can be
secured only by acting the part of a bully? It is unjust, it is
unpatriotic, it is unstatesmanlike, for men to argue that the United
States should browbeat the world into submission; that she should
build so many battleships that the nations of the Eastern hemisphere
will be afraid to oppose the ironclad dragon of the Western
Hemisphere. Peace purchased at the price of brute force is unworthy of
the name. Surely the United States cannot afford to be guilty of such
an injustice. If we wish to be free; if we wish to remain a true
republic; if we purpose to continue our mighty work for humanity, we
must limit our preparations for war. The best way to preserve peace is
to think peace, to believe in peace, and to work for peace.

The extent to which the great powers will go in order to secure
enthusiasm for their military establishments is almost beyond
comprehension. Each nation has its great military rendezvous, its
grand naval parades, its magnificent display of gorgeous military
uniforms, its wave of colors, blare of trumpets, and bursts of martial
music. The United States is now sending her navy around the world--for
the purpose of training the seamen?--certainly, but also that the
youth of our land may be intoxicated by the apparent glory of it all,
and thus enlist for service; that the American citizens may be aroused
to greater enthusiasm by this magnificent display of the implements of
legalized murder, and thus be willing to build more floating arsenals
rather than irrigate arid lands, develop internal waterways, build
hospitals, schools, and colleges.

The trouble with such exhibitions is, that it displays only the bright
side of militarism. If in place of the Russian battleships they should
display the starving masses of dejected and despised beings who pay
for those battleships; if in place of the gay German uniforms they
should exhibit the rags of the disheartened peasants who pay for those
uniforms; if in place of the grand parade they should produce masses
of wounded men and rivers of blood; if in place of the stirring
martial music they should produce the writhing agonies and awful
groans of dying men; if in place of sham war they should produce
actual war,--their exhibitions would make militarism unbearable.

Again, we are told that we have suddenly become a world power, and
that we must prepare to exercise a new diplomacy under new conditions.
We must increase our navy, they say, to enforce this