What Shall We Say?
Being comments on current matters of

WAR and WASTE

By

DAVID STARR JORDAN

'Bloody the hue Ciatalgia's bivouacs lend
Unto the waning star of Bethlehem."
—M. B. Anderson

WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION
Boston, Massachusetts, U. S. A.
1913

Copyright, 1913,
by
DAVID STARR JORDAN

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

PRESS

3
H
o
To the memory of

Sir Cbarles JSaaot
and of

IRicbarO TRusb
patriots of a hundred years ago, who excluded warships
from the Great Lakes of America and thus secured what
no warrior could—lasting- peace between two great
nations. Where there are no soldiers there is no war.

PREFATORY NOTE
These little essays were originally written and sent out as
personal comments or "editorials" to friends interested in the fight
against war and war accessories.
Two of these —• numbers i and 6 — were originally published
in the Atlantic Monthly, number 21 in the Independent, and
parts of numbers 24 and 28 in the World's Work. Others have
been copied in various journals at home and abroad.
Stanford University, California,
January 19, 1913.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE

1. Peace and the Balkans
2. Shall the Turk Go?
3. Why Turkey Fails
.
.
.
.
4. The Fate of Armenia
5. The Great War of Europe
6. "Our Ships" and Our Money
7. The Open Door at Panama
8. Which Ship Goes First
9. Twenty-five Thousand at Panama
.
10. The Canal and its Enemies
11. The Size of the Navy
12. The Monroe Doctrine
.
.
.
.
13. Military Conscription
.
.
. . .
14. The Abolition of Piracy
15. Entangling Alliances
.
.
.
.
.
16. The Pest of Glory
17. The Force of Arms
18. The Fighting Edge
19. The Net of the Usurer
20. The Fertile Dreadnaught
21. The Dream of Invasion
22. The Defense of the Pacific
.
.
.
23. Pearl Harbor
24. Magdalena Bay
25. The Samoan Precedent
26. Japanese Immigration
27. The Old-Age Pension
.
.
.
.
28. Taxing the Cost of Living
.
.
.
29. Fort Graft
30. The Navy and Statesmanship

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I.

Peace and the Balkans
What shall we say, as lovers of peace, in face of the Balkan
war? Is it true that while Serbs are Serbs and Greeks are Greeks,
and Turks are Turks, there is no way out save war? Is it not
true that while Turks rule aliens for the money to be extorted,
there can be no peace between them and their subjects or their
neighbors ?
It is not necessary for us to answer these questions. They
belong to history rather than to morals. The progress of events
will take our answer from our lips. The problem comes to us
too late for any act of ours to be effective. The stage was set,
the actors chosen, thirty-four years ago, at Berlin in 1878. Our
part is to strive for peace—first, to do away with causes for war;
second, to lead people to look for war as the last and not the first
remedy for national wrongs or national disagreements. Most
wars have their origin in the evil passions of men, and no war
could take place if both sides were sincerely desirous of honorable peace.
No doubt, the Balkan situation could have been controlled for
peace by the "concert of powers" in Europe, were it not that no
such concert exists. The instruments are out of tune and time.
So long as foreign offices are alike controlled by the interests of
great exploiting and competing corporations, they can never
stand for good morals and good order. If they could, the Turkish
rule of violence would have ceased long ago.
Those who fight against war cannot expect to do away with
it in a year or a century, especially when it is urged on by five
hundred years of crime and discord. The roots of the Balkan
struggle lie back in the middle ages, and along mediaeval lines
the fight is likely to be conducted. "The right to rule, without
the duty to protect/' is the bane of all Oriental imperialism.
Meanwhile our own task is to help to modernize the life of the
world; to raise, through democracy, the estimate of the value of

IO

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

men's lives; to continue through our day the enduring revolt of
civilization against "obsolete forms of servitude, tyranny and
waste/'
The immediate purpose of the Peace Movement is, through
public opinion and through international law, to exalt order above
violence and to take war out of the foreground of the "international mind" in the event of disputes between races and nations.
No movement forward can succeed all at once. Evil habit and
false education have left the idea of war and glory too deeply
ingrained. Men law-abiding and patient, willing to hear both
sides, have never yet been in the majority. Yet their influence
steadily grows in weight. The influence of science and arts, of
international fellowship, of common business interests—small
business as well as great—are leading the people of the world
to better and better understanding. Left alone, civilized peoples
would never make war. They have no outside grievances they
wish to submit to the arbitrament of wholesale murder. To make
them prepare for war they must be scared, not led. No soldier,
we are told by experts, not even the fiercest Cossack, wants to
fight, after he has once tried it. Those who make war never go
to the front. Were it not for the exaggeration by interested
parties of trade jealousies and diplomatic intrigues, few peoples
would ever think of going to war. The workingmen of Europe
suffer from tax-exhaustion. The fear of war is kept before them
to divert them from their own sad plight. This diversion leaves
their plight still the sadder.
The bread-riot, in all its phases, is the sign of over-taxation,
of governmental disregard of the lives and earnings of the common man. Anarchism is the expression the idle and reckless give
to the feelings of those who are still law abiding.
The Peace Movement must stand against oppression and
waste. It must do its part in removing grievances, national and
international. It must give its council in favor of peace and order,
and it must help to educate men to believe that the nation which
guarantees to its young men personal justice and personal opportunity has a greater glory than that which sends forth its youth
to slaughter.

II.

Shall the Turk Go?
What shall we say of the expulsion of the Turk from Europe ?
Most of us say let him go, and he seems to be going. But we
would not have him driven out because he is a Turk nor because
he is a Moslem. Those are not good reasons. Difference in race
or in religion is no valid cause for war. Nor is it really the habit
of massacre to which the Turk seems addicted and by which he
has stained the soil of Armenia and Syria as well as that of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece. The Turk has a long list of massacres because he has had a long lease of opportunity. The fault
is not with the Turk but with the system. He has held alien
lands in military servitude for 500 years. Others have done as
he does when the opportunity or the necessity was forced upon
them. Military pacification and military control over people who
do not manage their own affairs spells always massacre. Massacre is war, the very worst side of war. It is war unrelieved by
any lofty purpose. But more blood has been shed in the Balkans
in a month than the Turks have shed in a century before. Yet
there is a difference. There is real force in the Macedonian
proverb "Better an end with horror, than horror without end."
There is a Mexican proverb "The grass grows over the graves
of those who fall in battle, but not over those slain by military order." The evil does not lie with the Turk as Turk. Turks are
much like other people. Like other good soldiers, those who have
tried it have no love for war. They would rather not kill nor
be killed. But military occupation is irksome. A soldier
insults a woman. This has been a soldier's privilege in most
countries through the insolent ages. An insult is resented.
An alien insults a soldier. A trader refuses to pay his taxes. A
civilian complains of ill treatment. A boy shoots a soldier from
behind a cactus hedge. The soldier seeks revenge. His comrades stand behind him. Whatever the provocation, "shooting
up the town" is no novelty in history. Insolence begets resistance.

12

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

Resistance to the soldier is "treachery." The penalty of treachery is "massacre." This story has been told over and over again
wherever there is military pacification and military occupation.
It has been told in our day in Armenia and Adana and Macedonia. It has been told in the Oasis of Tripoli, in the Transvaal,
in Samar, in Peking, in Bessarabia, in Korea, in Finland, in
Zululand, in the Soudan, in the Congo, in Yucatan, in India, in
Indo-China, in Arabia, in Egypt. It is not the soldier's duty to
stand patiently under abuse. It is not his part to respect the
rights of men. It is not the civilian's part to take in meekness the
soldier's insults. And it is not the expulsion of the Turk that
we hope for. The Turk is the least of our problems. We would
put an end to the whole system which involves "the right to rule
without the duty to protect." And in the long run, there is no
protection for any people who have not some voice in their own
affairs. Sooner or later comes the end to all imperial domination that strikes no deeper roots than force or fear.

III.

Why Turkey Fails
What shall we say of the failure of Turkey in the test of war ?
We are told by a leading military expert that "Turkey is being
defeated because of her lack of preparation for war." Others
have said that it was because her armies have been under German
drill and armed with German guns, her adversaries being equipped
in France. Others say that her armies contain too many
Christians, who will not shoot nor fight their friends. Others,
with a similar thought, say that she "has misgoverned Macedonia
and Albania, and these in the crisis become inevitably and properly
her enemies and not her friends, a source of weakness and doom
instead of defense and strength."
May it not be that Turkey's failure in war is because of too
much preparation, because she has prepared for nothing else?
Nothing else grows under military occupation. Turkey's old
war debt of $509,000,000 is crushing to all her industries, prohibitive to all her hopes. As "the sick man of Europe" Turkey
has been kept alive only by the persistence of his creditors.
"Instead of being extinguished in the struggle for political
existence because too weak to pay his debts, he had to be kept
artificially alive in order to pay them."
The reputation of the Turk as a fighter comes down from the
days when he was a wild frontiersman. For centuries he has
been kept in garrison-towns, the worst possible school for physical
vigor, giving a lassitude which even the drill of a German Field
Marshal could not overcome. Perhaps this is not the true explanation, but it is as likely as the others. The Turkish army, it
appears, was short of arms and powder and rations. But the
soldiers may have had all there was. Too long prepared for
war, the provisions for it had long since given out, and there
was no money to get any more.
Chesterton tells us of approaching a distant shore, covered
with dark forest. As he came nearer he saw that this forest had

14

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

no roots in the ground. It was made up wholly of hovering
vultures. It was Turkey.
Professor Sumner of Yale once said: "There is no state of
readiness for war. The notion calls for never-ending sacrifice.
. . . It would absorb all the resources and activity of the state.
This the great European states are now proving by experiment.
. . . What we prepare for is what we get."
For hundreds of years Turkey has been preparing for war.
She has always had on "the fighting edge." The "fighting edge"
grows rusty. The standing army grows stale. But successful
war depends on other resources. Other resources Turkey has
not got,—can never get, because war is her business. Her
people have not taken root,—not in Europe, not in Asia. They
live in barracks, in encampments, not in a "continuing city."

IV.

The Fate of Armenia
What shall we say of Armenia in this crisis of the Balkans?
Is Turkey in Asia to be left to its fate with the redemption of
Turkey in Europe? Is the military Turk a different man on the
other side of the Dardanelles ?
There is no difference. Only this: the shrieks of victims grow
fainter as the square of the distance increases. The military
Turk is at home nowhere; and his rule is just as intolerable in
Armenia, in Syria, in Adana, in Arabia even, as it is in Macedonia and Crete. It is not the Turk as Turk who is primarily
at fault. The Turk as trader, farmer, artisan is likely to be a
good man, a good citizen, according to his lights. The fault lies
with the system. Irresponsible military occupation is the same
the world over. That of the Turk has been longer continued than
most others. It is so much the worse for that. Anything else is
to be preferred, even the control of Russia. "There are degrees,
even in hell/' so an Armenian patriot writes me. And the people
of Armenia look hopefully forward to a Russian invasion as a
relief from the evils they suffer now. The process justly known
as "the Strangling of Persia" is to Armenia a prayed-for relief.
The strangling of a nationality, though brutal to the utmost,
pinches less than the outrage of one's family and kindred.
But no rule of force unrelieved can be enduring. The right
to govern must accept the duty of co-operative protection. The
"wide-flung battle lines" of the world can hold nothing worth
keeping if there grow up no other ties as bonds of empire. The
best army in the world becomes an instrument of tyranny if it
cannot touch the hearts of the people. Kipling's "thin red line of
heroes" and Thackeray's "red-coat bully in his boots" differ
mainly in the point of view.
There is no end to the Balkan crisis which does not include
Armenia. The troubles cannot pass until tyranny passes. The
minor questions of politics, Servia's needs, Austria's ambitions,

i6

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

Roumania's deals, are of no consequence in comparison. The
exploiters behind the foreign offices may quarrel over the spoils.
They can arrange the map as they please. The essential thing is
the redemption of the peoples.
What the Armenian wants is to be allowed to live as people
live in other countries, "immunity from slaughter, plunder, torture and outrage on the soil of his own fatherland."
I give below a condensation of twelve demands from an
Armenian appeal to the world (the work of Diana Agabeg
Apcar).
( i ) The Armenians should be allowed the right to bear arms and
to establish a local militia in all the Armenian villages for self-protection
against the raids of Kurd, Circassian, T u r k and other Moslem robbers
who are allowed the possession of arms and ammunition.
(2) The Armenians should be allowed the right to bear arms and to
establish Armenian volunteer corps or local militia for protection against
Moslem destruction of their homes, churches, schools, shops and industries.
(3) The Armenians should be allowed the right to bear arms in order
to defend their own bodies and the bodies of their women and children
from Moslem murder and outrage.
(4) T h e lands of the Armenians, filched from them by the Turkish
authorities and made over to Moslems, should be restored.
(5) A judicial committee of twelve members, composed of six
Armenians elected by the Armenian National Assembly and six Moslems
deputed by the Government, should be appointed for the examination of
title deeds of lands and for the restoration to the rightful owners of their
lands. In the event of disagreement over the disputed properties between
the Armenian and Moslem members of the judicial committee, the case
should not be referred to any Turkish Court, but submitted to the
arbitration of two foreign Consuls, the Armenians choosing one for
themselves and the Moslems another.
(6) That Moslem officials should not be employed to collect taxes in
Armenian villages, but the taxes in all the Armenian villages should be
collected by Armenian tax-gatherers appointed by the Armenian National
Assembly.
(7) T h a t the Armenians should be allowed to establish their own
courts of justice for the purpose of administering justice and conducting
litigation between Armenian and Armenian, and for deciding all questions
relating to marriage, divorce, estate, inheritance, etc., appertaining to
themselves.
(8) That the Armenians should be allowed the right to establish their
own prisons for the incarceration of offending Armenians, and in no case
should an Armenian be imprisoned in a Turkish prison.

