November 7, 1918 
LAND &? WATER 
17 
Pelmadism versus Militarism. 
By Arthur F. Thorn, 
Author of " Richard Jefferies and Civilisation," " Social Satires," etc. 
In common with the gift of life, humanity has been endowed 
with Mind, and within the circle of these two gifts, libertj 
and happiness are not merely idealistic possibilities, but the 
natural heritage and birthright of every individual, irre- 
spective of social status or economic class distinctions. Each 
individual possesses the right to live and think ; to preserve 
a reasonable freedom within the social system, and to secure 
a maximum of happiness which does not depend for its 
existence upon the enforced misery and slavery of others. 
There is nothing new either in tyranny or in its resultant 
moral degradation. The peoples of the world have always 
suffered more or less from the unnatiu'al repression of indivi- 
dual initiative and personal freedom, but, although the 
exploiters of human credulity and ignorance are deserving 
of blame for taking advantage of the unthinking majority, 
there is legitimate ground for an indictment of the masses 
from the standpoint of their obstinate antipathy to thought. 
If the latter were less credulous and more analytical mentally ; 
if they would weigh human motives and social values in the 
scales of intelligence, then the exploiters of mankind wouJd 
be quite unable to wreck the lives and happiness of millions 
of simple and unsuspecting people as they are douig to-day 
with such impunity and success. 
The miseries and almost unrealisable horrors of war, to 
say nothing of the inevitable slavery of mind and body 
which must accompany the military organisation of brute 
force for slaughter, all these evil things spring from one 
condition — a condition of mental inactivity ; they are bom 
of our failure to appreciate the power of thought. The 
positive evils of Mihtarism, as they exist almost universally 
to-day, should make obvious to us all the ultimate outcome 
of credulous, undeveloped minds and unawakened imagina- 
tions. These subversive things which are to-day magnified 
to the point of insanity by universal war, do prove in a most 
terrible fashion the price that a non-thinking and unreasoning 
humanity must pay for its mental defects and inefficiencies. 
For neglecting the faculty of thought, humanity to-day is 
suffering indescribable tortures of body and mind which 
might quite easily have been prevented by the exercise of 
reason and intelligence. It is not, as many suppose, a racial 
problem: it is ^a^ problem of the universal mind of man. 
It is not entirely a question of the mental defects of any 
particular class or nationality : it is a problem involving 
humanity en masse. War and Militarism are not new things, 
neither j^are they the sole product of any particulcir race. 
Repression of individuality and vicious tyranny are as ancient 
as man himself, and have always arisen from the same cause, 
namely, mental laziness and non-intelligence on the part 
of the people who allow themselves to be used up in the 
interests of degenerate rulers. If we permit arrogant and 
unscrupulous autocrats to decide the condition and object 
of our lives ; if we allow despots to formulate laws which 
are expressly designed for our own personal sacrifice 
and destruction, what legitimate reason have we for 
complaint ? 
War is unquestionably the most hideous fraud ever imposed 
upon a long-suffering humanity ; it denies the sacredness of 
human life, and elevates into virtues those mechanical and 
non-mental responses to autocratic authority which involve 
the annihilation of human personality and the death of 
individuality. Militarism substitutes an impersonal and 
external discipline for an internal and personal discipline — 
the man becomes a machine — the spirit tecomes a soulless 
mechanism — life becomes death. It is the price that humanity 
pays for refusing to recognise individual mental power ; it is 
the tragedy of stagnant brains ; the golgotha of human intellect. 
In a world populated with mentally awakened people the 
curse of Militarism would be unable to exist. There is no 
question about this at all. War, which is the idealisation 
of brute force, could not possibly be accepted in a universe 
populated with individuals who realised that brute force was 
the negation of mind and intelligence. A military autocrat 
in such a world would immediately be placed in prison for 
safe custody. The people would perceive that he was not 
only insane, but also a source of serious danger J;o the com- 
munity. They would relate the destructive ideas which 
dominated such a man to the effect of such ideas if put into 
action. They would not wait until the world was plunged 
into the madness of war, they would visualise the result bejore 
it actually ^occurred and make sure that no suck appalling 
calamity could come about. This, it is certain, would be the 
action taken ^by a mentally awakened people who under- 
stood the relation between thought and action. 
