Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/181

 motive. Europe cannot recover if she goes on with the old race for armaments. She will collapse under the double burden. The world is so interlocked that if Europe blows up in anarchy we, though we hold together, must suffer terribly. An agreement to limit armies and navies to the point where they cannot be used aggressively can probably be enforced. We have no formal law between nations, it is true; but that uncharted moral opinion of democracies is perhaps powerful enough to secure a rough working agreement until we get something better. It cannot be done without the consent—indeed without the leadership—of the United States. We have as much economic and industrial power to manufacture navies and munitions as any three European nations, more population to furnish soldiers than any two Western European nations. If we arm to the teeth, the rest must follow through fear.

Such partial disarmament will serve not only as temporary alleviation; it will be also in the nature of a remedy. Whatever movement sets the nations thinking positively about peace, whatever forces them into co-operation instead of competition, makes toward their final, complete understanding. Finally, it will prevent the psychological drift toward war which comes with perfected armaments.

If I have anywhere made it appear that the term “militarist” 1s equivalent to the term “professional soldier,” I have done the military clan a wrong.