World-Equilibrium

I

THE world has long been seeking to solve the great problem of the maintenance of peace. War is as old as man; and he who wishes to limit its ravages may learn its most useful lessons from some rather old books — Thucydides, Demosthenes, Grotius, and our own Federalist. To the neglect of these lessons we may lay the carnage of the last seven years and the futile efforts to form a league of nations. If we would put aside our prepossessions, and study a few books that may be found in any good library, we might easily learn what may and may not be done to eliminate war. In the matter of preventing war, nothing is so absurd that it has not beenadvanced by some writer. What is most needed is a statement of the problem. We may safely assume, for the purpose of this study, that human nature is unchanging, — though it varies greatly in different races, — and that morality is stationary.

A sharp distinction must be carefully kept in mind between domestic and international peace, and between civil and international wars. Much of the confusion and incoherence of thought about peace and war is due to our failure to make this distinction.

International war and civil or domestic war are separate and distinct phenomena. An international war is a contest between nations or states; a civil or domestic war is a contest between parts of the same nation or state. The character of the military operations is very much alike in both cases; but the political problems involved are as far apart as the poles. Nevertheless, we continually meet people in search of a formula that would have prevented the American Revolution and the Boer War, which were civil wars within the British Empire, and the great international war of 1914. No one with sufficient logic to distinguish these cases expects to find a specific for civil wars. There is none, except good government; but it is not infallible. We shall first consider civil wars.

It is a fundamental doctrine of free government, as stated by Mr. Lincoln, that any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, has the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits it better. This right is not confined to cases where the whole people may choose to exercise it, but extends to a majority of any portion of a people. Such a majority is justified, and never hesitates, in putting down a minority intermingled with it, as were the Tories in our own Revolution and the loyal Union men in the Southern Confederacy during the Civil War.

On the other hand, if parts of a state were permitted to secede without let or hindrance, it would soon be dismembered; and, if the rule prevailed generally, the world would be delivered to private war and chaos, as was Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries of the Christian era. The shades of night would descend upon the world. It is necessary to the existence of civilization that every state resist rebels with all its might rather than let itself be dissolved into innumerable small communities. War against rebels is justified by the great law of self-preservation. No one can gainsay the right of sovereignty to deny the right to revolt. ‘ We do not want to dissolve the Union,’ said Mr. Lincoln on the eve of a great crisis in our national history; ‘you shall not.’

In every epoch of human existence, civil wars have caused far greater loss of life than international wars. More lives were sacrificed in the Taiping rebellion in China, than in all the international wars in the period between Napoleon’s victory at Marengo, June 14, 1800, and the Armistice of November 11, 1918. The greater number of the states of the world are prompted by domestic considerations in determining the strength of their armed forces, although this fact, in regard to any particular state, is rarely recognized by statesmen in their public utterances. For obvious reasons the danger of foreign invasion is always alleged as the reason for appropriations for armed forces. Internal conditions in every European state make necessary a formidable army to preserve domestic tranquillity; and the armaments in North and South America are, with a few exceptions, determined by similar needs. In 1914 the armaments of about fifteen states exceeded domestic requirements by reason of armament competition.

Prior to the World War the strength of our army was fixed almost wholly by the requirements of domestic peace, and our military expenditures were largely caused by civil strife. The American Union was not saved by oratory. It was saved by the blood which dyed the slopes of Gettysburg; it was saved by the determination of the bravest of its people. The first generations of Americans after the Revolution pushed the right of revolution to the utmost limits; the generation after the Civil War appreciated the right of governments to exert their full strength to put down rebellion.

A majority of existing governments would be overthrown immediately by rebels if their armed forces were disbanded or seriously reduced, and all the newly established governments would face the same predicament. It is worthy of note that the strength of the British army has been determined in time of peace mainly by the necessity of keeping order in the dominions under the British flag; and that no government of France would face the possibility of a second Commune or a new French Revolution without the ready and loyal support of at least three hundred thousand men.

It is the duty of a state to maintain peace within its borders, and every state must, for purely domestic reasons, have power to raise and support armies and maintain a navy. This power must exist without limitation, because it is impossible to foresee or to define the extent and variety of the national emergencies. No shackles, therefore, can wisely be placed upon the authorities to whom the maintenance of domestic peace is committed. Competitions in armaments do not arise from the presence in the world of the armed forces necessary to maintain domestic peace.

