probably this incident would serve better as a warning than as a precedent. XXX JAPANESE IMMIGRATION What shall we say of Japanese immigration.? Only this : There is no problem now, and if we let well enough alone there will be no problem in the future. Most of us in California hope to avoid a racial stratification of any sort among our people. Least of all do we want a body of labourers, Asiatic be- cause they are underpaid and underpaid because they 262 WAR AND WASTE are Asiatic. Most of those in Japan who think upon the subject do not want the rice-field hands to go where they are not wanted, where their presence pro- duces economic disturbances, or to go anywhere in such numbers that other people judge all their coun- trymen by them. For all these reasons, representatives of the two nations met in 1907, on the "gentlemen's agree- ment," that no Japanese labourers should be granted passports for America, and that no legislation hu- miliating to Japan should be favourably considered at Washington. This "gentlemen's agreement" has been rigidly kept by the Japanese foreign office. The Japanese construe the word America in a broad sense, for since 1907 the emigration of labourers has been debarred from Canada and Mexico as well as from the Pacific States and from Hawaii. Some time in the long future our country may be wise enough to frame immigration acts which shall treat all nations of the world alike. This problem, most difficult at the best, cannot be settled offhand nor can it be settled now. Perhaps some time we may see our way to admit skilled labourers only, from any region, and only when accompanied by their families. But no final adjustment is possible now; and all the Japanese ask for is to be spared the humiliation involved in any scheme for the exclusion WHAT SHALL WE SAY 263 of Asiatics as Asiatics. This is a matter of national sensitiveness to a highly cultivated and sensitive people; and needlessly to hurt such a nation is to hurt ourselves. For the lines of commerce run in grooves of international friendliness. An indirect exclusion act, as of races not eligible for citizenship, is more humiliating than a direct act would be. It implies that the Japanese cannot read between the lines. Exclusion from citizenship, for which dis- crimination if indeed it really exists no adequate cause exists, is of the nature of insult in itself. To be shut out because they have been insulted once adds doubly to a humiliation they have no power to resent, but which they hope their nearest friend among the nations will not offer them. If an exclusion act were necessary in our interest, or our own protection, it might be a painful alter- native. But there is no need for any action whatever. Who is there who would wish to break the "gen- tlemen's aggreement" in order to substitute an "exclusion act"? Not the labourers of California who fear Japanese competition, for such exclusion is now perfectly accomplished. To throw the matter again into international diplomacy would end in less perfect restriction than we have now. For restriction can be made most effective when the Japanese foreign office itself undertakes it. The people of the 264 WAR AND WASTE Pacific States, who fear lest they be overrun with Japanese labourers, have no need to ask for further legislation, for Japanese labourers cannot come while this "gentlemen's agreement" stands. In the end if we keep up futile agitation, a dis- gusted nation will be likely to remove all barriers, letting West meet East wherever it will, each taking its own chances. XXXI ANTI-ALIEN LEGISLATION IN CALIFORNIA What shall we say of the propositions made in each recurrent California Legislature to restrict land ownership by aliens in the state? These four propositions seem to be true : 1. Such statutes are unconstitutional, if directed against aliens of any particular nationality. 2. They are invalid, if in contravention of any existing treaty. This and the preceding being mat- ters to be finally determined in the federal courts. 3. They are not valid if attacking the present legal rights of ownership. 4. They would, if directed against all alien owner- ship, have sweeping effects, not yet estimated. As to the first point: Under our Constitution a State as such cannot make any treaty or agreement WHAT SHALL WE SAY 265 with a foreign nation, nor with any group of its people considered collectively as members of such nation. It can therefore not single out as objects of special legislation the citizens of any foreign nation who may be resident within the state. This condition is not changed In fact if such aliens be named indirectly as "aliens not eligible to citizen- ship." Such subterfuge does not change the Intent or the effect of the statute. If this principle is correct, no State legislation, anti- Japanese, can be valid. It may be, however, that the reference in the statute to such aliens, ineligible under United States Law, throws the responsibility back on the United States as the original author of such discrimination. It Is, however, not yet certain who Is really thus eligible. Under the statutes of 1870, passed before there were any Japanese property holders in the United States, Chinese only were Intended to be excluded, men black and white being eligible to citizenship under this law. Hindus, Syrians, and numerous Japanese have been already naturalized. As to the second point: A statute would be Invalid if violating the provisions of any inter- national treaty of the United States. The aliens in the United States are, in a sense and of necessity, "wards of the nation," acquiring their rights of 266 WAR AND WASTE travel and residence primarily through international treaties and international law. No statute of the State is, however, invalid until it has been so declared by the federal courts. The