The discussion as to the need of an international police to enforce decisions made at The Hague, is therefore wide of the mark as there can be no occasion for the use of force in such a connection.
It is becoming more and more evident in Europe that the greatest single asset of the Peace Movement is the success of the republic of America.
America is opposed to the War System. There is a much larger percentage of pacifists in the United States than in any other of the larger nations. For one thing, it is relatively easy to be a peace man in a republic. No criticism or obloquy attaches to it. But in Europe, the direction of least resistance is to follow the wake of the War System.
In spite of the unhallowed sums we have carelessly spent to build up a War System, we have none. We shall never have any. Should we pass under its yoke we should cease to be America. Even our admirals and generals do not belong to the War System. They are civilians in spirit, sometimes in disguise, but permeated with ideas of law and justice, a condition far removed from that of the professional war maker of the continent of Europe.
The impression of America as a great factor in international conciliation receives impetus with the celebration of the hundred years of Anglo-Saxon peace, with its lesson of the unguarded and therefore perfectly defended 4,000 miles of Canadian frontier. This impression has been strongly emphasized by the admirable skill by which President Wilson has up to the time of this writing, honorably avoided war with Mexico, a war which was considered inevitable in most political circles in Europe. While on the one hand the United States cannot have the secret treaty, the cherished tool of the War System since the days of Machiavelli, and while Democracy is a form of government fitted for minding one's own business, and for nothing else, it is recognized that the United States must and should take the lead in conciliation and in arbitration, as she is now taking the lead in furnishing means for a world-wide survey of the War System, and for the resultant propaganda for its abrogation.
It is understandable that Germany and Great Britain should consider their armies, their battleships, dreadnoughts, super-dreadnoughts, and invincibles as constituting the chief machinery for peace. In celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession to the imperial throne the Kaiser was hailed as "the true and central factor of the past peaceful policy of Germany." These were Lord Blyth's words, in recognizing the avowed policy of the Emperor to preserve peace through the utmost practicable preparation for war; and ex-President Taft, who would refer to arbitrators even questions of national honor, spoke of this apologist of arming for conflict between nations as the "greatest single individual force in the practical maintenance of the peace of the world." The Kaiser's silver jubilee was the signal for unstinted acknowledgment by the leading men of the world that His Majesty's policy had preserved the peace of the German Empire for a generation. In its exterior relations Germany had looked too terrible to encounter, and the romantic, warlike spirit that distinguishes the Teuton had found vent in the service of preparation. The young Germans, both aristocratic and bourgeois, were encouraged by every means to train, to show, to be martial, but not to fight. And it will be recalled that Germany refused to discuss the limiting of armaments at The Hague only because the Conference was not empowered to deal finally with it.