The test of a country’s fitness for self-government is its ability to maintain domestic peace. The power that protects a country from outside interference is bound, by the law of nations and its duty to foreign nations, to preserve order within the protected area. To expect England, for instance, to withdraw from India, renouncing all responsibility for the domestic peace of the land, but continuing to protect it from invasion, as so many demand, is an absurdity in thought, which recalls the petition of the Filipino municipality for Philippine independence and an increase in the local garrison of United States soldiers. Self-government is of the nature of a faculty; it should be the privilege of those who are able to develop the faculty.

Any scheme of disarmament which reduces the armed forces of a state below the requirements for domestic tranquillity must provide for intervention of armed forces from abroad — an intolerable contingency for any people possessing the faculty of self-government. The problem of maintaining domestic peace confronts every government on the planet, and it would confront, in an aggravated form, any world-state that might be erected to eliminate international war—a subject which now claims our attention.

II

Periodically some bandit nation runs wild and strikes a league with the Turks, the professional revolutionists, the discontented, and the ignorant of all nations, and seeks to impose its rule upon the world in the name of liberty and the freedom of the seas. We cannot get rid of these peoples and we cannot get rid of their will to rule us and reform us by violent means; nor can we induce them to subside into inactivity, without the use of force of some kind.

In coming to the rescue of the Allies who were resisting the efforts of Germany, the latest of these bandits, to impose her despotic rule upon the world, the United States was obeying the Law of Mutual Aid,¹ which has impelled threatened nations, throughout recorded history, to aid one another against aggressive powers that menaced their liberties. It is the law that impelled the nations to unite against Cyrus, Darius, Philip of Macedon, Alexander, Republican Rome, England under the Plantagenets, Charles V, Philip II, Ferdinand II, Louis XIV, the French Republic, Napoleon, and, finally, Imperial Germany. It is a law of nature, which persists unaffected by the wrecks of republics and empires and the change of creeds, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. It is beyond the power of fate, and no intellectual revolution can suppress or alter it.

France, in accordance with the principle, recently came to the rescue of Poland when she was apparently in her last agonies. This universal law has been scoffed at by the demagogues of all nations, living and extinct, who have appealed to the opposite principle of neutrality; but when the occasion has come, they have followed the law without knowing it. This law is embodied in our Constitution in the clause which requires that the ‘United States . . . shall protect each of them [the states] against invasion,’ not only from abroad but from each other, as the seceding Confederate States learned at Antietam and Gettysburg; it is embodied in its most gracious and pleasing form in the Monroe Doctrine, whereby the United States virtually guarantees every American nation, regardless of its form of government, against invasion by any non-American state.

Germany began the war in 1914, in the belief that the Law of Mutual Aid did not exist, or, as the German Chancellor expressed it in his speech of December 2, 1914, that the ‘balance of power . . . had become out of date and was no longer practicable.’ She believed that the passionate attachment of the nations to the doctrine of neutrality would enable her to isolate and attack her immediate neighbors without the danger of intervention of other countries. She found to her sorrow that the law did exist, and that nation after nation joined the forces arrayed against her, until she became an outlaw among nations. If the Germans had realized the inevitable fate that awaited them, when they began their war of aggression in 1914; if Prince Bismarck, who thoroughly understood the law and carefully kept Germany from becoming its victim, had been at the helm, they would not have begun it; nor would they have piled up great armaments in preparation for a great war of aggression. But how, we may ask, are the statesmen to be enlightened, who are usually at the head of the two or three aggressive nations of the world? The answer to this question will solve the armament competition question therapeutically, armaments being merely a symptom of a disease.

The answer is as old as Demosthenes, and may be found in nearly every one of his orations. Mr. Wilson recognized the malady, diagnosed it correctly, and sought to treat it therapeutically. A correct diagnosis is not always followed by correct treatment, and those who agree least with Mr. Wilson’s remedy would do well to examine his diagnosis with care. It was a bold and remarkable confession of error, that the man who appealed to Americans at the beginning of the World War to be neutral in thought and action, publicly stated, when his eyes were opened, that neutrality in such a war is intolerable, and finally signed a treaty designed to abolish neutrality in war, and even sought to deprive his successors in office of the discretionary power which he himself had exercised in the tragic months of July and August, 1914.