THE FATE OF ARMENIA

17

(9) T h a t irrespective of the office of the Turkish Governor, an
Armenian Governor elected by the Armenian National Assembly shall be
appointed in every province of Lesser and Greater Armenia for the protection of the Armenians.
(10) That the Armenian Governor shall be assisted by an Armenian
legislative council composed of six Armenians elected by the Armenian
National Assembly.
(11) That the Armenians should be allowed the right of sending their
own delegate to the Hague Conferences.
(12) That no reforms in Armenia should be left to the promises, the
control or administration of the Turkish Government.
(All Turkish
reforms are the prelude to Turkish massacre.)

V.

The Great War of Europe
What shall we say of the Great War of Europe, ever threatening, ever impending, and which never comes ? We shall say that
it will never come. Humanly speaking, it is impossible.
Not in the physical sense, of course, for with weak, reckless
and godless men nothing evil is impossible. It may be, of course,
that some half-crazed archduke or some harassed minister of
state, shall half-unknowing give the signal for Europe's conflagration. In fact, the agreed signal has been given more than once
within the last few months. The tinder is well dried and laid in
such a way as to make the worst of this catastrophe. All Europe
cherishes is ready for the burning. Yet Europe recoils and will
recoil, even in the dread stress of spoil-division of the Balkan
Wai.
Behind the sturdy forms of.the Bulgarian farmers lurks the
sinister figure of Russian intrigue. Russia and Austria, careless
of their neighbors, careless of obligations, find in this their opportunity. And the nations of Europe in their degree are bound
to one or the other of these malcontents. Neither Russia nor
Austria can be trusted to keep the peace even in her own interest,
for both, through debt abroad and discontent at home, are in a
condition of perpetual crisis.
The financial exploiters of Europe which control the "Great
Powers" are very active behind the scenes. The huge debt of
Turkey is mainly held in France. French financiers arm the Balkan troops and pay their expenses. French concessionaires strive
with English, German, Austrian for everything worth holding in
Turkey. The "sick man of Europe," owes his continued existence as well as his final demise to these industrious parasites.
But accident aside, the Triple Entente lined up against the
Triple Alliance, we shall expect no war. Some glimpses of the
reasons why appear daily in the press. We read that German and
that Austrian banks try in vain to secure short loans in New York,

T H E GREAT WAR OF EUROPE

19

even at eight per cent. We learn that great bankers refuse absolutely to loan on any terms for war. We learn that on the day
of Montenegro's declaration of war, the nominal value of stocks
and bonds in Europe fell to the extent of nearly $7,000,000,000.
The loss of France alone, the creditor of Europe, is given at $800,000,000. The decline in England in three years is set down at
$9,250,000.
At the same time the house of Krupp, the greatest builders
of war tools, reports a surplus for the year of $12,500,000. A
twelve per cent dividend was declared, besides the setting apart
of $4,000,000, for welfare work and capital reserves. The armament builders of France can doubtless show a like profit, but the
details are not yet public.
The gains of war and war talk go to the vultures. The cost
falls on the people. Whatever else happens, the common man
stands to lose in war.
The expenses of the proposed general war are thus tabulated
by Professor Charles Richet of the University of Paris:
Austria
England
France
Germany
Italy
Roumania
Russia

-

2,600,000 men
1,500,000
3,400,000
3,600,000
2,800,000
300,000
7,000,000
21,200,000

If these nations—supposed to be diplomatically concerned in
the question of whether the obscure Albanian port of Durazzo
should fall to Servia or to Austria, neither of the two having the
slightest claim to it—should rush into the fight, the expense
would run at $50,000,000 per day, a sum to be greatly increased
with the sure rise of prices.
The table of Richet (here translated from francs to dollars)
deserves most careful attention.

20

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

Daily cost of a great European W a r .
i. Feed of men
$12,600,000
2. Feed of horses
1,000,000
3. P a y ( E u r o p e a n rates)
4,250,000
4. P a y of workmen in arsenals and
ports (100 per day)
1,000,000
5. Transportation (60 miles 10 days).. 2,100,000
6. Transportation of provisions
4,200,000
7. Munitions: Infantry 10 cartridges a
day
4,200,000
8. Artillery: 10 shots per day.
1,200,000
9. M a r i n e : 2 shots per day
400,000
10. Equipment
4,200,000
11. Ambulances : 500,000 wounded or ill
($1 per day)
500,000
12. Cuirasses
500,000
13. Reduction of imports
5,000,000
14. Help to the poor (20 cents per day
to 1 in 10)
6,800,000
15. Destruction of towns, etc
2,000,000
Total per day

$49,950,000

T o all this we may add the horrors of the air, the cost of
aeroplanes and of burning cities which this monstrous abomination of murder may render inhumanly possible. T h e nation
which uses instruments like these against a sister nation can
boast no advance over the Red Indian and his scalping knife.
In this connection we must remember that Europe still owes
$27,000,000,000 for old war debts, that her present nominal capital
that in all her banks and vaults there exists b u t seven or eightf
billion dollars of actual coin or bullion, a third of this locked up
or tied up in vaults from which it cannot escape. T h e total of coin
money and bullion in circulation in the whole world is not, far*
from $11,000,000,000.
T h e g r o w t h of credit in the last forty years has been without
conceivable precedent. T h e movable credit of Europe in 1871
did not exceed $40,000,000,000.
T h e masters of credit are staggered at the hazards of present
day war. W a r s of a certain class may be tolerated, others may be
connived at in the interest of local exploitation, but the great wars

T H E GREAT WAR OF EUROPE

21

ending perhaps—whoever is victorious—in the total destruction of
European credit, present appalling risks unknown to any earlier
generation. The people are slowly reaching the conclusion that
no nation or group of nations has the right to place the world in
such danger.
The bankers will not find the money for such a fight, the industries of Europe will not maintain it, the statesmen cannot. So
whatever the bluster or apparent provocation, it comes to the same
thing at the end. There will be no general war until the masters
direct the fighters to fight. The masters have much to gain, but
vastly more to lose, and their signal will not be given.
It is not alone the paralysis of debt which checks the rush of
armies. The common man is having a word to say. While the
waning aristocracies are everywhere for war, and while the man
with nothing to lose—the man of the galleries in the music hall—
repeats the echo, the good citizen sees the world in a new light.
He is not so ready for a fool's errand to Durazzo as he was a couple of generations ago for a similar mission to Sebastopol. The
cause of peace has moved forward in these years, and in the only
way in which real progress in civilization can be made—through
the enlightenment of the people.

VI.

" Our Ships " and Our Money
What shall we say as to "free ships" and the Panama Canal ?
If our Nation has agreed to treat all ships alike, including our
own, let us stand by that agreement. Of violation of treaties we
have been more than once accused. If we know what we have
promised, let us stand by it, even though it seems strange that we
cannot "throw our money to the birds" while every other nation
is free to do it.
But why "throw our money to the birds"? Do "the birds"
require it or appreciate it ? What claim have coastwise steamships
of the United States to use our canal at the expense of the American people ? But these are "our ships" we say. Since when have
they become "our ships"? Have the New York and London
capitalists who own them ever turned them over to us? Have
they ever agreed to divide their profits with those who make
great profits possible? The great enemy of democracy is privilege. To grant a concession of any sort having money value
without a corresponding return, is "privilege." The granting of
privilege in the past is the source of most of the great body of
political evils from which the civilized world suffers to-day.
While declaiming against privilege, even while exalting its
curtailment as the greatest of national issues to-day, we start new
privileges without hesitation. We throw into the hands of an
unknown group of men, to become sooner or later a shipping trust,
a vast unknown and increasing sum of money extorted by indirect
taxation from the people of this country. No accounting is asked
from them; no returns for our generosity. We give them, yearly,
to begin with, as much as an American laborer can earn in 4,000
years; in other words, we place at their service and at our expense
4,000 of our workingmen. From our tax-roll we pass over to
them the payments each year of 10,000 families. And all because
these are our ships. "Our ships"—we have here the primal fallacy
of privilege, a fallacy dominant the world over, and which is the

"OUR SHIPS" AND OUR MONEY

23

leading agent in the impending insolvency of this spendthrift
world.
In Europe and America taxes have doubled in the last fifteen
years, and half of this extra tax has gone to build up "our ships/'
"our bankers," "our commerce," "our manufactures," "our promoters," "our defense" in nation after nation, while the "man
lowest down" who bears the brunt of these taxes is never called
on to share its benefits. The ships that bear our flag in order to
go through our canal at our expense are not "our ships." By
very fact of free tolls, we know them for the ships of our enemy,—
for the arch-enemy of democracy is privilege.

VII.

The Open Door at Panama
What shall we say to the suggestion that tolls be free on the
Panama Canal for a certain period of years to the ships of all
the world?
Why not? The cost would not be burdensome. We have
already given away a large part of our expected receipts. We
have done this in spite of our treaty agreement that we should
do nothing of the kind.
In giving free passage to our coastwise ships, why not make
it free to all the world? It would be a most gracious act, an act
most characteristic of a great nation which values generous action
above money. It would show that our occupation of the Canal
Zone had in part at least the altruistic desire to help the commerce
of the world. It would tend to justify this occupation. It would
"save our face/' and save us.from facing the Hague Tribunal to
answer for the violation of a treaty. It would save us from our
folly of a special and needless subsidy to vessels engaged in our
coastwise trade. It would make easy and natural the neutralization of the Canal Zone. It would relieve us from the worry of
the ruthless militants who would make the canal zone invulnerable on land and unapproachable by sea. It would save us the
monstrous cost of the fortifications they have already coaxed us
or scared us to begin. It would cost us something, to be sure,
this world-embracing generosity. Let it be so,—we can afford it.
We have already paid more money for less worthy purposes. It
would restore our self-respect and the respect of other nations.
We are losing both under the statutes as they stand. Why not
declare the open door at Panama and keep it open at our own
expense for half-a-dozen years? Experience may bring wisdom;
we can act better later. Besides, in the fine words of Mr. Roosevelt, "It always pays for a nation to be a gentleman!"

VIII.

What Ship Goes First?
What shall we say as to the first ship to pass through the
Panama Canal? Let it be an American ship, bound on foreign
commerce. If possible, let it be a merchant ship on its peaceful
way to one of our sister republics.
The date of the opening of the Panama Canal is approaching.
A certain symbolism of the thoughts and purposes of the people
of the United States will be associated with the character of the
first vessel which shall pass through the Panama Canal. May
this symbolism be one of international peace and good will, and
of that alone.
The main function of the Panama Canal is one of peace. It is
to link nations more closely by bonds of travel and of commerce.
To symbolize this purpose should be chosen a vessel engaged in
the activities of peace, one sailing under the flag of the republic,
bound to or from the shores of this nation; one which shall bear
the friendliness of the United States of America to the nations
of the world, wherever its course may tend.
These purposes of the United States could not be fitly symbolized by a ship of war, however great her excellence and however perfect her equipment. The existence of such vessels may be
a necessity in an age in which international war is still legalized
as a means of settling international differences. But the people
of the republic wish not to glorify this necessity. They wish that
war may be made the last, and not the first, resort when international problems arise. At the best the warship harks backward
to the history of the past; while the ship of travel and commerce
points forward to our nation's ideals of the future.
This great democracy will find its future" greatness not in
conquest, not even in self-defense against would-be conquerors,
but in friendly cooperation, the brotherhood of men and nations,
the ennobling of the individual man, and in increasing recognition
of the worth of human life.

IX.

Twenty-Five Thousand at Panama
What shall we say of the demand for 25,000 soldiers at
Panama ?
We are told that 25,000 men are needed to guard the great
canal from "the enemy."
Uncle Sam, as we know, is still a very young man. He
hasn't yet got his business head. But he has Yankee blood in
him and he is beginning to figure.
A new $400,000,000 canal ought to yield $16,000,000 a year
in net returns. Uncle Sam doesn't expect this, for he is an
idealist and would help on the commerce of the world. Besides,
he has already given a sixth of his receipts to build up his
cherished "Coastwise Shipping Trust." But he figures that 25,000 soldiers at Panama may cost $25,000,000 a year. Forts and
fleets and fighting mosquitoes may cost him how much he does
not dare to guess. All this amounts to the interest on $1,000,000,000 and more.
One of Uncle Sam's most faithful teachers and most loyal
friends has figured most of this out for him. Professor Emory
R. Johnson, canal commissioner, estimates the total cost of the
canal at $375,000,000. All this, interest and principal, must be
paid from taxes or from canal tolls.
For the first two or three years, the most that can be expected
in returns is about $12,600,000 per year, if all vessels pay. If
coastwise shipping is exempted, this will fall to less than $10,500,000. In ten years it is hoped that the toll receipts will rise
to $17,000,000 yearly. The coastwise exemption will reduce this
to less than $15,000,000, unless that useless grant of special privilege to "the most heavily protected interest in the country" should
be repealed.
"It is estimated that $19,250,000 will be required annually to
make the canal commercially self-sustaining. This total is made

TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND AT PANAMA

2.J

up of $3,500,000 for operating and maintenance expenses; $500,000 for sanitation and zone government; $250,000, the annuity
payable to Panama under the treaty of 1903; $11,250,000 to pay
3 per cent on the $375,000,000 invested in the canal; and $3,750,000 for an amortization fund of 1 per cent per annum upon
the cost of the canal."
When Uncle Sam sees the plans for fortifications, for ships
for long range and short range defense, the bill for soldiers and
officers, and the cost of creating a military instead of a commercial atmosphere, he will finally conclude that it is cheaper and may
be better to let "the enemy" seize the canal, furnishing all the
fortresses, fleets and soldiers for its protection, while he puts his
own money into better ventures.
But Uncle Sam cannot escape so easily, because there is no
"enemy." No nation on earth would take the Panama canal
as a gift, if the gift involved defense by land and sea, or if it
involved the loss of the friendship (that is, the commerce) of the
United States.