remedy for any person aggrieved is therefore to be found, not in diplomacy nor in journalism, but in appeal to the courts. It has not been finally decided that a Japanese is not eligible to citizenship, nor that he is a "Mon- golian" by race or by origin. As to the third point: We have the decision of the Hague Tribunal in 1905, in the noted House Tax case in Japan ("The British Isles, Germany, and France vs. Japan.") In this case it was decided that a nation could not alter the conditions under which aliens have obtained title to land except with the consent of such owners. If Japan cannot change concessions or sales made under former conditions to foreigners resident in what were then her "treaty ports," without their consent, then California can- not force aliens having legal titles to property to sell such property within any given time — nor can she in any legal way take away such property from them. An anti-alien land law apparently cannot be made retroactive, or change conditions once legalized. As to the fourth point: The bulk of alien owner- ship in California is British. As to the theory in- WHAT SHALL WE SAY 267 volved, there is no doubt something to be said on either side; but how the state would finally come out with a sudden reversal of policy, no one knows. Any state statute applying exclusively to aliens of any special nationality, however disguised in phraseology, must apparently be unconstitutional. Such a statute would rest on the impossible doctrine that a federal state may form alliances or have differences with a foreign nation, without involv- ing the United States. This is, in another form, the old theory of "nullification" — that a state may assume to itself powers reserved to the federal government. If it should be finally decided that the alien land act as actually passed in California is in fact consti- tutional and that a state has a right to entangle the United States in an international problem, the na- tion has two duties : 1. To amend the Constitution in such a way that all international problems and all matters dealing with aliens shall be taken from the hands of the state and left solely in the hands of the central Government. 2. The statutes concerning naturalization should be so amended as to allow any permanent resident to become a citizen without regard to race or na- tionality. This Is for our own protection as well as 268 WAR AND WASTE for his. Otherwise all his actions and the incidents of his life are subjects of foreign diplomacy. It is said by some that it is the duty of California to "guard the frontier" of Caucasian civilization; but we should remember that the frontier belongs not to California but to the nation, and California's method of guarding it should meet the nation's approval. Furthermore, as Japan and China must be near neighbours of California for the next thou- sand years, it is necessary above all that the frontier be guarded in courtesy and in friendship. XXXII THE RACE PROBLEMS OF AMERICA What shall we say of the Race Problems as shown on our Pacific Coast? There are reasons, obvious enough, why unrestricted immigration of labourers from any of the nations of Asia to the Pacific Coast is not desirable. On the other hand, this is a settled issue, and the agitation of the day is in favour of dis- crimination against Asiatics among the people act- ually here and actually resident in America. The sole apparent justification of this discrimina- tion lies in the fact that we may otherwise develop another race problem akin to the one which now dis- turbs our Southern States. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 269 No investigatipn of this matter has been made by any competent authority. One opinion is as good as another, and my own opinion Is that this fear is groundless. The race antipathy on which it is supposed to rest has no honourable existence. It rests mainly on ignorance and prejudice, and even then it can only be maintained through constant efforts of those seemingly anxious to keep it alive. The problem of the South is not that of two races inhabiting the same region, nor of a people of differ- ing habits, the one thinly scattered among the other. It is the problem of a mixed race, its parentage on the one hand and sometimes on both regarded as inferior — • suddenly raised from slavery to freedom as a result of war. Even in the South the responsi- bility for race friction rests largely with ourselves. It was an avowed purpose of our Civil War "to settle once for all that men were men" — that is, a man should count for what he is worth irrespective of race or ancestry. We should, as Lincoln once observed, not say that he belongs to a lower race and hence must have a lowlier seat. Too many of us — and especially since the war in the Philippines — have forgotten this principle, and the most hopeless feature of the matter is that our negroes have themselves failed to grasp its mean- 270 WAR AND WASTE ing, for as a whole they are not thrifty, frugal, in- dustrious, or ambitious. Their great leader, Booker T. Washington, has recognized that the negro problem must be solved by the individual negroes largely each one for himself. The Japanese have no such problem. Their points of difference from their brother Aryans of the West lie largely in their early training, and in their customs developed in centuries of isolation. They have never been servile; they are quite competent to solve their own problems individually or collec- tively; they will never give us cause to question whether indeed "men are men"; they have their limitations, all sorts of people may be found among them. Some are wise, helpful, honest, devoted in the highest degree, and with the addition of a fine touch of artistic taste; some are as selfish, mean, and un- trustworthy as the worst anti-Japanese slanderer has ever imagined. Our own race shows all these con- tradictions. Although the Japanese farmers and labourers of California are chiefly drawn from the group of homeless rice hands in southern Japan, brought to Hawaii before the present system of compulsory education had been put in force, and innocent of Japanese culture as well as of European, yet as a whole each one of them is sufficient unto himself. