rtain extent it restores the
importance of the soldier at the expense of machinery. A world
conference for the suppressing of the peace and the preservation of
armaments would neither interfere with such dear incorrigible squabbles
as that of the orange and green factions in Ireland, (though it might
deprive them of their more deadly weapons,) nor absolutely prohibit war
between adjacent States. It would, however, be a very powerful delaying
force against the outbreak of war, and it would be able to insist with a
quite novel strength upon the observation of the rules of war.

It is no good pretending that mere pacifism will end war; what will end
war, what, indeed, may be ending war at the present time, is
war--against militarism. Force respects itself and no other power. The
hope for a world of peace in the future lies in that, in the possibility
of a great alliance, so powerful that it will compel adhesions, an
alliance prepared to make war upon and destroy and replace the
Government of any State that became aggressive in its militarism. This
alliance will be in effect a world congress perpetually restraining
aggressive secession, and obviously it must regard all the No-Man's
Lands--and particularly that wild waste, the ocean--as its highway. The
fleets and marines of the allied world powers must become the police of
the wastes and waters of the earth.

VI.

Now, such a collective control of belligerence and international
relations is the obvious common sense settlement of the present world
conflict, it is so manifest, so straight-forward that were it put
plainly to them it would probably receive the assent of nineteen sane
men out of twenty in the world. This, or some such thing as this, they
would agree, is far better than isolations and the perpetual threat of
fresh warfare.

But against it there work forces, within these people and without, that
render the attainment of this generally acceptable solution far less
probable than a kind of no-solution that will only be a reopening of all
our hostilities and conflicts upon a fresh footing. Some of these forces
are vague and general, and can only be combated by a various and
abundant liberal literature, in a widely dispersed battle in which each
right-thinking man must do as his conscience directs him. There are the
vague national antagonisms, the reservations in favor of one's own
country's righteousness, harsh religious and social and moral cant of
the Carlyle