It is indispensable to remember that in the cases of both Germany and Japan their extraordinary success has been due directly to that kind of efficiency in war which springs only from the highest efficiency in preparedness for war. Until educated people who sincerely desire peace face this fact with all of its implications, unpleasant and pleasant, they will not be able to better present international conditions. In order to secure this betterment, conditions must be created which will enable civilized nations to achieve such efficiency without being thereby rendered dangerous to their neighbors and to civilization as a whole. Americans, particularly, and, to a degree only slightly less, Englishmen and Frenchmen need to remember this fact, for while the ultrapacificists, the peace-at-any-price men, have appeared sporadically everywhere, they have of recent years been most numerous and noxious in the United States, in Great Britain, and in France.
Inasmuch as in our country, where, Heaven knows, we have evils enough with which to grapple, none of these evils is in even the smallest degree due to militarism--inasmuch as to inveigh against militarism in the United States is about as useful as to inveigh against eating horse-flesh in honor of Odin--this seems curious. But it is true. Probably it is merely another illustration of the old, old truth that persons who shrink from grappling with grave and real evils often strive to atone to their consciences for such failure by empty denunciation of evils which to them offer no danger and no temptation; which, as far as they are concerned, do not exist. Such denunciation is easy. It is also worthless.
American college presidents, clergymen, professors, and publicists with much pretension--some of it founded on fact--to intelligence have praised works like that of Mr. Bloch, who “proved” that war was impossible, and like those of Mr. Norman Angell, who “proved” that it was an illusion to believe that it was profitable. The greatest and most terrible wars in history have taken place since Mr. Bloch wrote. When Mr. Angell wrote no unprejudiced man of wisdom could have failed to understand that the two most successful nations of recent times, Germany and Japan, owed their great national success to successful war. The United States owes not only its greatness but its very existence to the fact that in the Civil War the men who controlled its destinies were the fighting men. The counsels of the ultrapacificists, the peace-at-any-price men of that day, if adopted, would have meant not only the death of the nation but an incalculable disaster to humanity. A righteous war may at any moment be essential to national welfare; and it is a lamentable fact that nations have sometimes profited greatly by war that was not righteous. Such evil profit will never be done away with until armed force is put behind righteousness.