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 271 Under the training of our schools and of our business conditions, no race of people is more readily assimilated, if by assimilation we mean sympathy and understanding of our institutions. This is a matter quite separate from physical resemblance and from mixture of races. And while no one would welcome race mixture on any large scale, it contains no special element of evil. From the best of each race superior men and women are born. When races mix at the bottom the progeny is like its parentage. Among educated Japanese there are many mixed families, the children to all appearance worthy of father and mother. The New York World observes: Nothing can be so ironical as history. In 1853 it took a few shiploads of American sailors under Commodore Perry to force Japan out of 200 years of hermitage into civilized intercourse with the rest of the world. In 1913 it takes a few shiploads of Japanese farmers under Governor Johnson to force California out of a lifetime of civilized intercourse with the rest of the world into the exclusions and dis- criminations and repudiations of a hermit state. Californian civilization has reached the same crisis in 1913 that Japan civilization had reached in 1853. Only it is travelling in the opposite direction. Those who see in the landholdings thus far of petty Japanese gardeners raising strawberries, potatoes, and peaches, a small germ presaging great future 272 WAR AND WASTE trouble in California may yet be in the right. The anti-foreign elements in feudal Japan sixty years ago had the same forebodings, and so, with better reason, had the Chinese Boxers in 1900. But if so, it is a matter for the nation to investi- gate and for the nation to remedy by mutual agree- ment or friendly treaty. It is not a simple problem safely or righteously to be dealt with by the legis- lature of any single state. That different races may meet in continuously friendly intercourse and on terms of mutual respect has been fully demonstrated in Hawaii; and for that matter in Japan also. The treaty ports of Yoko- hama, Kobe, and Nagasaki have long held a large foreign population, Americans, English, German, Dutch, and Chinese. Any treatment, really un- just, of Japanese in America would react on our own varied interests, honourably maintained in Japan. XXXIII WHO IS THE ENEMY? What shall we say of the talk of war and the ever- recurring danger from- the enemy? Only this: There is to be no war. There is to be no foreign enemy. The enemy is he who talks of war, the evil- WHAT SHALL WE SAY 273 minded knave, the noisy fool, the unthinking who echo the clamour the knave and fool set up. Just now, the enemy is fuming over Japan. There is no war in that quarter. There is no trouble save what we make for ourselves, and the echoes our noises may provoke. Men without brains in the long run have no influence. Between cowardly fear and cow- ardly bluster there is not much to choose. Let us look quietly at the situation. Japan's people recognize — those who have the breadth of vision belonging to the good citizen — that the United States is her nearest neighbour among the western nations, her best customer and most stead- fast friend. Her own ambitions and interests lie all in the restoration of Korea, the safeguarding of Man- churia, and in her readiness to do her part in the untold future of China. She is in debt to a degree no other civilized nation knows; her taxes are crush- ing; her country is without roads, and her railway system must be rebuilt at a -cost she dare not face. She is as eager for more war as we of California for more earthquakes. Along the borders where great nations meet there is friction among ill-tempered or narrow-minded men. This fact makes an immigration problem on the Pacific Coast. This problem was bfravely met and solved in 1907. It was solved by national states- 274 WAR AND WASTE men, without the aid of local politicians; and so it was honourably solved. Next comes a smaller problem, of alien landhold- ing. It is microscopic as yet, though it may have germs of trouble if Japanese farm colonies grow up in the midst of an environment of provincialism and intolerance. There is no remedy for this evil, if evil it be, except through a careful study of the actual conditions and their future promise, with an after adjustment through friendly agreement between the Government at Washington and the Ministry at Tokyo. As this matter has international bearings and results, it lies outside the jurisdiction of any state. In assuming to usurp federal authority, the Governor and Legislature of California have placed themselves in antagonism, not to Japan — for California can have no direct relations with a foreign nation — "but in antagonism to the United States. This antagonism exists in fact, even if it be true that the sinuous language of the statute should legalize its obviously unconstitutional provisions. In any event, the courts of the United States are adequate to settle the question. Any act of the Legislature of California discriminating between foreign nations must become an act of the United States itself, or else it is an act of local usurpation. Only sovereign nations can deal with sovereign nations, and the WHAT SHALL WE SAY 275 Governor of California is not a ruler of any sovereign nation. He has no ambassadors from foreign courts and he receives none. All