THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR 407 



advent of some sort of a socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of 

 the war-function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due 

 to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable 

 criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole 

 nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in intellec- 

 tual refinement with the sciences of production, I see that war becomes 

 absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant am- 

 bitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations must 

 make common cause against them. I see no reason why all this should 

 not apply to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look forward to 

 a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civil- 

 ized peoples. 



All these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist 

 party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be 

 permanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized preserve 

 some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful 

 peace-economy can not be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or 

 less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting we must 

 still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to 

 our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. AVe must make 

 new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the mili- 

 tary mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring 

 cement ; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, 

 obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states 

 are built — unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against com- 

 monwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever 

 a center of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed 

 anywhere in their neighborhood. 



The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that 

 the martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through 

 war, are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and 

 ambition in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a 

 more general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is 

 no reason for supposing them to be its last form. Men now are proud 

 of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay 

 down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off 

 subjection. But who can be sure that other aspects of one's country 

 may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be 

 regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame? Why 

 should men not some day feel that it is worth a blood-tax to belong to a 

 collectivity superior in any ideal respect? Why should they not blush 

 with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in any 

 way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this 

 civic passion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark till the 



