The essential thing that has happened to dentistry is that they now kill the germs that decay the teeth.
The first natural thing for the Red Cross to do would be the day after the armistice to go back to war germs.
The Red Cross with its branches in every town and every nation in the world would announce that from that day on, through a vast new division, it would occupy itself with germs--with the germs of six inch guns, with the germs of submarines. It would deal with the embryology of war.
The germs of war between nations, breed in wars between classes, and the germs of class war breed in the wars between persons, and the germs of war between men and men breed in each man's not keeping peace with himself.
It is when I am having a hard time getting on with Stanley Lee that I am likely to have a row with Ivy Lee. It is a colossal understatement to say that charity begins at home. Everything does. If a man understands himself he can understand anybody. If he gets on with himself the world will fall into his hands.
The great short cut to stopping war between peoples is to stop war between capital and labor. This is a feat of personality and of engineering in human nature. It is a home-job, and when we have done it at home we can sow all nations with it. If I wanted to stop a war between Ivy Lee and me I would have to pick out a series of things to do to Ivy Lee and to say to him which he would like to have me do and say to him. Then I would pick out in myself things that Ivy Lee does not like to have me do to him and say to him, and which possibly when I study on them I will not want to do.
This is a science. It is not merely a vision or a religion. Removing the cause of fighting may be a less exact science of mutual study and self-study, but it is approximately exact. It is also a fascinating and contagious science. We master the embryology of war between persons--the embryology of war between classes, and then between nations. The principles which we demonstrate and set up working samples of in one of these problems will prove to be the principles of the others.
If people do not believe in germs enough and are more afraid of fire, I would change the figure.
We are proposing to follow up at once, the Red Cross, which was run as a fire engine to put or help put out fires between nations, with the Air Line League which is to be run as a machine for not letting fires between nations get started.