Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/19



, it has been said, lives by happy combinations of words, thinks by phrases. With phrases, no less than with engines of destruction, the world fought the Great War of 1914–18—“The War for Democracy” on the Allied side, “The Place in the Sun” and “Spreading our Kultur” on the German. Volumes of political essays and bales of editorials have less influence among the American people at present than that popular expression, “A hundred per cent American.”

In the two years since the Armistice, a new phrase has entered the discussion of military affairs not only in America but in all the European countries—“the next war.” It appears many times daily in the reactionary press of Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Paris. It sprinkles the reports in the staff colleges of the Continent, of England, of the United States. It has furnished already the theme for books in all European languages. “The First World War,” the