The civilized world is a community of free commonwealths. The forcible absorption of any one of these by another is contrary to the interests of the rest, as the state thus aggrandized becomes a menace to its neighbors. The Law of Mutual Aid, founded purely upon self-interest, prompts nations to come to the aid of states threatened with absorption, in whole or in part, by powerful neighbors; the doctrine of neutrality, one of the fundamental bases of modern international law, which is largely designed to favor conquest, bids nations, so long as they are not actually attacked, to sit idly by, neutral in thought and deed, while neighboring states are being crushed by superior might.

Mr. Wilson put his finger upon the disease; neutrality is not the way to peace between free commonwealths; it is the way to the peace which exists under despotism. The world will adopt peaceful habits only when the ambitious aggressor among nations is as certain to encounter overwhelming force as would be the aggressor among the states of the American Union.

How may this certainty be secured? It is not enough that a state should merely avoid aggression. To preserve peace and independence, something further is needed. While it is impossible to rely upon the self-restraint of nations, it is possible to limit their aggressions. A country that aspires to conquest is the most vicious of wild beasts. We cannot, exempt ourselves from its attacks by resolving to avoid them. The negative policy of curbing one’s own ambition must therefore be supplemented by a positive programme.

Does the Law of Mutual Aid lead to a new Holy Alliance? No, since the Holy Alliance aimed only at preventing revolutions arising within national boundaries, and had nothing in common with the measures designed to prevent one state from attacking another. It is well, of course, to remember that radical revolutionary governments tear up previous treaties. No treaty with the Tsar’s government binds the Bolsheviki. Revolutionary governments are invariably aggressive toward other nations. The French Republic, in a single campaign, gained greater successes than all previous monarchs of France. Toward revolutionary governments it is wise to pursue a policy of non-intervention, but nations must be prepared to meet their aggressions.

III

Before we consider what may be done to facilitate the natural operation of the Law of Mutual Aid, it is well to point out the ways that must be avoided.

A super-state, a government over governments, such as the League of Nations, is, from its nature, doomed to failure. It is a confederation, as opposed to a federation, which is a government over individual human beings. The United States is a federation, and, as a government, is efficient, because it legislates for individuals, has power to tax them and to command their services, and can compel obedience by the process of a court.

A confederation legislates for governments, lives by doles from governments which collect from individuals, and can compel the obedience of the subordinate states only by acts of war. In a confederation every breach of law involves a state of war. When a confederation is under the control of a strong coercing state, as were the Roman Republic and the Assyrian Empire, its history is marked by civil wars. It was such a form of government that Germany intended to give to the world. A confederation which is not under such control — such as the United States under the Articles of Confederation and the League of Nations — is a mere semblance of government, the shadow without the substance, built of wrong materials, and resting upon no foundations whatsoever.

It is futile to think of forming a super-state by conferring upon it the power to make peace and war, without giving it the power of unlimited taxation directly upon the men and women of the world. Whoever controls the purse controls the sword. This fact is recognized in the rule of unanimity required for important acts in every confederation of the soft-core type. Such a rule is a sure indication of a government based upon unsound principles.

A belief in the efficacy of arbitration as a bloodless substitute for international war has become a part of the habitual thought of the world; but sensible men must be on their guard against this cup of enchantments. Nations do not go to war over things that can be arbitrated, and arbitration treaties serve only as caustic irritants of the relations between states. The fallacy in arbitration lies in the fact that the causes of war, being political in their nature, can be settled only by political agencies, never by courts of justice. The pretexts upon which nations declare war are a mere covering brought forward to conceal the real political cause, which is invariably the desire for conquest. To arbitrate the pretext is like treating the symptoms in medical practice. International arbitration, as a means of applying the principles of justice to the causes which lead to war, is a farce.

In no known instance could arbitration treaties have averted war. In every case the aggressor began hostilities for the purpose of making conquest. He had made up his mind to break treaties, and an arbitration treaty is as easily broken as any other. Moreover, nations are unwilling to impawn their future being and action by binding themselves to abide by the irrevocable decisions of judges who base their opinions upon what they decide is the law; nor are they willing to confer legislative power upon judges by authorizing them to say wlmt shall be the law.

Nations cannot afford to enter into an agreement that will permit other nations to hale them into court, to answer for political acts which may or may not lead to war. To do so is to resign their governments into the hands of the court. Those who advocate such action take no heed of the fixed unwillingness of men to settle political matters, either domestic or international, by judicial means.