It is the hope of the world that the people shall be mentally 
awakened ; that they shall be, as it were, initiated into the 
mysteries of mind ; that social science and intelligent educa- 
tion should prepare men and women not only for the par- 
ticular trade, business, or profession which they choose to 
adopt, but for the supreme art of life itself. This is the 
need, and it is as urgent as our need of bread. A system of 
mental development is required that will link up all the 
tangled ends oi unorganised thought, and enable the indivi- 
dual ^o become conscious of the highest values of human 
life, not only from a personal, but from a universal stand- 
point. This system of mental education exists and has 
already proved itself to be of extreme value to thousands 
of individuals who had been previously handicapped by 
undeveloped brains and starved imagination. The Pelman 
System of Mind and Memory Training exists not only for 
the purpose of sharpening one's mental faculties in relation 
to commercial affairs, but also to enable the eyes of the 
mind to perceive more important and much deeper realities 
than the surface values of civihsation. 
Peltnanism exists to help the mind to become aware of itself 
in relation to the infinite possibilities of human existence, 
and also to develop personality in the direction of freedom and 
' self-realisation. It is one of the saddest facts of human 
lite that so few really express themselves fully or achieve, 
a condition of life that merges harmoniously with their own 
particular temperamental needs and desires. It is usuallj- 
the diseased personalities of despots that express themselves 
to the full, as we have ample proof to-day. The peace- 
loving and normal man or woman who detests violence and 
leans mentally towards the higher values of hfe rarely comes 
to possess sufficient mental power to achieve what he or she 
feels instinctively to be the highest and best. This is the 
failure of the wrongly educated mind — the^mind that is not 
whole. Militarists who gamble with the simple idealism of 
ordinary folk couid not function were the opposite and 
higher mental quahties sufficiently developed in the people 
they exploit. It is at this point that the Pelman System 
of Mind and Memory Training asserts itself and reiterates 
the urgent need for real mental education based upon the 
laws of personal psychology. 
Pelmanism draws the individual mind in the direction of 
all that is truly educational : it interests the student in 
those things wliich really matter in the cause of individual 
progress and social sanity. These most important truths 
may be stated and restated in a very few words, but humanity 
is not yet mentally awake to those basic facts of human 
psychology which, if recognised and acted upon, would 
revolutionise the world and purge the diseases of War and 
Militarism from human society for ever. / 
What "Truth" says:— 
"The first point which emerges in the survey of the present 
position of the Pelman Institute is . . . that recognition is 
being more and more accorded to its educational activities 
by men and women interested in the improvement of the 
intellectual fibre of the nation and the cesultant increase in 
national efficiency. The judgment passed by Truth has 
been upheld by every judge who has examined the facts for 
himself, and, be it added, by a jury of unexampled magni- 
tude, which has come to the same conclusion through per- 
sonal experience. 
"Allusion has already been made to the amazing increase 
in the number of men and women who have taken, or are 
taking, the Pelman Course of instruction. The number of . 
students on the Pelman roll to-day has passed the 250,000* 
mark, and of those a very large proportion have enrolled 
within the past two years. From no one of these students 
has Truth heard a single word of discontent or a suggestion 
that any of the conclusions arrived at are misleading or 
fallacious, though those conclusions in a large proportion of. 
recent enrolments were probably a determining factor." 
"Mind and Memory" (in which the Pelman Course Js fully 
described, with a Synopsis of the lessons) will be sent gratis 
and post free, together with a full reprint of " Truth's" famous 
Report on the Felnmn System and a form entitling readers 
of Land & W.vter to the complete Course for one-third less 
than the tisual fees, on application to the Pelman Institute, 
39 Pelman House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.i.^ ^ 
Overseas addresses : ^b-^H Market Street, Melbourne ; 
15 Toronto Street, Toronto; Club Arcade, Durban. 
* Now 400,000. 