X.

The Canal and its Enemies
What answer shall we give to Admiral Mahan's demand for
a greater navy because the Panama Ganal weakens our line of
defense ?
This tireless sea-dog, in the New York Times, tells us that the
Panama Canal, once built and provided with costly fortifications,
so far from strengthening our position in the militant world (at
the best, precarious), adds still further to our weakness. Of our
whole coast "it is through its isolation the most exposed. It is
intrinsically the weak link of the chain/' "The fortifications and
associated troops are to insure this hold on the canal while the
navy may be absent on its mission of action in either ocean, but
neither works nor troops will secure ultimate security if the navy
be inferior to the enemy's."
The Admiral does not state who the enemy is whose imaginary
attacks we are spending so much good money to repel. He dreams
of war, but only of war against "the enemy." We may infer,
however, that it is Japan who is on the watch for this, our weakest
spot. He tells us that "the population of our Pacific states is less
than 20 to the square mile, while that of Japan is over 300." He
further clinches his purpose with reference to an utterance some
years old of that fine old Japanese gentleman, Count Itagaki, who
has spent his last years trying to remove the element of heredity
from titles of nobility, and, thus far without success, to get rid of
his own title of Count. Only the Emperor can cancel an honor
of this sort. Count Itagaki believes that the people of the world
are entitled to access to any part of it, and that the doors of
America should not be closed to Japanese who may wish to take
their part in the building of the West. Perhaps he is right. It
is a question of social philosophy, and this noble-spirited old man
has a broad outlook. But this is far, very far, from advocating an
armed attack by Japanese ships and soldiers on the Isthmus of
Panama. It is infinitely far from ensuring feats of arms or deeds

THE CANAL AND ITS ENEMIES

29

of violence. Some excellent men in the United States have
thought that Canada should have accepted our views of reciprocity. To say this is very far from committing armies to invade
Canada, putting reciprocity through by force of arms.
The purposes of Japan are very simple. She wishes to hold
her own at home, to build up her industries, and to pay her
debts; and meanwhile to make good her ventures in Korea and
Manchuria. She has passed through the terrible calamities of the
war with Russia, and her tremendous burden of debt can not be
lifted for half a century. She would not fight us if she could. She
could not if she would,—and there is nothing in the world to fight
about. It would be easier for us to seize any Japanese port than
for her to seize Panama. There will be no seizing done on either
side.
When information as to Japan's history, purposes and resources is so readily accessible it is not easy to be patient with
those belated war experts who talk of Japanese invasions, whether
in America, Australia or New Zealand.

XL

The Size of the Navy
What shall we say of the size of our navy? How many
warships do we need ? Can we do without any ?
The answers to these questions belong to experts,-—experts
in world-civilization on the one hand, in ship-building and shipusing on the other. Perhaps we have no such experts in this
country. In any event they have never come together, and our
people have never had a rational answer to these questions.
Let us analyze the conditions. For offense, we need no ships.
There is no other land we wish to rule, no nation we wish to
injure.
For defense, just as little. There is no power which hopes to
rule over us, no enemy that dares or cares to attack. The business
of America is linked with all other business. The commerce of
America enriches all our customers. It is not good for business,
as Benjamin Franklin once observed, "to knock our customers on
the head."
We care not to waste our money on mere rivalry. We are
in no Marathon race to see who can pile up the largest fleet or
who can excavate the biggest deficit. We care not a straw, when
we are in our senses, whether our navy in speed or size or weight
of iron stands first or tenth or twentieth. Those who stimulate
this rivalry have never given to us the slightest reason why we
should feel it. We do not build ships to awe the world. If we
did we should fail, for the world is too busy with its own affairs
to be afraid of a self-respecting republic, no matter how terrible
its disguise of power. To call a great navy an instrument of peace
is one of the giant jokes of the century. The way to lasting
peace is not through fear nor through bankruptcy. The world
knows—and we ought to know—that we lie outside the sordid
and selfish game they call world politics.
The most worthy reasons for a navy in the United States, so
far as I can read, are these: The need of a certain dignity in
public occasions on the sea, and the need of a speedy way to help
our American citizens who through no fault of their own may

T H E SIZE OF T H E

NAVY

31

find embarrassment in foreign lands. The mission of the Tennessee and Montana to the shores of Turkey is a legitimate duty
of a nation, and the nation wants ample and adequate means to
fulfill such duties.
But a fleet to rival the swollen navies of the Great Powers
is not needed for this purpose. If $13,000,000 per year was a
generous allowance for our navy in 1881, covering amply all
demands, it is not clear why, in 1911, with no greater or different
duties, this cost need rise to $121,000,000. A larger population,
a few more helpless dependencies, a more costly type of ship,—
all these we may allow, making a two-fold" or three-fold increase
perhaps. But no one has suggested a reason why the cost should
be tenfold,—and there is no reason.
The navy, like the army, should be just as efficient as possible,
and just as small as its actual need permits.
Surely we want nothing more. For the cost and upkeep of
the four super-dreadnoughts now asked for, we could build at
Washington the one great national university of the world: one
of which every scholar or investigator the world over must make
use; one which could bring to its halls almost every teacher,
investigator or inventor of the first rank the world over; one by
the side of which Harvard, Columbia, Chicago or Wisconsin,
Oxford, Cambridge, Berlin, Leipzig, Paris as well would seem
like fresh-water colleges. And this would not be for twenty years
at most, the life of a warship. It would give to America the
intellectual leadership of the world perhaps for all time. There
is no University in the world which spends on its teaching force
a million of dollars a year. A million is the interest on only
twenty-five millions. How much will sixty millions yield?
Or if the money were used in another way, such a sum would
go far toward doubling the area of the South and West. To
restrain the flood waters, to pour them out on the arid lands, to
gather the power increment of all falling waters. No one can
foresee the extent to which these enterprises would add to the
wealth and to the effective happiness of our people. It is worth
our while to consider relative values, to spend generously where
spending counts and to refrain from spending when the only
motive is rivalry or inertia, the inability to break loose from an
evil fashion, a fashion set in other nations and in other times.

XII.

The Monroe Doctrine
What shall we say of the Monroe Doctrine as an incitement
to war? In an address before the Harvard Union a leading
general is reported as saying:
"We are the only nation which stands for definite policies
which are almost certain to bring us into conflict with other
nations which are expanding. The Monroe Doctrine and our
policy of not allowing even commercial coaling stations of other
powers in American waters are practically sure to cramp foreign
nations at some time." It is further assumed that this will force
these nations into war with us, hence the need of 450,000 more
men who may be mobilized as soldiers in case of need.
The Monroe Doctrine has never been made part of the policy
of the United States except by the tacit acceptance of the dictum
of Monroe: President Monroe declared "that the United States
will regard as unfriendly, any attempt on the part of European
powers to extend their operations in the Western hemisphere, or
any interference to oppress or in any manner control the destiny
of governments in this hemisphere whose independence has been
acknowledged by the United States."
This is a reasonable proposition enough, provided that we do
mot push it to offensive conclusions. South America has been
saved from the fate of Africa, though it has had its own troubles
of anarchy and waste. In so far the Monroe Doctrine has served
its useful purpose. No European nation intends to violate it.
None could afford to do so even if it had not to reckon with the
United States. Individuals in Europe may scoff at it, as we sometimes speak disrespectfully of the "Spiked Helmet/' but talk like
this may not be taken seriously.
It is only where our claims go beyond Monroe, when we seem
to patronize our neighbors or to use them for our own benefit,
when we assume special rights in Latin America, "spheres of
influence" or other claims that suggest possible schemes of spolia-

T H E MONROE DOCTRINE

33

tion, that opposition arises. And this opposition is not from
Europe but from the South American republics. These people,
confident in their own resources, naturally resent anything that
looks like an assumption of superiority on the part of the United
States. Patronage, as such, is not acceptable as a substitute for
friendship. Insistence on an extreme interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine has developed the very reasonable Calvo Doctrine
that South America is quite capable of taking care of herself.
Attempted forcible collection of bad debts has given rise to the
Drago Doctrine that no nation should collect money for its subjects by force of arms.
The Monroe Doctrine does not object to the docking privileges
or other conveniences of friendly commerce. As it was promulgated before coaling stations were ever dreamed of, it involves
no objection to friendly transfers which do not subject the people
of a republic to the rule of a monarch.
Dr. Manuel de Oliveira Lima, a leading statesman of Brazil,
has recently declared that South America is utterly opposed to
the Monroe Doctrine as it stands. "Not that they do not appreciate the protection of the power of the United States, but that
they are resentful of the assumption by this country of the power
of a protectorate."
He suggests that this doctrine be made, not a decree of the
United States alone, but a principle of Pan-America, the
"communal opposition of the nations of the Western hemisphere
against encroachment, on the principles laid down by President
Monroe."
Why not ? This would blend the Monroe Doctrine, the Calvo
Doctrine and the Drago Doctrine into one broad and reasonable
principle, acceptable to all really concerned.
We should be large enough, generous enough, broad-minded
enough, to forego our national leadership in this matter for the
general good-will of the continent.
If our Monroe Doctrine as bluntly or acridly stated is a cause
for war, it will be very easy to do our part in making it a cause
for peace. And the way to do this has been well indicated by the
statesman of Brazil.
A recent effort to add to the Monroe Doctrine a clause in-

34

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

eluding occupation of American territory by foreign syndicates
does not affect this problem in any way. The recent Senate
Resolution, itself based on misinformation, has no validity whatever. The President of the United States, better acquainted than
the Senate with the facts concerning Magdalena Bay, did not
join in this declaration. It is therefore null and void.
"The Senate cannot declare the policy of this Government, at
any rate, because it cannot make it. It is only part of the treatymaking power and only part of the legislative power and only
part of the executive power." The President is therefore under
no obligation to follow the dictates of such a resolution, and no
President would do it unless such action was clearly required by
the public benefit.
If, therefore, the Monroe Doctrine makes for war, it is not
necessary to repeal it or to modify it, but only to share it with
our sister republics. Then it will again make for international
peace in accordance with the original purpose of President
Monroe.

XIII.

Military Conscription
What shall we say to the efforts of military experts in Great
Britain, the United States, and in the great British colonies in
behalf of universal compulsory military service?
Only this: we will have nothing of it. It is not American. It
is not democratic. It is not wholesome. This service has been
the curse of continental Europe. That no man is a soldier against
his will is the badge of freedom in Great Britain and the United
States. "Every Englishman's house is his castle/' Every Englishman's body (except as freedom is lost by conviction of crime
or of incompetence) is secure from official manhandling. The
primal evil of compulsory military service is its onslaught on
personal freedom. The political evil is that its purpose being
war, it keeps the air filled with talk of war. War would vanish
if people could only "forget it." It is in itself so irrational, so
costly, so brutalizing, that we would have none of it if we could
separate it from ideas of "patriotism" and of glory. The conscripts think of war as the ultimate end for which they are "doing
time." "The conscripts hope for war," writes a Bavarian sharpshooter, "because they look for a chance to get even with their
officers." The petty officers, swarming in multitudes, have no
other thought than war. The higher officers (not all of them)
look forward to actual war for exercise, for promotion, or for the
test of their unverified theories or of their weapons rusting
through years of peace. All these men idle or malemployed pile up
the taxes, giving the workingman more and more mouths to feed.
We need not deny a certain value—physical, mental, or even
moral—to military drill. We need not deny that a standing
army may be made in some degree a school for the betterment
of the individual. We would not in the least depreciate the work
of those men who have given their lives to the upbuilding of
the character of boys in military institutes. To act together, to
act promptly, to obey orders,—all these may constitute the best
of training for young men. All this has a value wholly outside
of war. It has nothing to do with unwilling conscription.
Enforced military service of grown men bears the same relation to military discipline of willing students that stoking a

36

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

furnace bears to building one's own campfire in a forest. The
successful military school has sympathetic teachers, men to whom
the end of the work is character-building. It deals with boys at
that age in which order and obedience furnish the best lessons.
It is as far away as possible from the atmosphere of barracks
and brothels, the chief features of the idle standing army.
Military service considers only the purpose of war.
Its
discipline the world over is under incompetent, narrow-minded,
irresponsible, often profane and brutal teachers. As a school it
is at the best most costly, inefficient and belated. Its work is
begun too late in life to have educational value, even were the
war authorities anxious to give the individual soldier industrial
or other training to fit him for civil life. Besides this, the standing army has been for centuries the reservoir of the "red plague"
parasites. Under the most favorable conditions physicians have
been able to reduce the number of victims of venereal disease
from about one in three to one in six. In tropical service the
proportion of men ruined or half ruined is far greater.
The "white slave traffic" of to-day is an outgrowth of the
standing army. Requisitions have been published, signed by
commanding officers and frankly drawn on associations of pimps.
The term "white slave" was first used by Napoleon III, who
applied it to his conscript soldiers, those whom Napoleon I called
"chair pour le canon"—"meat for the cannon."
In 1867, the great journalist fimile Girardin wrote: "If war
is to be suppressed in Europe, this must be done gradually. The
first step is the abolition of the 'white slave traffic/—that is, of
military serfdom, the suppression of the drawing lots for men.
It is here that a beginning should be made."
Now that the conscriptionists are hard at work in England,
active in the United States, and successful in New Zealand, it is
time to stand for individual freedom and individual peace. We
make no criticism of military drill in schools or other well
guarded establishments, when it is voluntary and part of a wellplanned course. We pledge ourselves to a permanent fight
against the military conscription which burdens Continental
Europe. We find our answer in the words of the Honorable Mr.
Runciman, of the House of Commons, spoken at Elland in oppo-

MILITARY

CONSCRIPTION

37

sition to the plans of Lord Roberts in England: "Lord Roberts
knows little of the North of England if he imagines that it would
ever submit to conscription. War is only inevitable when
statesmen cannot find a way around or through difficulties that
may arise, or are so wicked that they prefer the hellish method
of war to any other method of solution, or are so weak as to allow
soldiers, armament-makers, or scaremongers to direct their
policy."
In any international difference, war should stand as the last
resort and not the first. If force is kept in the background and
all other methods are tried out first, there will not be many wars
in your day or mine. The few that we shall see will have the
motive of robbery of the weak, or else the motive of revolt against
age-long operations of "military pacification.''