his foreign business is transacted through the Department of State at Washington. It is manifestly a duty of Japan, as of any other nation, to protest against discriminations, and there her duty stops, until the question of jurisdiction is settled. And there it has stopped. Only the enemy talks of Japan's "arrogance," of "her efforts to domineer," her attempts "to force the issue." War talk the world over is 99 per cent. lies. It has been found in Germany and France that the same money Is used in both countries to Inflame the water- front mobs. The armour pirates of the world play into each other's hands. The same spirit excites the waterfront mobs in Japan and In the United States. Fortunately the saner elements in both nations are at the head of affairs. This is generally the case, for if it were not so nations could not long exist. I quote the following from Mr. Zumoto, editor of the Japan Times, a paper In Tokyo representing the opinion of the Japanese Government: The cries of war raised in yesterday's meeting in the Kokugi- kan, Ryogoku, as a demonstration against the land-ownership legislation in California, are ill-advised, to say the least. Those 276 WAR AND WASTE speakers who indulged in such rash arguments have disqualified this nation for criticising America for its having Hobsons and Hearsts. Besides, they have missed the mark by placing the emphasis on the anti-Japanese sentiment in California. Because no amount of local anti-Japanese agitation would have had any serious effect on Japanese interests but for the circumstance that the Japanese are barred from naturalization by the Federal laws. The Japanese nation has not yet made any serious effort to obtain the right of naturalization, and if we did, even at the present, we would have a fair chance of success. Only those who talk about war with America are injuring the cause of Japan by decreasing the chance of much success. America is a democratic country, and has the right to refuse citizenship to a people who have shown themselves incompetent to carry out a democratic government. The first necessary qualification of the people for the task is that they should be able to discuss national or international questions in a calm, dispassionate way. The people who easily get hysterical, lose their reason in passion, and are inclined to decide by force those questions that can be decided by discussion, lack the political self-restraint without which a democratic government is impossible. We would refuse to believe that the Japanese were so backward in political training but for the hysterical demonstration that unfortunately occurred here yesterday. The Japanese crisis is not a matter for warships or soldiers or local politicians. Its solution rests with experts in Constitutional Law and in Social Relations. Whoever talks of war and stirs up race antipathies, he is the enemy in either nation. The name traitor has long been used for better men. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 277 XXXIV THE SIX-POWER LOAN TO CHINA Now that it is all over, what shall we say of the Six-Power Loan, its methods and its purposes ? This, for one thing: The very name is deceptive. The United States can have no part in a "six-power loan"; it must be some one else, who has assumed our name. The United States is not a "power" — only an association of self-governing people. She cannot, in any legal way, make her "power" felt in nations with which she is at peace. She has no machinery for intermeddling, and no taste for it. She has never lent any money in foreign lands. She has no money to lend. All the money she exacts is used to pay her expenses. She has not yet paid all her debts. The other five nations concerned may be "powers." They have the "power" to make secret agreements in the interest of private business. But they have no money to lend. They have never paid their debts. If they were to do this, they would have to cut down very materially their style of living. They are living far beyond their means already. But there are "powers" within powers — and it is these inner powers that lend the money. The 278 WAR AND WASTE "six-power loan" is not an affair of nations, but of six groups of bankers, each using the name and influence of his nation for his own purposes. But even these bankers do riot always furnish the money to which they lend their names. The share of Tokyo In this loan is reported to be borrowed In Paris, as is most of the share of St. Petersburg, bankers in Brussels being reputed to aid. It was a three-power loan at first, then a four, as New York came in "at the request" of our State Department, it Is claimed; and at last a six. The purpose of such a loan as this, with its special control of internal revenues. Is not to accommodate China; the point Is to secure some form of special privilege for each of six groups of capitalists. The prestige of the nation is for this purpose a sort of trade-name, under which exploiters and dealers In "spheres of influence" transact their business. The Chinese people are afraid of "power loans," and their experience justifies this caution. Not only must China pay the common usury exacted of debtor nations, but the transaction Is likely some- where to cut deeply into her sovereignty. The money-lenders hunt in packs when concerted action best serves their Interest, and sometimes because they dare not trust each other to hunt separately. As citizens of the United States, this is no concern WHAT SHALL WE SAY 279 of ours. We wish our bankers well In their foreign speculations. There is nothing wrong in lending money to nations or to men who may need it. But this is not our money. We ask no part in its profits. We take no share in its risks. There is nothing wrong in the promotion of our trade by representatives at home or abroad. But such