In regard to proposals to postpone actual hostilities until there can be an investigation as to the merits of a controversy, it may be said at once that there are never any merits in the ‘controversy.’ The quarrels of nations that are not bent upon conquest begin and end in words, and no elaborate machinery for making investigations is necessary in such cases. The aggressions of the international bandit aiming at the conquest of weaker nations can be stayed only by the known readiness of nations to aid each other in case of attack. Nations that seek protection in treaties of investigation and arbitration are foolish.

IV

We shall now consider the positive measures that may be taken to avert international war.

The nations have been able to preserve their independence against bandit states only by long and bloody wars. How may they preserve their liberty without the necessity of waging these wars? Surely in no other way than by making it unmistakably evident that inevitable defeat awaits the ambitious aggressor. Positive measures for the maintenance of international peace must be based upon the Law of Mutual Aid, and must, recognize the fact that the control of the sword cannot be taken from the hands of the great legislative assemblies which now control, and which seem destined to control for all time, the nations’ purse-strings.

Two methods, both of which are tried and approved deterrents of war, meet these requirements.

1. The first method is by defensive alliance treaties, of which the treaty long subsisting between England and Portugal is a good example. The objection to such treaties is that one or more of the parties may begin a war of aggression and claim assistance, as when the aggressive French Republic claimed the assistance of the United States during Washington’s administration, and Germany and Austria claimed the assistance of Italy in their war of aggression in 1914. It should be observed that the state whose assistance is claimed under such a treaty is judge of the occasion — a right which the United States and Italy asserted and made good. A general defensive alliance treaty, in which, to copy the language of our Constitution, the United States ‘shall protect each of them against invasion,’ has much to recommend it. After the treaty of alliance with France lapsed and was declared at an end, the United States did not renew it, and she has carefully avoided such treaties. She has refused upon more than one occasion to embody the principles of the Monroe Doctrine into a defensive alliance treaty with the nations of the American continent. It is therefore idle for us to discuss this phase of the subject.

2. The second method is by legislative declarations of policy, such as that contained in the preamble of the Annual Mutiny Act prior to 1867, which stated that one of the purposes of the British army was ‘the preservation of the balance of power in Europe ’; or by executive declarations of policy similar to that enunciated by Mr. Monroe, in which the nation, through its executive, announces that the invasion of one state by another will be regarded as an unfriendly act by the state making the declaration. The Monroe Doctrine is, in effect, a spontaneous offer of assistance, on the part of a nation which refuses to enter into defensive alliances, to all the states of the New World against any nonAmerican state that may attack any of them. It leaves the nation free to adopt such measures as it may see fit to pursue, and makes it judge of the time and the occasion. It is stronger than any treaty, and has been a most potent deterrent of war and conquest. However unfriendly an American republic might be, our aid would come to it as promptly as to any other. The Monroe Doctrine is not based upon sentimentality, but upon the more stable and respectable basis of selfinterest, which demands that we avoid the close neighborhood of strong aggressive powers. It is maintained by the United States for purely defensive purposes; but it has been of infinite advantage to the Latin-American states.

The great merit of the Monroe Doctrine is that it has caused the nation to think along correct lines and see its duty clearly; it has given guiding principles that have removed all doubt and hesitation in troublous times; and it has served as a warning to possible trespassers. The maintenance of peace is a problem of education. The Monroe Doctrine has preserved peace by educating our people, our statesmen, and our potential adversaries.

What oceans of blood would have been saved if the nations and their rulers had been educated in their duties in the strenuous days that preceded the German attack on Liége in 1914! Want of education, want of a correct policy, have cost the United States $26,000,000,000, and the nations a world war. Our defect, so far as want of declaration of policy is concerned, has been remedied by Mr. Harding in his Inaugural Address, by the following words, which, let us hope, will be quoted in after times, as are the words of Mr. Monroe: —

Our eyes never will be blind to a developing menace, our ears never deaf to the call of civilization....In expressing aspirations, in seeking practical plans, in translating humanity’s new concept of righteousness, justice, and its hatred of war into recommended action, we are ready most heartily to unite; but every commitment must be made in the exercise of our national sovereignty. . . . We have come to a new realization of our place in the world and a new appraisal of our nation by the world. The unselfishness of these United States is a thing proved, our devotion to peace for ourselves and for the world is well established, our concern for preserved civilization has had its impassioned and heroic expression. There was no American failure to resist the attempted reversion of civilization; there will be no failure to-day or to-morrow.