XIV.

The Abolition of Piracy
What shall we say to the plea of Dr. Frederick Harsley at the
University of Berlin, that all war operations at sea should be confined to the three-mile limit of territorial jurisdiction?
Why not? This would be a great move forward, and in the
line of the efforts of Sir John Brunner and many other good
men to safeguard private property at sea. Private property on
land, if not used for war purposes, is immune from hostile
seizure. It has been so since 1899. But private property at sea
may be seized by the crews of hostile vessels and taken as prizes
for their personal benefit. This right to plunder has been supposed to stimulate officers and men to patriotic activity. By this
means England once destroyed Holland's commerce; and those
who forget that we live in a changing world have wished to hold
on to the legalized piracy, as a means, some time, of doing the
same thing with Germany. This, it was said, "insures not only
England's overlordship of the sea, but also her supremacy of
trade for all times." This is no longer true, and England's insistence on the right of piracy is plunging the world into insolvency. It is this vicious claim which explains, if it does not
excuse, the huge naval armament of Germany, for "it is impossible to take, lying down, such a perpetual menace."
But the cruelty and folly of legalized piracy has become
apparent to wise and just men in England. The next Hague
Conference will see a determined effort to do away with it, as
we have already done away with legalized pillage on land.
Now why not go a step farther and make the sea an open
highway on which all sorts of vessels shall be safe from all form
of attack ? Why not make belligerent nations confine their brawls
to their own shores? All the sea outside the three-mile limit
belongs to all the world. Let it be made immune from war.
And let it be provided, at international expense, with ships for
protection of commerce—not for its destruction. Let us have,

THE ABOLITION OF PIRACY

39

as Dr. Harsley urges, a life-saving patrol for warning and for help
when the icebergs come down from the north. Let us join to
destroy all derelicts. Let us find the dangers of the open sea, and
jointly remove them, without adding to them the dangers involved
in the operations of ships of war.
The naturalists of the world, led by Paul Sarasin of Basle,
have already made a plea for the prohibition of the killing of the
great sea-going mammals, Fur Seal, Sea Otter, Walrus, Sea
Lion, Whale, outside of the three-mile limits of the coasts where
these creatures breed. On no other terms can these splendid
animals be preserved for future generations. Why not do the
same by Man, the greatest of all seafaring creatures? Why not
let his path at sea be free from all dangers from his fellow-men ?
Why not recognize the supreme value of the right to trade and
travel? If men must be killed on a large scale in international
rivalry, why not take the matter out of the world jurisdiction and
confine the slaughter to the territorial waters of the nations
concerned ?
The navies of the world must melt away. The taxpayers of
the world cannot stand the drain much longer. Why not take
away their chief excuse and build up the merchant fleets instead ?

XV.

Entangling Alliances
What shall we say of Washington's warning that we of the
United States should keep free from "entangling alliances" ?
Do we realize how sound this advice was, and that the provision
of our constitution which prevents secret treaties is one of the
most valuable clauses in that noble document?
In it, we may remember, it is provided that an international
treaty originating with the executive must be approved openly
by the Senate before it can have any value. No minister, no
president, can secretly pledge the nation to any line of action.
No president, no senate, no congress, acting alone can make any
declaration of national policy. For these reasons, the United
States must stand outside of the tangled snarl of concessions and
intrigues which we call "world politics." It must play its international games with open hands. It cannot be the secret friend
of any other nation. It cannot be a secret enemy, because all acts
of friendship or of hostility are open to all the world.
In the present crisis in European politics the people in no
nation know where the nation stands. By the law of "continuity of policy" Sir Edward Grey, in London, is bound to
the international agreements made by his predecessor in office,
his opponent in politics. No English citizen knows how far he
is pledged to France, or to what degree he is to be blind to the
designs of Russia. He knows that there is a "triple entente," a
three-cornered understanding, and that this entente pledges England to inaction in Morocco, Persia or Mongolia and to acute and
active protest should Germany attempt to extend her control by
force. In like fashion Germany is bound to Austria, to Italy, to
Turkey, in varying degrees; and no German knows when his
empire's responsibility in the renewed Triple Alliance may leave
off. Germany may suspect Austria of a desire to fight, in order
to secure unity at home. She may disapprove of Italian greed
and folly. She may deplore the fate of Turkey or she may

ENTANGLING

ALLIANCES

41

recognize it as just or inevitable. No good citizen of Germany
cares a straw whether Durazzo is in Servian or in Austrian hands,
or in the hands of its own people to whom it really belongs. The
very existence of Durazzo is no concern of his. But the secret
treaty may force him to give up his life somewhere in the bloodwashed Balkans, that Austria may block Servia's hoped for
"window to the sea." He can only guess at the future. He must
await the outcome of the secret treaty before he can define his
own patriotism.
The secret treaty is a relic of the military state. The civilized
world is still organized on the mediaeval theory that war is a
natural function to be expected in the normal course of events, not
a hideous moral, physical, and financial catastrophe. In the old
theory as expounded by Machiavelli, the king has no other business but war. It is the duty of his ministers to find weak places
in the defenses of other kings through which war may be successful, and to find, after the fact, excuses by which war can be
justified. The late Italian war was begun and continued on
strictly mediaeval lines. The secret treaty, the concession to a
friendly power, the artificial interference with a rival,—all these'
belong to the days of Machiavelli. If all parties concerned could
come out into the open, where the United States is forced to
stand, we should soon have an end to the Anglo-German struggle,
of the rivalry between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance.
Outworn ideas of national glory, outworn figures of speech
as to national purposes, outworn mediaevalism in our conception
of the state,—all these find expression in the "secret treaty/' the
"entangling alliance," which is a chief obstacle in the way of the
conciliation of nations.

XVI.

The Pest of Glory
What shall we say of the progress in the art of killing in these
centuries of Christian civilization ?
Benjamin Franklin, in 1782, after the battle of Martinique,
wrote thus of what he elsewhere called the "Pest of Glory": "A
young Angel of distinction being sent down to this world on
some business for the first time, had an old courier spirit assigned
him as a guide. They arrived over the seas of Martinico in the
middle of the long day of obstinate fight between the fleets of
Rodney and de Grasse. When, through the crowds of smoke, he
saw the fire of the guns, the decks covered with mangled limbs
and bodies dead or dying, the ships sinking, burning or blown into
the air, and the quantity of pain, misery and destruction the
crews yet alive were thus with so much eagerness dealing around
to one another: he turned eagerly to his guide and said: 'You
blundering blockhead you, so ignorant of your business; you
undertook to conduct me to Earth, and you have brought me to
Hell/ 'No, sir/ replied the guide; T have made no mistake. This
is really the Earth, and these are men. Devils never treat each
other in this cruel manner. They have more sense and more of
what men call humanity/ "
Gustaf Janson of Sweden, in 1912, one hundred and thirty
years later, after the battle of the Tripoli Oasis, wrote thus of
what he called "the pride of war" :
The bird-man had returned from his flight into the desert
where the bombs he threw had stirred up the sands about the
Arab encampment.
"The general shook him warmly by the hand once more and
stood for a few minutes sunk in thought. 'Gentlemen/ be began
suddenly, turning to the officers, 'it is incredible how the technique of war has changed. Telephones, telegraphs, wireless communications—war makes use of all these. It presses every new

T H E PEST OF GLORY

43

invention into its service. Really, most impressive. I have just
been reading the latest aviation news from Europe. Our ally
Germany and our blood-relation France possess at this moment
the largest fleets of aeroplanes in the world. The distance between
Metz and Paris can be covered in a few hours. The three hundred aeroplanes which Germany possesses at this moment, all
constructed and bought in France, could throw down ten thousand
kilos of dynamite on the metropolis of the world in less than half
an hour. This is a positively gigantic thought! In the middle
of the night these three hundred flying-machines cross the border,
and before daybreak Paris is a heap of ruins! Magnificent,
gentlemen, magnificent! . . . Unexpectedly, without any previous warning, the rain of dynamite bursts over the town. One
explosion follows on the other.
Hospitals, theatres, schools,
museums, public buildings, private houses—all are demolished.
The roofs break in, the floors sink through to the cellars, crumbling ruins block up the streets. The sewers break and send their
foul contents over everything . . . everything. The water pipes
burst and there are floods. The gas pipes burst, gas streams out
and explodes and causes an outbreak of fire. The electric light
goes out. You hear sound of people running together, cries for
help, shrieking and wailing, the splashing of water, the roaring
of fire. And above it all can be heard the detonations occurring
with mathematical precision. Walls fall in, whole buildings
disappear in the gaping ground. Men, women and children rush
about mad with terror among the ruins. They drown in filth, they
are burnt, blown to pieces in explosions, annihilated, exterminated.
Blood streams over the ruins and filth; gradually the shrieks for
help die down. When the last flying-machine has done its work
and turned northwards again, the bombardment is finished. In
Paris a stillness reigns, such as has never reigned there before.
" 'We can imagine, on the other hand, that the French have
carried out this same operation against Berlin, or possibly London.
Who knows what political combination the future may have in
store ? But be that as it may, it only remains to us gratefully to
dedicate ourselves to the new and glorious task now set before
us. Gentlemen, I bare my head before the marvelous and unceasing progress of mankind/ The general removed his cap, and

44

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

his voice vibrated with gratitude to the merciful Providence which
would perhaps grant that he would live to see this vision come
true; and he continued: 'In the face of this triumphant progress
which I have just described I am not overstepping the mark when
I say that we are approaching perfection/ "
In 1912 Israel Zangwill, in "The War God/' writes:
"To safeguard peace we must prepare for war"—
/ know that maxim; it was forged in hell.
This wealth of ships and guns inflames the vulgar
And makes the very war it guards against.
The God of W a r is now a man of business,
With vested interests.
So much sunk Capital, such countless callings,
The Army, Navy, Medicine, the Church—
T o bless and bury—Music, Engineering,
Red-tape Departments, Commissariats,
Stores, Transports, Ammunition, Coaling-stations,
Fortifications, Cannon-foundries, Shipyards,
Arsenals, Ranges, Drill-halls, Floating Docks,
War-loan Promoters, Military Tailors,
Camp-followers, Canteens, W a r Correspondents,
Horse-breeders, Armourers, Torpedo-builders,
Pipeclay and Medal Vendors, Big Drum Makers,
Gold Lace Embroiderers, Opticians,- Buglers,
Tent-makers, Banner-weavers, Powder-mixers,
Crutches and Cork Limb Manufacturers,
Balloonists, Mappists, Heliographers,
Inventors, Flying Men, and Diving Demons,
Beelzebub and all his hosts, who, whether
In Water, Earth, or Air, among them pocket—
When Trade is brisk—a million pounds a week!

It is said that, for a century or more after the death of Jesus,
no follower of his was enrolled in any army or took part in any
battle. This may not be literally true, but it was true in spirit.
The centurion, Maximilian, we are told, "threw down his military
belt at the head of his legion, saying: T am a Christian, therefore I cannot fight!' " ; and these words, says Harnack, became a
common formula with men who believed in a brotherhood not to
be achieved through killing. It was only / under Constantine
(A.D. 312) that the Cross was brought into the service of war.

XVII.

The Force of Arms
What shall we say to the claim that the stability of a nation
must rest on compulsion; that in the last analysis authority means
force of arms? In America, we have thought that in the free
will of a free people there lay a force of union greater than the
power of any army. We have supposed that the real force behind
our institution lay in public opinion, the collective judgment of
free men.
This is a force, we know, with which we all must reckon ;
a force that stands at the opposite pole from the force of arms,—
the force of public opinion. Is there not a fallacy somewhere
in our use of the word "force"? The "force of arms" is not a
"force"; it is a fear,—the fear of being murdered. It has no
potency among the fearless, the resolute, the desperate. It is
operative only when men consider their chances, as of sudden
death, against their devotion to the line of action, right or wrong,
against which the force of arms may be directed.
Once perhaps the force of arms may have been really physical
force. The power of muscle and of fists, may have brought some
refractory family or tribe to order. Struggle is inherent whenever
men are brought together. Nowhere do men in the large have
like interests, like purposes, like feelings. But struggle is not
force of arms, and the normal rivalries of men do not involve the
necessity of killing. The power to kill without redress and the
fear of killing are both involved in the force of arms.
And as military affairs progress we go further and further
from the idea of force. Modern war takes no account of normal
courage or personal strength. Torpedoes and lyddite recognize
no heroes. The strong are led forth to slaughter, not as abler
fighters, but as better able to bear the strain of camp or march,
as looking better in a uniform.
The end of war is exhaustion on both sides. Not exhaustion
of physical force, but of loans and taxes. When war decides, in

46

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

the last analysis, it is not force but fear which determines the
solution. And fear was never the foundation of the stability of
any nation.
If China, for example, should build up a great army, to promote internal stability, the effort would be sure to fail. A great
army may hold communities in awe, it may fill the air with war,
it may egg on the spirit of glory, it may inflame ambitions and
antipathies. But no nation can build its institutions upon it. It
is no factor in a great republic; it is no bond of union among selfrespecting men. To found a nation upon force of arms is to
build on sand. Even Germany's unity is not one of blood and iron.
It rests on the wide-spread intelligence of the German schools,
the well-planned training of her industrialism, the "wide-flung"
justice of her code of laws.
"Dominion over palm and pine" avails nothing unless
dominion has its real root in the hearts of a grateful people.
The "wide-flung battle-line" can hold nothing worth keeping
unless there grow up ties of common thought and common interest
which in time will banish all need of lines of battle.

