rown out a dark
jungle of indirect advertisement, and it has compromised and corrupted
great numbers of investors and financial people. It is perhaps the most
powerful single interest of all those that will fight against the
systematic minimization and abolition of war, and rather than lose his
end it may be necessary for the pacifist to buy out all these concerns,
to insist upon the various States that have sheltered them taking them
over, lock, stock, and barrel, as going businesses.

From what we know of officialism everywhere, the mere transfer will
involve almost at once a decline in their vigor and innovating energy.
It is perhaps fortunate that the very crown of the private armaments
business is the Krupp organization and that its capture and suppression
is a matter of supreme importance to all the allied powers. Russia, with
her huge population, has not as yet developed armament works upon a very
large scale and would probably welcome proposals that minimized the
value of machinery and so enhanced that of men. Beyond this and certain
American plants for the making of rifles and machine guns only British
and French capital is very deeply involved in the armaments trade. The
problem is surely not too difficult for human art and honesty.

It is not being suggested that the making of arms should cease in the
world, but only that in every country it should become a State monopoly
and so completely under Government control. If the State can monopolize
the manufacture and sale of spirits, as Russia has done, if it can,
after the manner of Great Britain, control the making and sale of such a
small, elusive substance as saccharin, it is ridiculous to suppose that
it cannot keep itself fully informed of the existence of such elaborated
machinery as is needed to make a modern rifle barrel. And it demands a
very minimum of alertness, good faith, and good intentions for the
various manufacturing countries to keep each other and the world
generally informed upon the question of the respective military
equipments. From this state of affairs to a definition of a permissible
maximum of strength on land and sea for all the high contracting powers
is an altogether practicable step. Disarmament is not a dream; it is a
thing more practicable than a general hygienic convention and more
easily enforced than custom and excise.

Now none of this really involves the abandonment of armies or uniforms
or national service. Indeed, to a ce