ermanent significance. Our changed
relation to this central fact of war constitutes one of the gravest
problems that we face to-day. Growing up in a peaceful environment we
had imbibed the idea that war was a thing alien to us, monarchial,
European. We had come to hold that a nation could avoid war by not
desiring it, by not preparing for it, by minding its own business. We
believed that what share in the world we had and wanted was what every
reasonable nation would willingly concede us, and if certain powers
proved refractory and unreasonable--a most improbable contingency--we
could always send forth our millions of minute men, armed with
patriotism and fowling-pieces. With European conflicts we had no
concern; we might deplore the senseless brutality of such wars, but
need not take part in their conduct or in their prevention. In due
course Europe would learn from America the lessons of republicanism,
federalism and international justice and the happiness and wisdom of an
unarmed peace. Ourselves unarmed, we could peacefully wrest the
weapons from Europe's hand.

The sheer, unthinking optimism of this earlier American attitude ended
abruptly on the outbreak of the present war. It is not surprising that
our first reaction towards this war, after its full sweep and
destructiveness were visible, was one of fear. If a peaceful nation
like Belgium could suddenly be overrun and destroyed, it behooved us
also to place ourselves on guard, to be ready with men and ships to
repel a similarly wanton attack. The result was a demand for
preparedness, an instinctive demand, {6} not based on any definite
conception of a national policy, but intended merely to meet a
possible, not clearly foreseen, contingency. The whole preparedness
controversy revealed this rootlessness. It was in part at least an
acrid discussion between careless optimists and unreasonable
scare-mongers, between men who held positions no longer tenable and
others who were moving to positions which they could not locate. Our
ideas were in flux. Whether we should arm, against whom we should arm,
how we should arm, was decided by the impact of prejudices and shadowy
fears against an obstinate and optimistic credulity.

Nothing was more significant of the externality of these debates than
the fact that they seemed to ignore everything that we had cared about
before. The case for armament was presented not as a continuation of
earlier national policie