XVIII.

The Fighting Edge
What shall we say of the dangers we run by losing our
"fighting edge"?
A military expert is reported to have declared at the Harvard
Union: "When a nation becomes large and rich and inert it is
certain of annihilation by other powers." Shades of the Goths
and Vandals! When did all this happen? When did an inert
nation become rich ? When did a rich nation ever become inert ?
There is only one way. This was the Roman way: To become
rich by plunder; to become inert by the loss of strong men, by
the loss of the great widening wedge of those who should have
been their descendants. This is the way of the armed host; and
in history, each nation dependent on force of arms has found in
it its final undoing.
Rome seized the fruits of other people's industry. Her strong
young men were sent far and wide, over the accessible world,
never to return. They left no offspring at home. Her leaders
fought each other back and forth in Rome, until, in the words of
the latest and best of her historians, "Only cowards remained, and
from their brood alone came the new generations." The Romans
conquered the world; and the Romans at home sprang from the
man who was left,—from the man whom war could not use. The
city of Rome filled up like an overflowing marsh, but her people
were not true Romans. They were sons of slaves, scullions,
peddlers, sutlers, adventurers, get-rich-quick men from the ends
of the earth. To cultivate the Roman fields, the historian tells us,
"whole tribes were taken." "Out of every hundred thousand
strong men, eighty thousand were slain; out of every hundred
thousand weaklings, ninety to ninety-five thousand were left to
survive."
Even at the best, or the worst, Rome was not rich. It was
only the few who controlled the plunder. It was only the Caesars
and the favorites of Caesars who found place on the Palatine Hill.

48

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

For the mob there was no participation. Their part was bread
and circuses.
No nation is really rich unless it grows rich evenly. No
nation grows rich evenly save by industry and trade. No nation,
rich or poor, ever grew inert through industry. The only exhaustion history has known is war exhaustion. This is expressed
in terms of waste and debt: crushing taxes on the one hand, and
reversed selection,—the survival, not of the fittest, but of the
weakest. This shows itself in loss of initiative, in over-caution
and undue patience in facing the ills of life, in corruption, in
despotism, in dependence on violence instead of reason in meeting
the national crises.
For all force of arms is a confession of weakness. It is a
confession that the cause it represents is not founded in reason,
in justice, not fixed in the hearts of the people.
"You cannot organize a pirate crew until its members drop
the use of force one against another." The weapon of force
"produces the very evils it was forged to prevent." The force of
arms as a cementing influence is the badge of political inefficiency.
The mailed fist is the dependence of the weak nations, not of the
strong. Strong men are "too self-willed and too independent to
allow any one to rule over them but themselves."
It was this thought that led Martin Luther to declare that
no League of Princes could help on the German Reformation of
religion. "God is a righteous but marvelous judge," he said.
"Sickingen's fall is a verdict of the Lord that the force of arms
must be kept far from matters of the Gospel."
There is no Orozco, nor Zapata, no Alva nor Tilly, no Goth
nor Vandal nor Moor nor Hun who can over-run our nation so
long as we thrive in the arts of peace. To be large and rich and
courteous and reasonably honest is to make all other nations our
friends and our debtors.
It is the business of a sentinel on the watch towers of the
outer gate to keep us alert to every passing shade. It is the
business of good citizens to keep their heads and to trust their
neighbors so long as they know these to be good citizens too.
"The soldier is not to be blamed for doing his work. It is the

THE FIGHTING EDGE

49

civilian who should be blamed for not adding the proper supplement." The citizen should size up the situation. It is his nation.
He pays the bills. He suffers from the waste. If you live in a
fire-proof house, no use to spend two-thirds your income on
fire insurance. And don't depend on the insurance agent to set
you right.

XIX.

The Net of the Usurer
What shall we say of the net of the usurer, which we are told
stifles all activities of Europe in war or peace?
Men have been made free by war. Why not again ? Why not
break the net in which we are confined ?
Because it will not break by war, for in war it was woven.
Mr. Cecil Chesterton (not the real Chesterton, whose name
is Gilbert) first coined this phrase, the "Net of the Usurer,"
another name for the "Unseen Empire" of finance. With a
mixture of metaphors worthy of a greater humorist, he looks to
war to tear this usurer's net, because a costly war may rip the
usurer's purse as well. That the banker may lose money does
not ease up on the banker's creditors. For old wars, we lhave
pawned our freedom; and war will not, on further borrowed
money, restore it.
Mr. Chesterton would have France fight this war of release,
and that against Germany (although the usurer mostly lives in
France), the purpose being to save Europe from the infection
of German ideas, especially "the idea that you can make a nation strong by making its people behave like cattle."
This idea may be a bad one, but it cannot be suppressed by
killing Germans or being killed by them. It is itself purely a
war idea, and more war will not cure it. Our nets were all woven
by war, not by any usurer.
More war will only draw the net tighter. If we cannot find
freedom in self-government, in peace, we cannot find it at all,
The first step toward freedom is to get out of debt. Only thus
can we "break the net of the usurer." How is this done? Not
by more wars, more waste, more corruption, more military occupation,—with their legacy of more wars, more waste, and more
corruption. By such means the net was spread in the first place.
There is but one way to break it. It is by mending our own ways,

T H E N E T OF T H E

USURER

51

by moving away from the pitfalls over which the net was spread.
It is by patience, frugality, limitation of governmental expenditures, the elimination of privilege, by the "humble and contrite
heart" in public affairs, by preparing for peace and not for war,
by stimulating s.cience, education, sanitation and industry, by national justice, economy and solvency,—methods in national administration that would bring about the desired result in the affairs of the individual. The double standard in morals of the
man and the nation—the idea that what is wrong for the man is
right for the group—this has led only to evil. Equally evil is the
double standard of economics, that what would bankrupt the man
would cover the nation with glory.
If the system by which men and races are grouped in nations
is to succeed,—and it is still on trial,—the administration of nations must follow the same laws of ethics and economics which
control the actions of men. "My country, right or wrong," is a
principle as dangerous as the braggart assertion of the "superman" that he will do whatever he pleases regardless of the laws
of man or of God. There is no such right of man or nation.
Whatever mistake either may make in matters of ethics or of
economics, brings, in its degree, its sure penalty. And "the net
of the usurer" is the prison in which nations which waste their
people's substance, in whatever way, will find themselves presently confined. The road leads through insolvency and violence.
The sole escape is to turn about and go the other way.

XX.

The Fertile Dreadnaught
What shall we say of the advocates for peace who stand at
the same time for a great navy and corresponding military expenditures ?
We shall say that we believe that they are mistaken. Without
other reason we may not doubt their sincerity. But we may question their judgment. Nothing is more important than the maintenance of peace. But the show of force does not seem a good
means to this end. Besides, it is most costly. If one-fourth of
our present expenditures were more than adequate twenty years
ago, half of the expenditures of to-day are on the wrong side of
the account.
War instruments are built for war. Their influence tends
toward its destined end. Those who make war are not appalled
by them. Reckless daredevils, these warriors, they fear nothing;
they have nothing to lose. It is the plain man who pays the
cost. And cost multiplies cost. Once started on the line of war
preparation and the expenses pile up with mathematical certainty
and with no regard to real needs. Whatever movement has money
behind it calls for more money. No nation has any system of
checking expenditure. Debt breeds debt and waste breeds waste.
That war expenditures are four times as great as twenty years ago
implies no increase of danger anywhere. It means only that four
times as many people are making a living by them. That the
taxes of the world have doubled in fifteen years rests on the fact
that twice as many people are tax-eaters.
It is a fine saying of Norman Angell, that "War is futile but
not sterile." Most wars settle nothing, accomplish nothing; but
each is descended from some other war, and each tends to become the parent of new conflicts. Just so with all schemes for
expenditure. The dreadnaught is futile enough: no returns of
good in any land can be traced back to it. But it is not sterile.
It gives birth to new dreadnaughts, at home and abroad. English dreadnaughts breed German. German dreadnaughts are
the parents of the American fleet. Our navy is the parent of the

T H E FERTILE

DREADNAUGHT

53

growing fleets of Brazil, Argentina and Japan. Each avoidable
expenditure calls for more expense. Even worthy expenditure
has the same bad habit, as the number of persons interested in
it expands. The wedge of the well-earned pension of the maimed
soldier has opened the door of something for nothing for thousands of other soldiers, the gift culminating but not ending in the
demoralizing service pension of to-day.
Forty years ago the Germans exacted from France the unheard of indemnity of a billion dollars. In fifty years, our southern states have paid about double that sum in pensions.
There is under consideration at Washington a bill which proposes to pay national money to the militia of the various states.
The sums suggested range from $45 to $360 yearly for each individual. This is for service hitherto taken as an honor, a patriotic duty, or a healthy recreation. One of the evil effects of such
a proposition (and all its effects appear to be evil) is this: that
such expense breeds more expense. It is the beginning of an attempt to create a standing army, neither soldier nor civilian,
its reason for existence being the money that is in it. As more
and more persons become financially interested, the method of
log-rolling will increase this largess from a few to many millions.
It will go the way of the pension bills. What was originally a
sacred duty of a grateful nation has become one of the scandals
of the century. The money in it demands more money. It will
be the same with the militia bill. Futile but not sterile are all our
preparations for war in a time of trebly-assured peace.
War money makes war talk. War talk perverts public opinion. It increases the possibility of war, by making war seem
easy and familiar, even inevitable. More war ships, more soldiers
do not allay this. They mean more war money, more war talk,
more expenditure.
The way to peace lies in the opposite direction. It lies in
friendly relations and in friendly commerce, in the extension of
international law, in the patient removal of possible stumbling
blocks, the loyal ignoring of real differences if such exist, and
making war never the first resort, but always the very last resort
in every real crisis of the nation.

XXI.

The Dream of Invasion
What shall we say of those in search of righting chances
who still fix their eyes on Japan?
We who know Japan as a nation of patient, lovable people,
intent on their own affairs, hopeful, sensitive, eager for the good
will of their neighbors, burdened to the utmost with the cost
of their experiences in Korea and Manchuria,—we can see no
reality in their signs and portents.
We cannot conceive of a war between Japan and the United
Stat.es. We would feel in such a condition the most intense
humiliation; but we cannot imagine it as anywhere within the
range of human possibility. If such a horror were to come to
pass we should have to imagine the following series of incidents
in our future history:
( i ) The abandonment of our unchanged tradition of national
friendliness toward Japan. Thus far, whatever may have been
done or said by individuals, our Government has preserved for
sixty years an unbroken attitude of courtesy and friendliness.
(2) That such breaches of this rule as might arise in Washington should be of such a character as to arouse an insatiable
feeling of humiliation and an uncontrollable spirit of revenge on
the part of the Japanese people. This spirit must be so strong
as to overturn the patient and conservative ministry which desires
and must desire, above almost all other things political, to retain
the good will of the United States.
(3) That this supposed outbreak should take place before the
American advisers in the Japanese Government could make their
influence felt toward mutual understanding and before the friends
of international decency in America could exert a similar influence.
(4) It would further be essential that the rulers of Japan
should be determined on national suicide in the face of this
assumed provocation. To send an armada to attack on her own
ground 6,000 miles away a nation of twenty times her wealth and

T H E DREAM OF

INVASION

55

practically out of debt, with a population half greater, would be
self-destruction.
(5) It would involve further the necessity that the cause of
war was so flagrant as to give Japan the sympathy of the civilized
world, and especially of the world of finance. This sympathy
must be deep enough to induce the bankers of London and Paris
to give to Japan outright the $1,000,000,000, more or less, necessary to equip this armada and to carry on the war. They could
not lend the money, for to Japan to-day, lending would be giving.
Japan already owes more than $1,300,000,000, and to duplicate
this debt would make her securities worthless. In Japanese affairs
to-day almost every other interest is subordinated to that of keeping her credit good. „
(6) The coast of Japan itself is no better defended than that
of California. "It would be comparatively easy for an enemy of
any strength to land" at Matsushima in order to overrun northern
Japan, to land at unprotected Kamakura to flank and starve
Tokyo, to land at Sakai to march on Osaka, and to isolate Kyoto.
In fact, no nation with a long seacoast can ever raise money
enough, no matter how grinding the taxation, to have every foot
of it protected from invasion. On the other hand, no such
invading army, in the heart of a hostile country, without a base
of supplies, could ever finally escape.
(7) As the United States must be responsible for provocation,
whatever that may be, why do we assume that she will act only
on the defensive. Is not our monstrous naval expenditure based
on the theory that we shall "meet the enemy in the middle of the
sea"? I have assumed, of course, that provocation would necessarily be on the part of the United States. It is not conceivable
that it should be otherwise. No other nation is so careless as to
civilities, tho we have not often shown real insolence. Any one
familiar with affairs in Japan must know that all her resources,
and more, are devoted to holding on to what she now has. The
occupation of Korea is a costly and perilous experiment, perhaps
necessary as a defense against Russian aggression, but nevertheless involving the nation in many dangers which unexpanded
Japan would have avoided. The lease of the railways of South
Manchuria, with the city of Dairen and Port Arthur, further

56

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

greatly extends the danger line of Japan. The United States
receives more than a third of the exports of Japan. Among
nations with stable government she is Japan's nearest neighbor
and most steadfast friend. Whatever the petty flurries on the
Pacific Coast, the small rivalries of the European laborers with
the rice field hands, the determination of the Japanese Government to cultivate friendship with us in every honorable way
cannot be shaken.
If any great insurance company of the world ever underwrites against war, a policy covering our whole Pacific Coast
could be had for half the present cost of maintaining the Presidio
of Monterey. Men sometimes speak of the "dream of universal
peace" as a most desirable but quite impossible ideality. But it
is a reality so far as it goes, and it goes farther and farther every
year. Almost any nation could attain it at once by substituting
in part a civil tongue for its reliance on army and navy. The
real obsession of the world is "the dream of universal war."
This is the noxious dream of our times.

