prevent the larger from attempting domination, make sure that
treaties and other international contracts shall be public and be
respected until modified by mutual consent, and provide a safe basis for
the limitation and reduction of armaments on land and sea, no basis to
be considered safe which could fail to secure the liberties of each and
all the federated States against the attacks of any outsider or
faithless member. No one can see at present how such a consummation is
to be brought about, but any one can see already that this consummation
is the only one which can satisfy the lovers of liberty under law, and
the believers in the progress of mankind through loving service each to
all and all to each.

Extreme pacificists shrink from fighting evil with evil, hell with
hell, and advise submission to outrage, or at least taking the risk of
being forced into resigned submission. The believers in the religion of
valor, on the other hand, proclaim that war is a good thing in itself,
that it develops the best human virtues, invigorates a nation become
flaccid through ease and luxury, and puts in command the strong,
dominating spirit of a valid nation or race. What is the just mean
between these two extremes? Is it not that war is always a hideous and
hateful evil, but that a nation may sometimes find it to be the least of
two evils between which it has to choose? The justifiable and indeed
necessary war is the war against the ravager and destroyer, the enemy of
liberty, the claimant of world empire. More and more the thinkers of the
world see, and the common people more and more believe instinctively,
that the cause of righteous liberty is the cause of civilization. In the
conference which will one day meet to settle the terms of peace, and
therefore the future conditions of life in Europe, the example of the
American Republic in regard to armaments and war, the publicity of
treaties, and public liberty, security and prosperity may reasonably
have some influence.

CHARLES W. ELIOT.

Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 14, 1914.

DR. ELIOT'S FIFTH LETTER.

A Hopeful Road to Lasting Peace

_To the Editor of The New York Times:_

The great war has now been going on long enough to enable mankind to
form approximately correct views about its vast extent and scale of
operations, its sudden interference with commerce and all other helpful
international intercourse, its unprecedented wrecking of family
happiness and continui