Paraphrasing the language of Mr. Lincoln, I should say: Let this duty of the nation be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles in her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, in spellingbooks, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

The writer believes that the Harding Doctrine will do fern the world at large what the Monroe Doctrine has done for the American continents. It will not prevent civil wars or small international wars; but it is an announcement to the world that we stand ready to join in crushing any bandit nation that attempts world-conquest. If taken by us at its full import, it will prevent a repetition of the World War, and it will lead to a large measure of disarmament. It will be what we make of it.

The nations need no additional machinery of government to preserve international peace. The world had sufficient organization to have averted war in 1914. What it needed then, and what it needs now, is enlightened policy, based upon a careful and searching study of war and politics. Organization without spirit is an empty shell. When the spirit is right, organization adjusts itself to the needs of the hour.

V

There are certain axiomatic principles in ‘world-politics’ that are of fundamental importance in the practical application of the Law of Mutual Aid. Several of these principles will now be considered.

Competition in land armaments between adjacent continental nations is not a mutual affair, as it is assumed to be in all discussions on disarmament: it is a one-sided phenomenon. A powerful nation, like Germany, arms to conquer a weaker neighbor, which, in turn, arms for defense. There is a vast difference between arming for offense and arming for defense, as every thoughtful reader of the daily press must have realized in the month of August, 1914. The defensive armaments of the weaker nation are not a menace to the stronger nation, which needs no great preponderance to assure itself against the attack of its weaker neighbor. War comes, not from armies and navies, but from the belligerent intentions of nations. The aggressors, the beginners of wars, the leaders in the so-called armament competitions, are the strong nations, not the weak. Excessive armaments in time of peace are a phenomenon of quite recent times, due to the ambition of Germany and one or two other states that have followed her example. Convince these states that the Law of Mutual Aid will be applied against them, that the fate of Germany awaits them if they attack their neighbors, and land armaments will automatically decline to the scale required in each state to maintain domestic peace, beyond which it is not desirable that they be reduced.

Competition in naval armaments is one of the effects of excessive land armaments. There is never any naval competition between countries that maintain small armies, however great their naval forces may be. This is a fact of supreme importance at the present time. Nations like Great Britain and the United States, which maintain strong navies, but comparatively weak skeleton armies raised by voluntary enlistment in time of peace, measure their naval strength, not by each other’s naval strength, but by that of countries which have powerful conscript armies backed by trained reserves ready for instant mobilization.

Recent propaganda does not disprove the foregoing statement. For more than four centuries England has gauged her building programme by that of the most powerful navy of those European powers which maintained large armies. She will, beyond all doubt, continue the same policy for a period of time that can be measured only in centuries. If we are wise, we shall follow a somewhat similar policy, taking into account Asiatic as well as European neighbors, which maintain powerful conscript armies.

England has never considered the strength of the American navy in determining her two-power standard, not because blood is thicker than water, as some would have us believe, but because she has known full well that she has nothing to fear from the aggression of a country whose army does not greatly exceed the needs of domestic peace. And we have been indifferent, about her navy for the same reason. Nations that depend upon naval power for defense never enter upon a war that can in any way be avoided. The English, like the Romans, have generally had wars thrust upon them, and, like the Romans, have generally begun their wars with disasters. As England and America have each a tremendous interest in the peace of the civilized world, which can be threatened only by countries having large armies, each is vitally interested that the other shall not neglect its naval forces. Their navies are the mainstay of the peace forces of the world.

A strong naval power, which maintains a comparatively small army, is not a menace to any strong military power, unless the military power, by its aggressions, unites the world in a coalition against itself; in other words, England, which relied upon her navy as her first line of defense, would never have begun a war of aggression against Germany; and the United States, with its small army, will never begin a war of aggression against Japan, which keeps up a large and efficient army.

No nation ever attempts to gain a preponderance of armaments upon both land and sea unless it is actuated by aggressive purposes. The nation which, like Germany, attempts to gain such preponderance, brands itself as an international bandit.

The liberties of the nations will be at an end whenever any country which has the best army in the world gains command of the sea; or, vice versa, whenever any country which has the best navy in the world builds up the most formidable army. The hegemony of the ancient world soon passed to Rome, when that Republic, already possessed of an invincible arny, wrested the command of the sea from Carthage. The defeat of the British fleet at Jutland would have placed the modern world in a similar position in regard to Germany, unless, indeed, the American fleet could have restored the command of the sea to the Allies.