XXII.

The Defense of the Pacific
What shall we say to the demand on the part of army experts
for the "establishment of three large mobile forces" for the
defense of the Pacific Coast: one at Seattle, one at San Fran^
cisco, and one near Los Angeles? General Leonard Wood is
quoted as saying at Berkeley recently: "We are prepared to
cope with the situation so far as the bombardment of cities and
towns is concerned, but we are not prepared to protect our
people from the landing of a hostile force beyond the reach oi
our coast artillery. The seacoast defense is useless without a
mobile army. Now, how are we to get men for this army? At
present there are approximately 130,000 to 140,000 men in the
various stations of the army service in the United States. We
have need of 450,000 more.* It is imperative that a reserve be
established, as we wish to train the citizen to defend his country
in case of war." [If this figure is correctly reported, some 50,000
of reserves or militia are included, besides the regular army of
about 82,000 men.]
Elsewhere military experts have told us that if a large
oriental army should without warning sail to our coasts, we
should be helpless, without these three great forces. Must we
take all this seriously? And must we stand the expense of all
these military visions?
It is not stated how large these mobile forces ought to be.
It is hard to fit figures to a warrior's dream. Ten thousand men
in each of the ports is an easy figure on which to calculate. That
means another twenty millions a year just for pay and board and
keep. The great national University to which Washington gave
his fortune more than a century ago, could be built for that. We
could do wonders in storing and distributing our flood waters
for an annual sum like that. And there are other expenses
totaling no one knows what. The individual cost of a soldier
averages a* out $600 a year,—more than double the cost in other

58

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

nations. But we do not begrudge this. We are willing that the
boys should be well cared for. According to the Army and Navy
Journal the total expense per man, for food, clothing and keep, is
about $600 per year. "The authorized strength of the army is
81,500. The amount of their pay, including longevity pay, is
$20,236^230. For clothing, subsistence and transportation the
total is $16,047,080. Adding this to the pay, we have for our
army a grand total of $36,283,140, which divided by 81,500 gives
$445. Adding for what are known as 'overhead charges' gives
us our $600 rate."
But for some unexplained reason, this cost is but one-fourth
of our total army expenditures per year. Our people are ready,
no doubt, to pay what is really necessary, but whatever is in
excess of this is waste or graft. The total military cost for
1910-11 is given by Arthur W. Allen as $162,357,000. Dividing
this by the number of soldiers (85,000) we have an annual cost of
$1910 per year for each. Army preparations would be futile
without soldiers. Yet it would appear that if the nation should
discharge them all the saving would be relatively small. The
balance of $113,457,000, besides interest, pensions and the time
of those who might be employed in gainful occupations, represents still a huge military establishment, almost as large as the
annual cost of the whole regular army of Great Britain
($138,800,000: 262,000 men), and as large as the combined army
expenses ($122,709,000) of Austria ($73,513,000: 396,000 men)
and Japan ($49,196,000: 225,000 men). Only in Great Britain,
Russia, Germany and France is the army so costly as in the
United States to-day, although all the principal nations have a
larger fighting force. With us it is the establishment that costs,
not the men.
What shall we say of the moral effect of these garrisons on
our coast cities and of our coast cities upon them ? However well
disposed and well controlled, every idle garrison of idle men the
world over is in its degree a standing menace to virtue, a standing
target to vice. At the best a standing army should be a school,
a school in which two or three years brings graduation, a school
in military drill if it must be, but in industrial training as well,
to fit its graduates for useful civil life. It should not be a life

THE DEFENSE OF THE PACIFIC

59

profession for men debarred from marriage. The humble cottages of "Washerwoman's Row" disturb the neatness of our army
posts, hence married soldiers are not wanted. But the choice
remains—marriage or vice,—and vice goes with barracks the
world over. Our own army officers and post surgeons have in
late years done their best to alleviate these conditions, yet the
tendencies remain still true. The secretary of war, with more
emphasis than I have dared to use, speaks of our forty-nine army
posts as "adjoined by dives and ill resorts of the vilest character."
It is these conditions, he believes, "which make the record of the
army in this respect shameful beyond that of the army of any
other civilized nation." This actual supremacy we may doubt,
for like conditions produce like results in every nation, whenever
idle men are gathered together to wait for the action that may
never come.
The purpose of this added force is to defend the Pacific Coast
from an "enemy's attacks." We ask again, What enemy? It is
plain that no such enemy exists. "The large oriental army" which
shall slip away from Asia, running the gauntlet of hundreds of
reporters, American and European, to land unsuspected at Monterey, could come from nowhere. There is no such possibility
outside of the land of dreams.
A hundred thousand men is perhaps a "large army." This
would require an Armada of more than fifty ships, sailing six
thousand miles, to land on a very unwelcome coast.
The average yearly cost of the Japanese soldiers has been
underestimated at $219 per year. Provisions come higher in
California, and this supposed landing would exhaust a good deal
of ammunition. But at the lowest estimate it would cost very
many millions in cash to equip and start this army. It could not
be done from funds in hand in any oriental nation. It could not
be borrowed in London or Paris or New York, for every yen
securable by the issue of bonds was exhausted in the war with
Russia, for which Japan has $1,325,000,000 yet to pay. Japan
has reached the limit of taxation. She can borrow no more. She
would not fight us if she could. She could not fight us if she
would. The United States still is, as she always has been, Japan's
most steadfast friend and her best customer. Japan's outside

6o

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

interests lie in Asia, all of them—in Korea and Manchuria—and
her hold on these regions is absolutely conditioned on her friendship with the United States. The coast of Japan, for that matter,
is far more vulnerable than our own. "A large army" could land
almost anywhere in Japan. But, six thousand miles from its base
of supplies, it could never get away again. No coast of any
nation could ever be ideally and perfectly protected. There is
always room for more men, more ships, more forts. If it were
perfectly defended, the cost of protection, and the presence of
these thousands on thousands of idle men would be a menace
worse than an enemy's invasion.
"The Dream of Universal War" with which some of our
military experts have become obsessed, has no foundation in any
needs of the United States. It is a natural result, perhaps, of the
existence of great armies and great navies maintained in idleness.
The leaders of these armies and navies find in their dreams a
world where soldiery is not play but action. We listen to them,
and we open our treasuries at their behest because their art is one
we do not understand. Everywhere the people's money is spent
as money was never spent before on the "great illusion,"—that of
ideal defense against imaginary dangers.

XXIII.

Pearl Harbor
What shall we say of Pearl Harbor, our new stronghold of the
sea?
We have been told that Hawaii has dangers both within and
without. As a coaling station it commands the Pacific. As a
community it is commanded by Japan. There are nearly four
Japanese to every Caucasian on the islands. This is no surprise,
for the same relation existed when their white rulers turned these
islands over to us. One military expert soberly declares that there
are 35,000 Japanese ex-soldiers on the islands, each ready to rise
at a signal from home. This we know is not true. There are not
35,000 ex-soldiers in 'Hawaii, nor any other number worth considering. If there were, it would signify nothing, as they have
neither money nor arms nor officers, nor any understanding with
the Japanese government. They are former rice-field hands, now
laborers on the sugar plantations. The mutual relations of the
many races in Hawaii are singularly amiable. Honolulu is the
cross-roads of the greatest ocean. All races meet there in the
most cosmopolitan of societies. Mutual knowledge breeds mutual
respect. The ordinary police of the most peaceable of towns
suffices for all internal defense of Honolulu. Moreover, whatever
the census may show, the people are all, of choice, American:
English, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians even.
There is no doubt of that.
But what of the other menace from without? Do not oriental nations look with envious eyes on our Gibraltar of the
Pacific? Surely, they need not worry us. What they might do
if they could, is only a matter of conjecture. What they cannot
do if they would is a matter of simple mathematics. Once in a
century a nation can fight as Japan fought in Manchuria. That
was the last time. Before the next century comes, the combined
work of commerce, civilization and finance will put an end to
international struggles. One impulse in the recent wars in

62

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

Europe has been the certainty that the close season for war is
soon coming on. Surely our fortifications about Honolulu and
Pearl Harbor would prove ample as defense were there anywhere
an enemy.
Our secretary of war, the least exacting of our military
experts, speaks of the great strategic importance of Pearl Harbor, of more value for "the protection of the entire Pacific
coast from attack than any one of the positions on that coast
now so strongly fortified. No naval enemy could make a serious effective attack upon any portion of the American Pacific
Coast unless it had first reduced the position at Oahu, threatening
its flank."
This is doubtless perfectly true; but vastly more important
is the fact that there is no such enemy, and there can be none.
The enemy's flank is already turned. It is turned by the crushing
debt of past war and by the grinding residue of present taxation.
It is turned by the friendship and justice of civilized nations, by
the interrelations of business, by the great banker's hatred for
war and waste. Magnificent as is the naval station at Pearl
Harbor, impregnable as is its Gibraltar-like defense, these islands
lie in the zone of peace. They are centres of no present struggles,
no future outbreaks of ferocity. To the student of world affairs,
their people of many races live in noble harmony, and an armed
garrison is no more needed there than in Kokomo or Kalamazoo.
Japan has earned the right to be let alone, while she works
out her own distressing problems of tax and debt and malemployment of men, all these with their necessary results in the rising
cost of living.
When the writer was in Japan not long since, an editor came
from Osaka to meet him at Nagoya to ask the cause of the rise
in the cost of living in Osaka. Why is it that the farmer about
the Inland Sea of Japan can no longer afford to eat the rice he
raises, but must sell it to buy cheaper rice, meanwhile living on
three-quarter rations? He cannot use his own crop, because he
must sell it to pay his taxes, that his nation "may keep her place
among the Great Powers of the World."
In the Japanese journal Shin Nikon, Mr. Nagai Ryutaro
presents the case of these people; an "Appeal in behalf of those

PEARL HARBOR

63

unable to appeal": "Thousands upon thousands of our compatriots/' says Ryutaro, "are on the verge of starvation. 'What
little value is set on human life V Mencius once asked King Yeh
of Liang (China), Ts there any difference between killing men
- by the sword and by means of government ? • 'None/ replied the
King. If future historians accuse modern statesmen of the
slaughter of people by maladministration, what grounds will there
be to deny the charge? I appeal on behalf of those who are
unable to appeal!"

XXIV.

Magdalena Bay
What shall we say of the Magdalena Bay incident, a pure
hoax at best, and of its treatment by the American press ?
Here is the story as told in headlines of leading newspapers
in New York:
JAPAN IN MEXICO STIRS SENATE. ULTIMATUM SENT TO
MADERO. SENATOR LODGE ASKS PRESIDENT FOR INFORMATION ON T H E JAPANESE PLAN TO PUT A BIG
COLONY ON MAGDALENA BAY. IN SECRET NOTE
A YEAR AGO GREAT BRITAIN DEMANDED
THAT U. S. STOP ACTIVITIES OF THE
MIKADO'S GOVERNMENT.
Alarmed by the plan of Japan to obtain an official foothold along Magdalena
Bay, where she will be a direct menace to the United States,
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to-day introduced a resolution calling
on the President for all information in the possession of the
Government relating to the purchase of the land in that vicinity by
the Japanese Goverment or by a Japanese Company. The resolution was adopted.
WARNING TO JAPAN ON MAGDALENA BAY. CABINET MEMBERS BELIEVE TAFT'S REPLY TO LODGE WILL END
HER SCHEMINGS. STEAMSHIP LINE AS A CLOAK.
POTENTIAL GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION
NOW KNOWN. LAND LONG OWNED BY
AMERICANS SOUGHT.
Japan's designs against U. S. to be revealed by inquiry under Lodge's
resolution. Open charge of bad faith in acquiring foothold in
Magdalena Bay based on information that Nippon government is
backing the venture. Mikado is determined to test the Monroe
doctrine in Mexico. Movements of Japs to Magdalena began
immediately after Diaz cancelled arrangement with the U. S. for
use of the place. Engineers recently prepared plans for a Japanese
city.
Our old friend, the Japanese "War Scare," as a friend of adequate
Naval increase. The Herald might be expected to be tempted to
join the chorus of the "The War Scare" which is sure to be raised

MAGDALENA

BAY

65

over the reports that the Japanese have made arrangement with the
Mexican Government for a naval base on Magdalena Bay, but as
an enemy of sham and a promoter of* good international relations
it is compelled to say bluntly that the whole matter is an attenuated
fraud, with its hair a little thinner and its beard a little whiter than
when it made its last appearance, just a trifle more than a year ago.
There is always some ulterior motive connected with the revival of
this absurd report. Those who foster it seem to imagine that it
might influence this country to intervene in Mexico. T h e theory is
that unless the United States takes and annexes Mexico the Japanese
will get such a foothold before the Panama Canal is opened that
this country will have to fight the armies of Japan just across the
Rio Grande. Not even a necessary evil. T h e last time this precious
imposition was fostered by the interests that desired intervention,
General Madero was leading a revolution against President Diaz.
Then the Japanese naval base was to be in the Bay of Todos Santos,
in Lower California. T h e yarn went clear around the world, and
was scotched and killed by the Herald, which interviewed the most
prominent statesmen of Japan. It was buried by President Taft
on March 25th, concluding with the statement, "I am most happy to
be able to reciprocate those assurances." It is not necessary to get
up a Japanese "war scare" to show the country how its interests
are being imperilled by the action of the house democrats in rejecting any battleships increase this year. T h e country knows that
unless we have an adequate navy any dream of this sort that any
coterie of adventurers might invent could come true.
New warning to the world and to Japan. President will restate our
determination to enforce Monroe doctrine. Hands off the hemisphere. Taft's reply to the Lodge resolution will thwart Magdalena bay negotiations.
Magdalena bay quest in senate. President asked to tell what he knows
of Japan's intentions. Lodge pushes inquiry. Recent reports have
caused revival of coaling station story. Denials by Mexico. Information that a steamship company first seeks a foothold. Move
thought a cloak. N o advantage in the bay for commercial vessels,
but ideal for warships.
Japs tried to buy Magdalena bay land of Yankees now holding it. American owners dickered with Orientals who wished to use fishing
concessions, found colony of Japanese laborers, and form Japanese-American steamship line. President will say in his reply to
senate resolution U. S. State department advised against sale. P r o posed scheme in which Japanese government did not appear, fell
through. This country could get land but doesn't want it, as
Mexico won't cede sovereignty. T h e strip of land is five hundred
miles long and sixteen wide.

