Our National Defense: The Patriotism of Peace Part 2

But a general plan based on an agreement made in advance to arbitrate all future unknown controversies would be unenforceable and would afford no a.s.surance of peace.

The plan for an international force, either army or navy, is too remote a possibility to be depended on now for practical results.

Agitation of these projects is commendable and should be encouraged, but we cannot wait for their adoption to set our own house in order and insure its safety.

In framing a national policy of peace for the United States, we must constantly and clearly draw the line of distinction between the deep-seated original causes of war, and causes which are secondary, or merely precipitating incidents.

The a.s.sa.s.sination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo precipitated the present war, but it was not the cause of the war.

Fundamentally, that cause was the check imposed by other nations on the expansion of the German Empire. The necessity for that expansion resulted from the rapid increase in the population, trade, and national wealth of Germany.

The same problem faces the United States with reference to j.a.pan and we cannot evade it by any scheme for arbitration or disarmament. We must squarely face and solve the economic problems that lie at the bottom of all possible conflict between this nation and j.a.pan.

A lighted match may be thrown into a keg of gunpowder and an explosion result. It might be said that the match caused the explosion. In one sense it did--_but it was not the match that exploded_.

And gunpowder must be protected against matches, if explosions are to be avoided. So with national controversies. The economic causes must be controlled, and conflict avoided by action taken long in advance of a condition of actual controversy.

In our dealings with j.a.pan, as will be shown hereafter, we are sitting on an open keg of gunpowder, lighting matches apparently without the remotest idea of the danger, or of the way to eliminate it.

But the situation on the Pacific Coast with reference to j.a.pan is not the first instance of similar risks that have been run with most appalling losses as a consequence.

The danger of an earthquake in San Francisco was known to everybody.

Likewise it must have been known, if the slightest thought had been given to it, that an earthquake might disrupt the water system of the city and make it impossible to quench a fire that might be started by an earthquake.

As San Francisco is now heedless of the need for a policy that will really settle the j.a.panese trouble, instead of aggravating it, so she was heedless of the earthquake danger. That heedlessness cost the city $300,000,000 in entirely unnecessary damage caused by fire. San Francisco was destroyed by fire, not by the earthquake. The earthquake was unavoidable, the fire was wholly preventable.

That sort of heedlessness is typical of the American people. Busy with the present, they take no thought of the future. Every city in the United States which is liable in any year to a great flood, is equally liable to a great fire--a fire which might as completely destroy it as the San Francisco fire destroyed that city, because, owing to the flood, all the means provided for fire protection when there is no flood, would be rendered useless by the flood.

Yet every such flood-menaced city in the United States stolidly runs the risk. No general precautions are taken to prevent such destruction, though it must be recognized as being possible at any time. Great floods will rarely follow one another in the same place. For this reason, flood protection for a city which has already suffered from a disastrous flood, like Dayton, is no more important than similar protection for all other flood-menaced cities. The only way to safeguard against floods, and the consequent risk of fire losses in flood-menaced cities, is that _all such cities_ should be completely protected against floods, under a nation-wide policy for flood protection and prevention.

When appeal is made to Congress for legislation providing for such a policy and for the appropriations necessary to make it effective, we are told that so much money is required for military expenditures that none can be spared for protection against floods.

Are we to go on for the next ten years doing as we have done in the last ten, and spend another billion dollars for the army and fortifications, while floods ravage unchecked?

If we had been getting actual protection from foreign invasion for that billion dollars, there might have been some justification for its expenditure; but we are getting neither protection from foreign invasion nor protection from flood invasion.

The fact that the people of the country at large give no heed whatever to the risk of tremendous losses of life and property by flood, arises from a fixed habit of apathetic indifference, and the fact that no commercial interest pushes steadily in behalf of flood protection.

There is money to be made, and large dividends may be earned, by furnishing insurance against fire. Consequently the owner of every building in every city is constantly reminded by insurance agents of the importance and necessity of fire insurance. This has been done until public education, stimulated by private profit, has created a habit of thought which instinctively recognizes the danger of fire, and insures against it. The property owner who now fails to carry fire insurance is commonly regarded as a.s.suming an unwarranted risk.

The same conditions exist from a national point of view with reference to war. We build battleships, for example, largely because there is a huge private profit made therefrom, which warrants a nation-wide propaganda to educate and sustain a favorable public sentiment. The profit is large enough to permit of propitiating troublesome opposition by endowing peace palaces. That is a gruesome and ghastly hypocrisy that must come to an end, if the world is ever to attain to universal peace.

The government should, if it needs them, build its own battleships; but the first thing it should do, before it builds any more battleships, is to provide for its other more pressing naval requirements, such as trained men, target practice, transports, coaling stations with adequate coal supplies, swift cruisers, torpedo boats, submarines, aeroplanes, and ammunition.

After all that has been done, if it is made the law of the land that dividends shall no longer be earned by private corporations from building battleships or from manufacturing armor plate, it might be found that no more battleships ought to be built. By that time naval experts may have agreed that, as against torpedoes and aeroplanes, battleships are too uncertain a defense, and may have decided that we need something else.

A battleship costs anywhere from ten to twenty million dollars, and they are too expensive to be built for experiment or ornament.

The people of the United States have been relying on battleships for coast defense, but all Britain's battleships did not protect Scarborough or Hartlepool or Whitby. Neither have the battleships been able to protect themselves from torpedoes, mines, or submarines.

Congress is a mirror. It merely reflects public sentiment. So long as the need for battleships and more battleships--for bigger and still bigger battleships--is constantly dinged into the ears of the people by the profit-takers from the government, just that long will public sentiment, and the legislation and appropriations that respond to it, be warped and one sided. Our navy will continue to be top heavy with dreadnoughts, and inadequate attention will be paid to the other things necessary for a symmetrically equipped and efficient naval defense.

