Page:Jay William Hudson - A Practical International Program.pdf/23

 that after this war European nations will have sufficiently learned the tragedy resulting from this needless competition in armaments to the extent of being more willing than ever to listen to some rational proposal which will look toward the entire reformation of the militaristic system now in vogue.

That there are many objections that might be raised to the efficiency of an international police is to be frankly recognized: but there are no objections that are insuperable. For instance, one objection is that such an international army and navy as is proposed will be made up of the fighting men of various individual countries and that these fighting men will, in case of stress, feel more patriotism to their particular countries than they will to the larger world interest. In other words, it is urged that it would be very difficult to get an international army with the proper esprit de corps and based upon an adequate world patriotism. If we were relying merely upon such an international army, this would, no doubt, be an unanswerable objection: but we are relying upon such an army plus a new international mind, a new international public opinion,—the very public opinion which will bring such an army into being; the public opinion which will have to be convinced before such an army even exists that the interests of individual nations cannot any longer be severed from world interests and that when national patriotism conflicts with world patriotism, national patriotism must revise itself for its own honor, for its own interests. With material disarmament must go that greater thing, moral disarmament. In fact, when the world order is once secured by its expression in a world law, a world court and a world police, such a police will have as little to do with the average nation as the police of a city has to do