promotion must be done in the open, treating all interests alike, and not through taking advantage of the weakness or need of any other nation. We are thankful that we have a wise and courage- ous President who knows how to cut loose from en- tangling alliances, and especially from connections without warrant In good policy or In law. And we trust that In our efforts for the "open door" we shall not be betrayed into helping to hold the door open by threats, nor by force of arms, nor as an avenue leading up to " spheres of influence, " through any perversion of "Dollar Diplomacy. " XXXV THE OLD-AGE PENSION What shall we say of the Old-Age Pension as a wise charity of the state? We shall go back to the fundamental principle of democracy. This is equality before the law. It is 28o WAR AND WASTE the elimination of privilege wherever found, of the rich or of the poor, all grants of something for nothing, all pay without an equivalent service. The function of the state is to provide first for justice — that is equality before the law — the square deal among men and interests. Its next duty is to provide for all things needed by the people which must be in public rather than in private hands. Schools, armies, roads. Inspection of banks, ships, corporations, come under this head, as also conservation, sanitation, and many other things as yet imperfectly realized, which must come with time through the state; that is, through compulsory combined effort, because no other agency is possible. But the state is only a plan of mutual assessment. It cannot be kind or charitable or paternal except at our own expense. It Is just as cheap and more effective for us as citizens to be fraternal. To lean too heavily on the state means heavy assessments on its stockholders and too heavy taxes on its people, and by this means many states are perilously near bankruptcy. Or what Is worse, as the Incidence of taxation is easily shifted by wealth to be a burden on industry, a state reaches the condition when a few are very rich while the mass of Its people are helpless. The wealth of our own nation does not rest on its great sweep of prairies, its mines, or its commerce. WHAT SHALL WE SAY 281 It rests primarily on the fact that "America means opportunity." Our nation has not always been true to the principles of its fathers, but it has not wholly forgotten them. Its free schools and its absence of privilege have made it possible for each of its children to make the most of the talents with which they are born. Its people have not been crushed by taxation, by caste, nor worn out by losing their strongest on the field of battle. The young men grow up to feel that "the world is their oyster," and it is for them, and for them alone to find means to open it. The democracy of America has no masters save of its own creation, and the power that made these is adequate to set them aside The democracy of England has [the handicap of ages of privilege. Inequality before the law is the foundation of British polity. England chooses lords and magnates and tyrants long before they are born. They belong to her system of privilege by which cities like Westminster, Shefiield, Devonport, Arundel, were held, virtually tax-free, by men whose ancestors received their land as royal gifts or bought them as cow-pastures. That the rich have special privileges is the justification for special privilege to the poor, all privilege being granted at the expense of industry. 282 WAR AND WASTE The "old-age pension" has been justly compared to the free pass homeward granted to the human wrecks who have lost their all in the gambling rooms of Monte Carlo. It is the shilling given to the man run over by my lord's automobile. In a better system he would not have been run over. He would not have lost his money in a vile resort. He would not have needed an outside pit- tance to carry him through old age. But the facts in England remain. The best of her workers have died in her wars, leaving a weaker stock to breed from. These have grown up unskilled, in default of the schools that make men strong. They have grown up in the atmosphere of the public house, sodden with lust and beer and whiskey. They have lost the opportunity that should be theirs, and at the end their fellows must be taxed to feed them. The tragedy of the East End of London is no normal part of the tragedy of Life. It is no part of the normal America. It is no part of a nation which has given opportunity. The flag of freedom never floated over a nation of deadheads, be they rich or poor. But for us in a new country, fresh, unspoiled, full of life and hope, it is for us to hold our government to its rigid purpose, to develop opportunity by the elimination of privilege, to lean not on government but on ourselves, and to aid by fraternal giving those WHAT SHALL WE SAY 283 who have fallen in the press; not to weaken by un- earned money those who are falling but who can be made to stand. The way of the transgressor is hard, and we would not make it easier if we could; we could not if we would. To give a man a chance to rise is to- allow him also the choice to fall. The "old-age pension" is, so far as it goes, a con- fession of failure of administration. Except as a measure of emergency, its real purpose In England, it has no justification in the public welfare. The old-age pension is part of the dark shadow cast over Europe by the growth of the gigantic delusion of "National Defense." Clean up the social atmos- phere, restore to the people what is rightfully theirs, and they will care, rare accidents excepted, for their own old age. XXXVI POPULARIZE THE NAVY What Shall we say to the recent move to "popu- larize the navy," the gigantic parade on the Hudson of miles on miles of war vessels on their way from the Tax Bureau to the Junk Shop? Let us look on