66

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

Find evidence of Japan-Mexico deal. Commercial company seeks 2,000,000
acres on Magdalena Bay. Ideal coaling station. Site has little value
except for naval purposes—Lodge resolution goes to State Department. Navy's head sees warning in issue. "This agitation over
coaling stations and the Magdalena Bay affair would not excite so
much apprehension if the prospects were good of keeping up a
strong navy in the future."—George von L. Meyer, Secretary of the
Navy.
Magdalena Bay story "merest buncombe," says chairman Sulzer of the
Foreign Affairs Committee of the House. No foundation in fact.
Taft's -reply to the Lodge resolution will be reassuring in regard to
our relations with Japan.
Japan's premier tells the Times there is no Magdalena bay incident.
Fishing rights have been obtained by the Oriental Whaling Company of Japan. Far from Magdalena bay. Not in Lower California at all, but along 750 miles of the mainland. Others have
same rights. Senators and members of house deeply impressed by
the message. Call plot story exploded. Senator Lodge is gratified
with statement that seems to explain. Marquis Saionji's statement to the Times.
The New York Times having invited Marquis Saionji, Prime Minister of
Japan, to explain the reports that Japan was negotiating for a naval
base at Magdalena Bay, in the Mexican territory of Lower California, Marquis Saionji cabled yesterday a reply to the Japanese
Ambassador in Washington, by whom it was delivered to the
Times. Marquis Saionji says there have been no negotiations for
Magdalena Bay, but the Oriental Whaling Company of Japan
acquired fishing rights, in common with citizens and subjects of
other countries, not at Magdalena Bay, but on the mainland of
Mexico, along a strip of coast 750 miles long between the states of
Tepic and Oaxaca.
This Magdalena Bay is a hamlet on the shore of the desert
part of Lower California. Its roadstead is an excellent harbor,
well suited, no doubt, for a coaling station if Mexico had any
need of such stations. The land about it is worthless, the region
being virtually rainless. Its empty sand dunes fit it well for target
practice, although the shock of big guns has killed its shell-fish
on the bottom. On one island is a village of one hundred people,
clustered about a crab and turtle cannery owned in Los Angeles.
The foreman of the cannery and five crab-catchers are Japanese.
On another island is a brackish spring rising among the sand
dunes, the only available water for scores of miles.

MAGDALENA BAY

67

Government lands and everything else available for exploitation in Mexico has been parcelled out in concessions, these mostly
held by foreigners. The fishing concession of Lower California
is held by a Mexican resident of Los Angeles. Such capital as
is associated with him in this concession is French. An option
on the desert land concession about the Bay is held in the United
States. No attempt has been made by the Japanese government,
nor by any Japanese capitalist, syndicate or corporation to secure
anything in Lower California. One Japanese gentleman without
capital and representing nobody once went down to look at
Magdalena Bay, and that is all. Other Japanese have examined
the fishing concessions below Tepic and have abandoned the
proposition as not worth while.
What shall we say of the newspapers? Only this, perhaps:
our country has no monopoly of spurious news. Great London
journals may pervert the truth with more dignity; great German
journals may obscure it with more ponderosity; great French
journals may twist it with more vivacity. But crooked journalism
is crooked journalism the world over. There may be some choice
as to methods, but not much as to motive or result.

XXV.

The Samoan Precedent
What shall we say of our operations in Nicaragua? No one
seems to know. Our marines have fought bravely against somebody, and good men have lost their lives. The Department of
State gives no clear explanation, but it is stated in the press that
it finds a precedent in our intervention in German Samoa in the
year 1899.
It may be remembered that the natives in Apia were "doing
politics" rather warmly, but in their own fashion, when, without
orders and on their own initiative, a British and an American
warship in the harbor began to shell the town. The single
American property owner on the beach, Mr. H. J. Moors, told mt
that he supposed that the ships were firing salutes until the shells
fell about his hotel. He had asked for no intervention or protection. Afterwards marines were landed from both ships, and these,
according to the record, "fought shoulder to shoulder against a
savage foe." The "savage foe" was led by the genial and pious
and, in his degree, scholarly Mata'afa. The machine gun of the
invaders became "jammed," and some of the men were killed.
One of the "savages" showed me the road the invaders took while
Mata'afa's men were hidden in the "bush" along side. They
could have killed all the marines except for the orders of their
chief. Afterwards this matter of "armed intervention" was
brought before the king of Sweden as arbitrator, and it was
decreed that the United States and Great Britain are "responsible
for the loss caused by their military action." The decision asserted the principle that a nation "has no right to land troops in order
to preserve the property or the lives of her nationals." The
United States agreed to pay the damages assessed, at the same
time refusing to recognize the principle involved. In any event,
probably this incident would serve better as a warning than as a
precedent.

XXVI.

Japanese Immigration
What shall we say of Japanese Immigration? Only this:
There is no problem now, and if we let well enough alone there
will be no problem in the future.
Most of us in California hope to avoid a racial stratification of
any sort among our people. Least of all do we want a body of
laborers, Asiatic because they are underpaid and underpaid because they are Asiatic. Most of those in Japan who think upon
the subject do not want the rice-field hands to go where they are
not wanted, to go where their presence produces economic disturbances, or to go anywhere in such numbers that other people
judge all their countrymen by them.
For all these reasons, representatives of the two nations met
in 1907, on the "gentlemen's agreement," that no Japanese laborers should be granted passports for America, and that no legislation humiliating to Japan should be favorably considered at
Washington. This "gentlemen's agreement" has been loyally
and rigidly kept by the Japanese foreign office: too rigidly it may
be, for even students from Japan bound for American universities, the best bond of peace between the two countries, find it
increasingly hard to get their passports. The Japanese construe the word America in a broad sense, for since 1907 the emigration of laborers has been debarred from Canada and Mexico
as well as from the Pacific states and from Hawaii.
Sometime in the long future our country may be wise enough
to frame Immigration acts, which shall treat all nations of the
world alike. This problem, most difficult at the best, cannot be
settled off hand nor can it be settled now. Perhaps sometime we
may see our way to admit skilled laborers only, from any region,
and only when accompanied by their families. But no final adjustment is possible now; and all the Japanese ask for is to be
spared the humiliation involved in any scheme for the exclusion
of Asiatics as Asiatics. This is a matter of national sensitiveness

7o

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

to a highly cultivated and sensitive people; and needlessly to hurt
such a nation is to hurt ourselves. For the lines of commerce run
in grooves of international friendliness. An indirect exclusion act,
as of races not eligible for citizenship, is more humiliating than a
direct act would be. It implies that the Japanese cannot read between the lines. Exclusion from citizenship, for which discrimination no adequate cause exists, is of the nature of insult in itself.
To be shut out because they have been insulted once adds doubly
to a humiliation they have no power to resent, but which they
hope their nearest friend among the nations will not offer them.
If an exclusion act were necessary in our interest or our own
protection, it might be a painful alternative. But there is no need
for any action whatever.
Who is there who would wish to break the "gentlemen's agreement'' in order to substitute an "exclusion act" ? Not the laborers
of California who fear Japanese competition, for such exclusion
is now perfectly accomplished. To throw the matter again into
international diplomacy would end in less perfect restriction than
we have now. For restriction can be made most effective when
the Japanese foreign office itself undertakes it. The people of the
Pacific states, who fear lest they be overrun with Japanese laborers, have no need to ask for further legislation, for Japanese laborers cannot come while this "gentlemen's agreement" stands.
In the end if we keep up futile agitation, a disgusted nation
will be likely to remove all barriers, letting West meet East whereever it will, each taking its own chances.

XXVII.

The Old-Age Pension
* What shall we say of the Old-Age Pension as a wise charity of
the State ?
We shall go back to the fundamental principle of democracy.
This is equality before the law. It is the elimination of privilege
wherever found, of the rich or of the poor, all grants of something for nothing, all pay without an equivalent service. The
function of the state is to provide first for justice,—that is equality before the law—the square deal among men and interests. Its
next duty is to provide for all things needed by the people which
must be in public rather than in private hands. Schools, armies,
roads, inspection of banks, ships, corporations come under this
head, as also conservation, sanitation, and many other things as
yet imperfectly realized, which must come with time through the
state; that is, through compulsory combined effort, because no
other agency is possible.
But the state is only a plan of mutual assessment. It cannot
be kind or charitable or paternal except at our own expense. It
is just as cheap and more effective for us as citizens to be fraternal. To lean too heavily on the state means heavy assessments
on its stockholders and too heavy taxes on its people, and by this
means many states are perilously near bankruptcy. Or what is
worse, as the incidence of taxation is easily shifted by wealth to be
a burden on industry, a state reaches the condition when a few
are very rich while the mass of its people are helpless.
The wealth of our own nation does not rest on its great/
sweep of prairies, its mines or its commerce. It rests primarily
on the fact that "America means opportunity." Our nation has
not always been true to the principles of its fathers, but it has not
wholly forgotten them. Its free schools and its absence of privilege have made it possible for each of its children to make the
most of the talents with which they are born.
Its people have not been crushed by taxation, by caste, nor

7^

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

worn out by losing their strongest on the field of battle. The
young men grow up to feel that "the world is their oyster/' and
it is for them and for them alone to find means to open it. The
democracy of America has no masters save of its own creation,
and the power that made these is adequate to set them aside.
The democracy of England has the handicap of ages of privilege. Inequality before the law is the foundation of British
polity. England chooses lords and magnates and tyrants long before they are born. They belong to her system of privilege by
which cities like Westminster, Sheffield, Devonport, Arundel, were
held, virtually tax-free, by men whose ancestors received their land
as royal gifts or bought them as cow-pastures. That the rich have
special privileges, is the justification for special privilege to the
poor, all privilege being granted at the expense of industry.
The "old-age pension" has been justly compared to the free
pass homeward granted to the human wrecks who have lost their
all in the gambling rooms of Monte Carlo. It is the shilling given
to the man run over by my lord's automobile.
In a better system he would not have been run over. He would
not have lost his money in a vile resort. He would not haw
needed an outside pittance to carry him through old age.
But the facts in England remain. The best of her workers
have died in her wars, leaving a weaker stock to breed from.
These have grown up unskilled, in default of the schools that
make men strong. They have grown up in the atmosphere of the
public house, sodden with lust and beer and whiskey. They have
lost the opportunity that should be theirs, and at the end their
fellows must be taxed to feed them. The tragedy of the East
End of London is no normal part of the tragedy of Life. It is
no part of the normal America. It is no part of a nation which
has given opportunity. The flag of freedom never floated over
a nation of deadheads, be they rich or poor.
But for us in a new country, fresh, unspoiled, full of life
and hope, it is for us to hold our government to its rigid purpose,
to develop opportunity by the elimination of privilege, to lean not
on government but on ourselves, and to aid by fraternal giving
those who have fallen in the press; not to weaken by unearned
money those who are falling but who can be made to stand. The

OLD-AGE

PENSION.

73

way of the transgressor is hard and we would not make it easier
if we could; we could not if we would. To give a man a chance
to rise, is to allow him also the choice to fall.
"The old-age pension" is, so far as it goes, a confession of
failure of democracy. Except as a measure of emergency, its real
purpose in England, it has no justification in the public welfare.
The old-age pension is part of the dark shadow cast over Europe
by the growth of the gigantic delusion of "National Defense."
Clean up the social atmosphere, restore to the people what is
rightfully theirs, and they will care, rare accidents excepted, for
their own old age.

XXVIII.