The modern world is distinguished from the ancient chiefly by the fact that it has not been brought under the domination of a single nation. It has been saved from this fate by the fortunate fact that the strongest military state has never been the strongest naval power, thanks to the insular situation of England, to her ability to command the sea, and to her inability to become the strongest military power. Herein lies the secret of the existence of the free commonwealths of the modern world. One of the ugliest aspects of our civilization was presented by the campaign in the press, prior to the World War, against the policy of England to maintain a two-power standard against the German navy.

The key to the international situation lies in the European-Asiatic continent, because Europe and Asia, if united under one strong, efficient, coercing state, would have ample land and naval forces to compel the rest of the world to accept the policy of the coercing state; and free government would be at an end. No such danger can come from any of the other continents, on account of their smaller size.

The establishment of republican government does not solve the problem of international peace. Hereditary autocracy has more often imperiled the world’s liberties; but the dangers coming from republics and democracies have been more serious. Rome conquered as a republic, and, as an empire, combatted only for a choice of masters. At the beginning of the last century, republics seemed dangerous to Europe because Republican France threatened its liberties, which were defended by several hereditary autocrats. In 1914, autocratic Germany threatened worldstability, and the danger was ascribed to the form of government. Such theories are wrong. It is not the form of government but the; act of aggression that, is dangerous. Many good souls were troubled because autocratic Russia and Samurai-ridden Japan and feudal Serbia and Montenegro gave support to the Allied cause. But all great coalitions have contained autocratic governments. The Allies have fought against domination by a single state, not against any particular form of government. There is no instance in history of the defeat of a republican state by an autocratic state, both states being otherwise fairly matched; but history is replete with the defeat and overthrow of monarchies by republics in fair and open fight.

Absolute suppression of all trade with the bandit nation should be enforced in future wars, if, unfortunately, the history of the world continues to repeat itself. In the last war the Allies did not declare a blockade, in order, apparently, to avoid irritating neutrals, whose battles they were fighting. They preferred to follow an illegal practice, as measured by international-law standards, which attained the same ends and permitted the compensation of owners of ships and cargoes. The Second Peace Conference of 1907 stipulated that commercial and industrial relations between belligerents and neutrals should be especially protected and encouraged. This is the freedom of the seas which Germany desired—freedom from blockade, which was necessary to bring her to her knees and stop her aggressions. The international law of Grotius justifies the measures which the Allies enforced, or should have enforced, against Germany; indeed, if they had proclaimed the principles of the Father of International Law at the beginning of the war, they would have had a moral and intelligible code to follow. Truth is so delicate that, if we deviate ever so slightly from it, we fall into error. Grotius was a citizen of one of a number of small nations which were threatened by the German empire of the day, and he wrote as the citizen of an ‘allied’ country. Looking out upon a world much like our own, his thoughts are as fully applicable to our larger world as if they were written yesterday.

The greatest crime that a state can commit is to kindle a war, either by its own aggressions or by creating the belief that it will play an unworthy part. War is not the supreme evil. The supreme evil is the habit of regarding war as the supreme evil. No nation has more serious difficulties to encounter than one whose courage and firmness are doubted. What a bandit nation believes to be true is, so far as its action is concerned, the same as the truth.

A primary power with a fearless and efficient government rarely gets into war. Such a government does not attack its neighbors, and does not provoke war by its reputation for inefficiency and want of spirit. The administrations of James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, and Theodore Roosevelt were eras of peace.

It is the duty of every nation to maintain such armed forces as are necessary to preserve domestic peace. Where free government prevails, the control of these forces is in the hands of the representatives of a majority of the people, who have no interest in resorting to factious methods and no desire to support needless armaments.

The path to international peace lies, not in neutrality, or in World Confederation, or in arbitration, or in any particular form of government, but in the unfailing application of the Law of Mutual Aid. International peace is a problem of education. World wars will be averted and excessive armaments will vanish only when that law is so well understood and so sure in its application that ambitious nations will renounce the hope of conquering neighbors as little disposed to endure as to offer an injury.

Although the United States will not enter into formal guaranties, the events of the World War and the declarations of her political departments give assurance that she will join the world against any power that threatens disaster to free nations.