39^ World Federation and Social Progress 



Paradoxical as it may appear, the perfection of 

 military organization and its instruments must 

 be counted as one of the most powerful forces 

 making for world federation. Although militar- 

 ism is to a certain extent a cause of interna- 

 tional anarchy, it is still more important as a 

 symptom and effect of this anarchy. Politi- 

 cal leaders in all countries, alarmed by the 

 growth of military budgets, have tried in vain to 

 reduce these expenses. "There is some deep 

 underlying cause for the continued growth of arm- 

 aments," said Sir Edward Grey; and the British 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George, has 

 referred to the armament competition of the na- 

 tions as "organized insanity." The national debt 

 created by the Great War will produce almost 

 unsupportable burdens of taxation, and any at- 

 tempt to maintain the old system of international 

 anarchy will result in a renewal of the armament 

 competition which can have only one of two 

 possible outcomes — bankruptcy or revolution. 



Since there is no possible way of stopping the 

 increase of armaments except by international 

 agreement to surrender the right of conquest and 

 aggression, the pressure of the burden of arma- 

 ments themselves, which caused the Russian Czar 

 to call the First Hague Conference, will lead inevit- 

 ably to the next step of world organization, the 

 formation of a League of Peace. From this step, 

 once taken, the road leads straight on to the realiza- 

 tion of the goal of evolution and the highest aspir- 