When private profits for building battleships shall have been eliminated, Congress will no longer skimp appropriations to man the battleships we now have, or for other naval equipment, in order to build more dreadnoughts.

After this war, it ought to be possible to conduct to success a nation-wide, and possibly a world-wide propaganda to end forever the earning of dividends from human slaughter.

That is the issue, bluntly and plainly stated, and those who profit by manufacturing the machinery of war must face it squarely. The time will come,--it is to be hoped it is near at hand,--when they will be held in the same estimation as are nowadays the pirates who forced their victims to walk the plank.

Over-preparedness, as well as unpreparedness, may precipitate a war. The causes of the present European war were, however, more deeply rooted than that. It was inevitable that they would some day result in war. But the war would not have come at this time if Germany had not thought England unprepared. Nor would it have come if Germany had not been, as she supposed, invincible, because armed to the teeth by corporations like the Krupps that make war and the machinery for it the source of stupendous private profits and acc.u.mulated wealth.

The growing temptation to create similar conditions in this country must be forever strangled. After the close of this war, the fields of battle in Europe must be cleared of war's devastations, and in the United States of America the field of industry must be cleared of all temptation for our merchants and manufacturers to become slaughterers by wholesale of human beings--murderers and manglers of whole battalions of their fellowmen--slayers of the fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons of millions of women. That is what they become when for money they furnish the means whereby it is done, or is to be in future done, by this or any other country.

It is far better that capital should be idle and labor unemployed than that either should be used to promote death and devastation in return for dividends or wages. All available capital and labor can find occupation in doing things that will promote human welfare. To the extent that the machinery of war may be needed by any government, it should be manufactured for its own use by that government, and never by any private concern or corporation for profit. A world movement to that end is being organized and every patriotic citizen should bear a hand to promote its success. The United States has the opportunity to be the first nation to adopt this advanced and peace-promoting national policy.

Whenever we have put an end to the making of private profit from the manufacture of battleships and machinery of war for our government, we will be relieved of much of the persistent pressure to make our navy top heavy with dreadnoughts, and to steadily increase our naval and military expenditures. More than that, we will then be able to get full, fair, and unprejudiced consideration, by the people at large, of every question relating to war or peace, or to our own preparedness for war, or the extent of the necessity for such preparedness.

Now the people know only a part of the facts on which a comprehensive judgment should be based. They have been urged to do the things which, if done, would result in profit to the manufacturers of battleships or machinery of war. Knowing this, many people go to the other extreme and oppose everything in the way of an adequate military or naval system. This tends to endanger the nation by unpreparedness, just as the Militarists would endanger it by over-preparedness, or a one-sided and unbalanced preparedness, like having battleships without other things even more necessary for naval defense.

The government should manufacture for itself all the machinery needed by it for war on land or sea. Its manufacture by anyone else should be prohibited by law. But it does not by any means follow that the government itself should refrain from manufacturing it, under the conditions that now prevail in the world. Neither does it follow that there will be no more wars. Nor again does it follow that the government should fail to be at all times adequately prepared for war. On the contrary, the possibility of war should be fully recognized and national defense should not be neglected.

Under the conditions that surround this country to-day, no nation should more carefully than ours safeguard against the danger of unpreparedness.

The United States should be, not unprepared, but fully prepared, and that can only be accomplished by carrying out the plan advocated in this book, for both immediate and ultimate national defense.

The a.s.sumption that this country will never be involved in a foreign war is one which every fact of history, every trait of human character, and every probability of the future proves to be unwarranted, unless measures are taken and things done for national protection, and for the preservation of peace, that are as yet not even contemplated by the people of this country.

The cost of those measures is so small, in comparison with the enormous losses this country would suffer if it became involved in a foreign war, that to forego them because of the cost involved would be as unwise as to fail to equip a pa.s.senger steamer with life preservers as a matter of economy.

CHAPTER II

_Advocates of Peace present no plan for national defense in case of war.

They leave it to the Militarists to provide for that contingency. The Militarists have proposed no adequate plan for national defense. No plan has been evolved, other than that urged in this book, which would in all emergencies safeguard the nation against war, and at the same time be in sympathy with and strengthen every movement to promote peace._

To make this clear, the various schools of thought on the subject should be cla.s.sified, and their views briefly outlined.

On the one hand we have the _Militarists_. They constantly clamor for a bigger navy and a larger army on the ground that we are unprepared for war--unarmed, unready, undefended--and that war is liable to occur at any time.

On the other hand we have the _Pa.s.sivists_. They have the courage of their convictions. Believing in peace, they oppose war, and all the means whereby it is made. Having faith in moral influence, they oppose armaments.

They are consistent, and urge that this nation should disarm and check military expenditures. In their peace propaganda before the people they have squarely and honestly contended for this national policy _for which they deserve infinite credit_.

In case of war, they have no plan.

_They leave that to the Militarists._

Between these two extremes we have the _Pacificists_. They deplore war and talk for peace, but believe in building battleships. They argue for arbitration and advocate disarmament, but have not opposed steadily increasing appropriations for naval and military expenditures by the United States. They justify this position on the plea that the best guarantee against war is an army and navy. They oppose war but not appropriations for war. They hold peace conferences and pa.s.s peace resolutions, but do not go before the committees of Congress and object to expenditures for armaments and militarism. In this cla.s.s belong all peace advocates who are builders of battleships or manufacturers of armor plate or armaments, and their a.s.sociates.