this mighty array of ships, splen- didly equipped no doubt, and manned by able and worthy men; the whole never to be needed, under 284 WAR AND WASTE any conceivable circumstances by the people who pay for it. We are told that a purpose of this pageant of the ships is to "popularize the navy."' This may mean to get us used to it and to paying for it, which is the chief function of the people in these great affairs. Or it may mean to work upon the public imagina- tion so that we may fill the vacancies in the crops of sailors and marines who "glare" at us "through their absences." By all means let us popularize the navy. It is our navy; we have paid for it, and it is for our people to do what they please with it. "For, after all, this is the people's country." And perhaps we could bring it nearer to our hearts and thoughts if we should paint on the white side of each ship, its cost in taxes, in the blood and sweat of workingmen, in the anguish of "the Man Lowest Down." There is the good ship North Dakota, for example. Her cost is almost exactly the year's net savings of the prosperous state for which she is named. There are the fine dreadnaughts, which fear nothing while the nation is in its senses and in war noth- ing but a torpedo boat or an aerobomb. It would please the workingman to know that his wages for 20,000 years ($528 per year, on the average) would purchase a ship of this kind, and that the wages of WHAT SHALL WE SAY 285 1,600 of his fellows each year would keep it trim and afloat. As the procession moves by, he will see ships that have cost as much as Cornell or Yale or Princeton or Wisconsin, and almost as much as Harvard or Columbia; and on the flagship at the last these figures might be summed up, the whole costing as much as an American workman would earn perhaps in a million years, or more, a European workman in twice that time, and an Asiatic in four times. These figures may be not all correct. It would require an expert statistician to make them so. But it would be worth while to have them accurate. If all this is needed to insure the peace it en- dangers, by all means let us have it. There is no cost we cannot afford to pay if honourablepeaceisatstake. But let us be convinced that peace is really at stake, and that this isthemeanstosecureit. Therearesome who think that Christian fellowship, the demands of commerce, and a civil tongue in a foreign office, do more for a nation's peace than any show of force. xxxvii THE AMERICAN PEACE POLICY What shall we say of the plans of the President and the Secretary of State for the promotion of inter- national peace? 286 WAR AND WASTE We shall say that nothing more practical and effec- tive has yet been suggested. There is no better means of bringing American influence to bear on the problems of the old world. The end in view is to relegate war to a position of last resort in times of international difference, to place soldiers and dreadnaughts in the background , — not in the front of national movement. The essence of this American policy is that, in case of friction between nations, the matter be placed for. six months in the hands of a joint high Commission of Investigation, chosen in part from the contending nations, the majority from friendly neutrals. These for six months shall study the question at issue, neither nation in the meantime demonstrating, mobilizing, or increasing its arma- ment, until the final report Is made. After this each nation is free to choose conciliation, concession, compromise, arbitration, or war. And with six months to think it over there will be no war. Wars are waged for greed, for politics, or because the mob has been stirred by senseless speech or reckless journalism. And in many cases this reckless journal- Ism has been carefully calculated and fully paid for by those interested in the sale of the accessories of war. The treaty of arbitration will naturally follow on WHAT SHALL WE SAY 287 the treaty for investigation. Courts will naturally supplement results of friendly offices. But the agreement for friendly conference comes first and is for the present the more important. The Treaty of Arbitration is most valuable — not as preventing war, for a nation bent on war, if there is such a nation, will not stop to agree to arbitrate. The world is finally ruled by public opinion. Arbitration treaties clinch public opinion and hold it to its duty. The present decade has been characterized by needless, costly, and brutal wars, the result not of actual conditions of to-day, but of blunders and crimes committed in the past. Wars do not spring up afresh in our civilization. They spring from old wars whose seeds were not destroyed by peace. But, however dark the present outlook may seem, with half the coined money of the world spent each year on war and war's accessories, the far outlook is most promising. The unspeakable horror of the Balkan war, the waste of armed peace and frustrate war throughout the civilized world — all these make powerfully for peace, for real peace — the Peace of Law and Trust, and not the Peace of Force. And just now is the time when American influence canbemost definitely crystallized and made effective. And we are thankful that we have in the seats of authority at Washington men who definitely work 288 WAR AND WASTE for peace and whom war and war's fripperies do not dazzle nor attract. XXXVIII WHAT IS PEACE? What shall we say to the claim the War Leagues make that with them are the true workers for Peace? Only this: We ask for a definition. There are many things called Peace. We do not question the sincerity of those who give the word a meaning different from ours. But their kind of Peace may not appeal to us. We contrast the Peace of Force with the Peace of Law, the peace which is tempo- rary — upheld by the strong arm or the balance