of pioneers.
There were no self-conscious peace-makers; no worshippers of those two
epicene idols: a God too much man, and a man too much God; no devotees
of third-sexism, in the days of Waterloo and Gettysburg, when we had
men's tasks to occupy us.

We are playing with our dolls just now, driving our coaches over the
roads, sailing our yachts in the waters, eating the fruits of the
fields that have been won for us by the sweat and blood of those gone
before. Germany has no leisure for that, no doll's house as yet to
play in, and she is perhaps more fortunate than she knows.

One can understand, too, that Germany has little patience with the
confused thinking which maintains that military training only makes
soldiers and only incites to martial ambitions; when, on the contrary,
she sees every day that it makes youths better and stronger citizens,
and produces that self-respect, self-control, and cosmopolitan
sympathy which more than aught else lessen the chances of conflict.

I can vouch for it that there are fewer personal jealousies,
bickerings, quarrels in the mess-room or below decks of a war-ship, or
in a soldiers' camp or barracks, than in many church and Sunday-school
assemblies, in many club smoking-rooms, in many ladies' sewing or
reading circles. Nothing does away more surely with quarrelsomeness
than the training of men to get on together comfortably, each giving
way a little in the narrow lanes of life, so that each may pass
without moral shoving. There are no such successful schools for the
teaching of this fundamental diplomacy as the sister services, the
army and the navy.

My latest visit to Germany has converted me completely to the wisdom
of compulsory service. Nor am I merely an academic disciple. I have
had a course in it myself, and were it possible in America I should
give any boy of mine the benefit of the same training. In Germany, at
any rate, no student of the situation there would deny that, barring
Bismarck, the army has done more for the nation than any other one
factor that can be named. Soldiers and sailors train themselves, and
train others, first of all to self-control, not to war. It is a pity
that "compulsory service" has come to mean merely training to fight. In
Germany, at any rate, it means far more than that. Two generations of
Germans have been taught to take care of themselves physically without
drawing a sword.

It is rather a puzzling commentary upon the growth of democra