Taxing the Cost of Living
The rise in cost of articles of necessity began about 1897. It
is world-wide, rather greater in high tariff countries, because of
the shelter and leverage offered by protection. In general, this
rise is about fifty per cent; the fall in the purchasing power of
gold about the same. It is enhanced and aggravated in different
countries by special conditions. Of these several have been described in the United States and others in other nations. These
elements are not causes of the rising cost of living, but modifying
circumstances. According to Sauerbeck, the "Englishman's dollar" of 1897 is now worth seventy-eight cents, the "American dollar" but seventy. Index tables of wholesale prices of many articles
leave the American dollar of 1913 as worth sixty-one cents in the
values of 1897. Of actual causes leading toward this change three
may be recognized:
1. The great increase in the world's stock of gold (from about
$7,500,000,000 to about $11,000,000,000). This increase has now
passed its climax. As the amount of gold at the best is very
small for the credit resting on it, the bonded war debt and
municipal debt of civilized countries exceeding $60,000,000,000, it
is believed that the importance of this factor is greatly exaggerated. Including bonds of private corporations, there are upwards
of $150,000,000,000 in evidences of debt in circulation in Europe.
It is, however, an element of unknown importance in determining
the value of gold as stated in terms of other products of labor and
capital. In so far as this goes, it is a cheapening of the actual
value of gold.
2. The improvement of the processes by which gold is extracted and the consequent cheapening of gold as measured in
terms of labor. The cyanide process has made it profitable to
work low grade ores and old dumps, and a new dollar obtained
from a gold mine costs in labor and capital much less than the
old dollars cost.

T A X I N G T H E COST OF L I V I N G

75

Whatever value may be assigned to this factor, its influence is
long since spent. It is not likely that the gold market will be soon
disturbed again by new discoveries of mines or by new processes.
So far as it goes, it means an actual cheapening of the value of
gold.
3. The increase of taxation the world over, due to (1) the
waste of actual war, (2) the extension of armies and navies, and
(3) the increase by one hundred to two hundred per cent of municipal and other local indebtedness of the world. "Instead of living
beyond our means, we are living beyond the means of the fourth
generation.'' These extra taxes correspond to excise duties.
They are laid more or less directly on the industries of the nations,
and their effect is to increase the selling price of products.. In
so far as this influence goes it is not a cheapening of gold, but
the pushing up, through taxation, of other values.
Roughly speaking, the taxes of the world have been doubled
since 1897. Supported by these additional taxes, millions of men
have been drawn from productive labor. In 1911 the bonded debt
of the world for past expenditures (pawn checks for wars already
fought) amounted to $37,000,000,000. The annual interest
charges on this was over $1,400,000,000. The annual naval expense of the seven most "progressive"—that is, most wasteful—
nations rose from about $250,000,000 in 1897 to $629,000,000 in
1911. The total military expenses of these same nations doubled
in this time, with a correspnding withdrawal of men from industry
to militarism. Meanwhile, municipal and other local debts everywhere are two or three times as great as in 1897. For example,
San Francisco had in 1902 a budget of $6,500,000 annually. For
1913 this budget is $15,000,000. The valuation of city property
was in 1902, $413,000,000. It is now $510,000,000. It is estimated that in 1921 the valuation will be $753,000,000, the tax
$27,000,000.
The bonded debt of British cities rose from $1,500,000,000 in
1897 to $3,800,000,000 in 1912. A similar increase is seen in Germany and France. In the United States the total of state and?
local taxes has risen from $1,090,000,000 in 1901 to $2,505,000,000 in 1911. The fact that these sums are raised by indirect
taxation makes the burden the greater. They must be paid in

76

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

the increased price of commodities,—in other words by a rising
cost of living. All taxes, however levied, constitute a confiscation
of private property for public purposes. A nation is a huge corporation which differs from other corporations in its power to
levy assessments without limit on its bondholders. The dealer
accustomed to a certain percentage of profit, adds his tax burden
to this percentage. In doing so he must lower his purchase price
or raise his selling price. What he does or can do depends on
the relative power of resistance of producer, dealer and consumer.
The stress and incidence of taxation falls on the less resistant
elements. Any one of the three groups may combine to throw off
this stress. The dealers are more often successful in this. As
production is more or less limited, the consumer is the weakest
of the three groups, and finally bears most of the burden. Some
part of the consuming group being also producers may roll the
burden back, but in any case an increase §f taxation is a burden
on the people, and they can only shift it among themselves. There
is no foreigner they can plunder to make their losses good.
As each dollar must bear the tax burden, its value is diminished. Taxation lowers the purchasing power of money. As the
purchasing power is likely to fall farther in the future, the rate
of interest rises. Bonds will be paid at their maturity in still
cheaper dollars. Hence the fall in value the world over of "giltedged bonds."
In this connection it may be noted that the price of most stable and staple commodities is fixed in London, the clearing house
of the world trade. Our exports have, in general, in New York
the London value minus the tost of handling. Imports have the
London value with the addition of the cost of handling and
the tax on imports. The value of non-exportable or perishable
goods depends on local conditions, and is subject to much greater
fluctuations. Thus potatoes are now very dear in California, and
onions are excessively cheap. But this is a local matter of supply
and demand.
I am a dealer, let us say, in Palo Alto. I allow a margin of
fifteen per cent gross profit on my dealings. I have some taxable
property and I feed my family. My taxes, direct and indirect,
amount to $500. With time my government, municipal, state and

T A X I N G T H E COST OF L I V I N G

7T

national taxes raise this tax to $1,200. I must increase my profits
by $700. I allow a margin of twenty-five per cent on my transactions. Those from whom I buy have raised their margin also;
they were obliged to do so to make both ends meet. I find that I
cannot secure a margin of twenty-five per cent—my competitors
cut under my prices. We lose money. Then we form a secret or
private combination to hold up the Palo Alto prices. Our customers, largely professors, can not increase their stipends. They
find that a salary of $4,000 in 1913 is equivalent to one of $2,500
to $2,800 in 1897. The cost of living has risen. The purchasing
power of money has fallen. It has fallen mainly because all
consumption has been over-taxed. The United States has done
her part in this; but all over the world from Osaka to Manchester,
Buenos Aires, Palo Alto and Irkutsk the same story is told with
local variations. The suffering is greater on those nearest the
bread-line. In my experience, I have found the pressure greatest in Italy and in Japan, and least in the United States, although
in the United States perhaps most fuss is made about it. Steadily
increasing taxation means steadily rising cost of living. The more
you take away from the people the less they have left, and the
higher the price they will set on what is left; and the more unpleasant it is to be poor, because the man lowest down is the man
who can not set his own prices.
In this view, the primary factor in the rise of the cost of living is the fall in the purchasing power of gold, due to the excessive and growing exactions of the governments of the world. In
other words, it is produced by the steady encroachments of the
government on the individual the world over, through the Indirect Tax and the Deferred Payment, the two instruments of tyranny in the past, now used by democracy for self-oppression.
Stated differently, the common man has too many mouths to feed,
and it takes too much of his money to feed them. The cost of
enforced idleness and malemployment, the special result of militarism, is greater even than the cost of powder, ships and guns.
The long roll of those fed by tax increment steadily grows with
the growth of the taxes that support them.
There is certainly a dangerous portent in a prosperity that
rests on taxing the future, and in the steady inflation of values,

78

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

The debtor world is growing nominally rich at the expense of
the creditor world, but a large part of its apparent wealth is due
to the inflation of prices and these in turn to administrative waste,
not to real additions in value. The financial management of the
great nations has overleaped all checks and balances. With the financial management of even the best of the "progressive nations,"
no private corporation could escape insolvency. Leroy-Beaulieu
has lately declared that the world has rarely before been so badly
governed. . Its financial affairs are "in the hands of incurable
prodigals and improvident experimenters."
And the sign and evidence of this is in the steady rise in
staple values, the steady increase in the cost of living.
Referring to the migration of people across the Rhine at
Basle, from high-taxed Germany toward freer and more prosperous Switzerland, the so-called "Pilgrims of Hunger," Professor Paolo Goldini says that "In ten years we shall all be Pilgrims of Hunger."

XXIX.

Fort Graft
What shall we say of the defense of Los Angeles ?
This fine city was until recently twenty miles from the sea,
and being unfortified was immune from attack under the laws
of war.
Reently, however, it has annexed to itself the seaport of San
Pedro and the lots and farms between. Near San Pedro and
dominating the harbor of Los Angeles is the fine large hill
called the Palos Verdes. It is reported that this hill has been
bought by the Government of the United States at a cost of,
as stated, $249,000, not as a park, for which nature finely
fitted it, but as a coast defense to be made, it is claimed, into a
second Gibraltar. About $328,000 is now asked for as a beginning, and some $2,500,000 is expected to follow.
By this means Los Angeles will lose her war immunity,—
which matters little, as there is not, never has been, and apparently can never be, an enemy on the outside which will do her
any harm. For the same reason, this fortification will certainly
be impregnable.
A leading general is quoted as saying, "Certainly Los Angeles
Harbor must be fortified, but you folks out here must get behind
it and shove. The money must come from Congress and it is
your duty to see that Congress appreciates your need. . . . The
situation is a live one, for wars are not over and never will be so
long as men are men. . . . It is not a simple proposition of placing soldiers. The problem goes way back of that, and the people
of the Coast must play the game."
It is suggested that the fortress be known as Fort Graft, in
honor of its founder.

XXX.

The Navy and Statesmanship
What shall we say of our navy and its future, its purpose
and its cost?
The American navy stands near the parting of the ways.
Shall it continue the servant of a democratic people, or shall it
develop into a special caste, unchecked as to expense, and with
no responsibility save for war?
With the single exception of the British navy, the American
navy is now the most costly on earth. It is one of the world's
most expensive institutions. It costs more each year than all the
colleges of engineering and agriculture of the world, with all the
technical, industrial, and trade schools of whatever sort—foundations of the industrial prosperity of nations.
It costs more
each year than all the universities of the world—the foundations
of all intellectual leadership and of social progress. Each year
it reaches a higher level of expense, and for this there is no visible reason, either internal or external, save the local rivalries of
Europe. The annual cost of our navy has risen from $56^000,000
a year in 1901 to $130,000,000 in 1912. In 1881 these expenses
were but $13,000,000 per year.
The main duties of our navy in the future, as in the past, are
likely to be away from the sphere of foreign war. We are outside
the reckless rivalries of European Imperialism. The United
States has known but three foreign wars. All three of these
we have ourselves brought on, and in no case has history justified
our action. While there may be crises ahead in our foreign relations, due to the greed of exploiters, or to the venality or recklessness of future diplomatists, no such danger is in sight today.
No existing nation could do us any injury comparable to the
injury to itself arising from the loss of our friendship and our
ti ade.
That the United States should have a navy goes without saying. No one wishes to destroy the navy; we would only that

THE

NAVY AND

STATESMANSHIP

81

it should be our navy,—our contribution towards the international
police, towards good order and safety on the sea.
We have been proud of the fact that our officers have been
American citizens first, and afterwards, if need be, brave fighters;
that they have never constituted a warrior caste, nor have they
Jitood for war for war's sake. We have rejoiced that their training was that of first-class engineers and skillful navigators, with
the culture of the Academy and the refinement gained by wide
experience in travel. We have contrasted this with the warriorcaste of Europe, scornful of the common man and his interests,
hand in glove with his exploiters, the great agent of imperial
waste, and eager always for war—since war is their sole business
and in war is glory and opportunity.
If the navy is to be the servant of the people, it must find
the reasons for its acts and for its cost in the needs of the people.
That two nations of Europe are running a neck-to-neck Marathon race, urged on, by war-scares and by class-interests, towards
swift ruin by war or slow ruin by bankruptcy, is no reason why
we should "speed up" to join them. We should rather use
every influence towards "slowing the pace" and softening the
friction. The insolvency impending is not that of lords, bankers,
traders and war syndicates—those who thrive on the nation's
waste. It is that of the common folk, who pay the taxes, and on
whom the final weight of empire falls. The present condition
~ in England and Germany is a world-wide calamity in itself.
There is but one greater in sight: that is, that these nations
should turn their armaments on each other. For each new
dreadnaught increases the danger of collision. The crash would
take place at any moment were it not for the restraints of bankers,
of trade, of labor, and of civilization-—which is another word for
common decency. The cohesive force of intenationalism is very
great, but it is strained as it has rarely been strained before; and
the responsibility for the strain rests with the war-caste and warsyndicates of England and Germany.
The size of a navy is no index of a nation's power. A batt]eship is not an agent of peace. Like a revolver, it is built for
killing. To say that "battleships are cheaper than battles" invites the epigram, equally true,' that "revolvers are cheaper than
tombstones."

82

WHAT SHALL WE SAY?

What our navy should be is no question of naval strategy.
It is a matter for the decision of the highest statesmanship. And
<unce this is a civilian country, made up of civilian people, its
statesmanship must be civilian statesmanship. Inside the navy,
expert opinion ought to rule, probably to a greater extent than
now; but the relation of the navy to other nations constitutes a
matter mainly outside of the range of naval judgment.
By the present struggle for or against two dreadnaughts a
year, or one or four dreadnaughts, we shall get nowhere. To
continue or to add to our present unprecedented expense will sooner or later bring violent reaction. Extravagance and reaction are
not good business.
We should hot go on building great floating fortresses, because we have begun in that way, nor because England builds or
Germany builds, nor because we may fall to third place or to
tenth place in the rush if we do not build. We should do simply
what is needful, wise, and just. Whatever is more than that
is waste—and waste is the older name for graft.
The way to a solution of these matters lies, as I believe, in
the constitution of a high commission of civilian statesmen to
which the whole policy of army and navy development should
be referred. This commission should be composed for the most
part of men holding no political or military office.
Such a commission might outline the duties and needs ot
''national defense," and of national and international police service, so as to bring good citizens into agreement, and thus to lay
the foundations for wise and stable policy.
I believe that we should build no more warships until our
people can have such a statesman's survey of the situation. This
should include consideration of the resources and purposes of
our sister nations; the menace, if any, involved in these purposes ;
and the methods of removal of possible causes of friction without
the suggestion of an appeal to arms. Wars do not come by accident, nor are they dispensations of an uncontrollable Providence. War is world sickness. It is brought on by human blundering, and it is quite as amenable to sanitation as any other
form of human disorder.