of power — with the "old Peace with velvet-sandalled feet, " eternal, so long as it rests on the balance of justice. It may be well to work for the Peace of Force, when nothing better seems possible. It may be wise to spend the earnings of toiling millions to secure it. It may be better than no peace at all. It saves men's lives while robbing them of prosperity and of freedom. But at the best it is only a temporary truce threatened by each fluctuation of the "higher politics. " The Peace of Law comes slowly, but it comes to WHAT SHALL WE SAY 289 stay. Evil customs based on wrong habits of thought cannot be set aside in a day. Each genera- tion contributes its quota of mutual trust, of inter- national justice, of good-will among men. The force of arms shall be less and less a factor. In the realm of international law, the great state, the rich, the powerful, counts for no more than the least that may have its quarrel just. The Peace of Force demands that each and all shall be fully armed. Before it is the vision of universal discord, held in check by fear. The Peace of Law looks forward to universal order. It has no need of force save as it may arise in the joint efforts of policing civilization. For the leadership in peace to-day but one nation is prepared. She is hampered by no past history, by no present recklessness. Her national ideals need no change, only intensification and reconsecra- tion. Our Republic stands for the rule of civilian manhood, the dominion of law and order. Under the flag where hatred dies away, she is secure from all attack. She can safely lay down her arms; and to do this boldly, in courage, in confidence, in trust, in law and righteousness, would be to lead the way in which all Europe in a generation or two must per- force follow. For Europe's Peace of Force has failed. Her people, taxed beyond endurance, writhe in dis- 290 WAR AND WASTE content. Her war-chests are empty, her states are mere "provinces of the Unseen Empire of Finance." If by any mischance there is a lapse into actual war, the Peace of Exhaustion is inevitable. But that again is not peace. It is permeated by seeds from past wars, the germs of future disagreements. The only escape for civilization is through the Peace of Law. Thus war is dying, though it strikes hard from the death coil. It has been slain by science. It has been slain by democracy. Between militarism and democracy the feud is eternal. As the spirit of manhood rises the war spirit must fail. So the day of peace is coming. Which shall it be, the Peace of Force or the Peace of Law? We may work for either. We cannot have both. Every man has some influence in forming public opinion, and, at the last, the world is ruled by what its people think. You have a vote in world affairs. Its weight depends on your intelligence and your integrity. How shall your vote be cast? THE END APPENDIX (From the Circular of the Navy League, the numbers being added for reference.) SIXTY-SEVEN REASONS FOR A STRONG NAVY The navy legislation of pressing importance referred to, naturally involves the consideration of why the United States should maintain a strong navy, and we therefore respectfully submit for your consideration the following sixty-seven reasons and aphorisms bearing thereon: SEA POWER AND HISTORY 1. Sea power was indispensable to the success of the War of the Revolution. 2. The navy suppressed the war on commerce by the Pi- rates of the Barbary States. 3. The navy fought and won the War of 1812. 4. The Union was preserved, and the outcome of the War of Secession was determined, as much by the blockading navy as by the army of the North. 5. National humiliation to the United States following naval weakness was illustrated by the humiliating treatment accorded to American seamen in Cuba by Spain in 1873. 6. The navy decided the outcome of the Spanish War, which would never have taken place had Spain known our navy's strength. 7. England's navy has given Great Britain uninterrupted peace on the water for nearly one hundred years and her shores have not been successfully invaded for nearly a thousand years. S91 292 APPENDIX 8. China's policy of evading militarism on both land and sea has been accompanied by disastrous defeats and untold hu- miliation. 9. Germany was once defenseless and her enemies swanned her borders and took possession of her land. 10. Germany with an adequate army and navy has been practically free from war on land or sea for forty years and more- 11. Turkey lost Tripoli because of pitiful naval weakness. NATIONAL DEFENSE 12. The navy is our main defense. 13. Undefended resources invite aggression. 14. The navy has 21,000 miles of coastline to defend. 15. The United States navy has more harbours with large cities and a larger number of strategic points to defend than has any other nation's navy. 16. The navy must defend Porto Rico, the Philippine Islands, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Panama Canal. 17. "Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than be ruined by too confident security." AMERICAN POLICIES The effectiveness of the following American policies depends finally on a strong navy, viz.: 18. The Monroe Doctrine,* particularly in its relation to the West Indies and lands north of the Amazon. *Note I. — The Monroe Doctrine went by default from 1862 to l86s be- cause it could not be enforced during our Civil War. Napoleon III, wishing to colonize Mexico, placed Maximilian on the throne, through the aid of the French army, and against the protests of the United States. The close of the Civil War enabled the President to send Sheridan and the army to the Meacan borders and naval vessels to the Mexican coasts. Napoleon then withdrew his troops, Maximilian was captured, and the Monroe Doctrine was again in force. Note 1. — The Monroe Doctrine was again upheld by the presence of the United States battleship fleet during the critical period when Germany and Great Britain virtually declared war against Venezuela. APPENDIX 293 19. The attitude of the United States as to possession or ownership of strategic alien harbours and coaling stations. 20. The neutrality of the Panama Canal, including the neces- sary safeguarding incident to the passage through the canal of the ships of belligerents, when other nations are at war. 21. The restriction of Asiatic immigration. 22. The integrity of China. 23. The open door of trade in China. 24. Equal rights for American citizens travelling abroad, regardless of blood and religion. FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ECONOMICS 25. Battleships are cheaper than battles. 26. The money for American battleships is paid to American workingmen, American builders, and American craftsmen. 27. The Navy Department's demand for higher qualities of steel and better mechanical devices has aided directly in Amer- ica's success in the production of high grade steel and in the building of bridges, bicycles, automobiles, and aeroplanes. 28. The navy is a school of efficiency, teaching many trades; teaching discipline and cleanliness to young men, a large portion of whom are so young that they can hardly be considered as producing units. 29. The navy as a trade school has been called "Our Great National University. " It returns to civil life annually as many trained, efficient, and patriotic young men as are graduated from the five leading universities of the country. 30. Germany's prosperity and national efficiency can, to no small extent, be attributed to the training received by citizens in her army and navy. 31. The annual cost of the navy, which is about j{i30,ooo,cxx) for 1912, is cheap insurance against the cost of war, and repre- sents approximately the cost of the nation's automobile tires for 1912. 294 APPENDIX 32. The navy is one of the foundations of national credit and is insurance against the unsettled conditions of trade and commerce which would be coincident with a reputation for naval weakness. OUTSIDE THE SPHERE OF WAR The following services have been rendered by the navy: 33. The suppression of the African slave trade. 34. The suppression of piracy. 35. The opening of Japan. 36. The opening of Korea. 37. Arctic exploration and relief. 38. Protection of the fur seals. 39. Pioneer work of Coast and Geodetic Survey. 40. The establishment of lighthouse service. 41. Pioneer work of the Weather Bureau. 42. The work of the Naval Observatory and Hydrographic Office. 43. Explorations and prdlminary surveys for various Isth- mian Canal routes. 44. Frequent protection of missionaries and citizens abroad. 45. Frequent prevention of insurrection in the West Indies and the southern republics. 46. Friendly ofRces to Cuba, Panama, San Domingo, and Nicaragua. 47. Repeated earthquake and famine relief at Messina, Mar- tinique and San Francisco; in Ireland and elsewhere. DIPLOMACY 48.' The weight of a powerful navy gives force to diplomacy. 49. Naval power is a legitimate factor ini international set- tlements, because it is the evidence of national eiHciency. NATIONAL PRESTIGE 50. George Washington said: "There is a rank due, to_the APPENDIX 295 United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising pros- perity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war. " PEACE PROGRAMMES 51. Disarmament and obligatory arbitration are incompatible. 52. Armament may be the instrument to force the adversary to arbitrate. 53. The general arbitration treaties adopted at the Second Hague Conference and other international treaties failed to prevent the forcible annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria; the seizure of Tripoli by Italy; the invasion of Persia by Russia, and the terrible war in the Balkans. 54. The military powers of Europe declined to enter into the Second Hague Conference if the limitation of armament were included in the programme of subjects for consideration. 55. Arbitrators' decisions have not always been accepted. 56. Navies will be needed to enforce the decree of a Court of Arbitration. 57. "Adequate armament and effective arbitration are cor- relative agencies for national security and for international peace and justice." PEACE 58. "Wouldst thou conjure upon any country the clouds of war — induce its government to disarm. " 59. "Obviously, the permanent peace of the world can be secured only through the gradual concentration of the pre- ponderant military strength into the hands of the most pacific communities. " 60. Power and strength are essential for the noble task of peacemaker. 296 APPENDIX GENERAL REASONS 6i. The unexpectedness of war. 62. A modem navy cannot be improvised. 63. In the family of nations, any one disturbing clement may cause a brawl. 64. Land hunger and land grabbing are as much in evidence to-day as in any other period of the world's history. 65. Might does not make right, but right backed by might is irresistible. 66. Negative righteousness means abstaining from evil, but positive righteousness may require a fight against evil. 67. "When the great interests of a nation, her dignity, her rights, the resources of her livelihood or even her liberty and her honour are at stake, men are in duty bound to go to war, to wage battle and risk their lives. There are considerations in this world which are higher than human lives. There are super- human interests, there are ideals dearer than our own persons, for which it is worth while struggling, suffering, fighting, and dying. Life is not the highest boon of existence, and no senti- mental reasons based on the notion of the sacredness of life will abolish struggle in the world or make war impossible." THE COUNTRY LITE PRESS OABSEN CITY, N. Y.