ast
forty years has bombarded the coast lines, battered the ports, and
landed raiding parties throughout Asia and Africa, to say nothing of
the well nigh continuous campaigns of annexation of the British army
in India, Burma, South Africa, Egypt, Tibet, or Afghanistan, within
the same period.

As to the quality of the materialism of the great Continental Powers
there is nothing to prefer in the French and Russian systems to
the German system. Each involved enormous sacrifices on the people
sustaining it. We are asked, however, to believe that French
militarism is maintained by a "democracy" and German militarism by an
"autocracy." Without appealing to the captive Queen of Madagascar for
an opinion on the authenticity of French democracy we may confine the
question to the elected representatives of the two peoples.

In both cases the war credits are voted by the legislative bodies
responsible to French and German opinion. The elected representatives
of Germany are as much the spokesman of the nation as those of France,
and the German Reichstag has sanctioned every successive levy for
the support of German armaments. As to Russian militarism, it may be
presumed no one will go quite so far as to assert that the Russian
Duma is more truly representative of the Russian people than the
Parliament of the Federated peoples of Germany at Berlin.

The machines being then approximately the same machines, we must seek
the justification for them in the uses to which they have been put.

For what does France, for what does Russia maintain a great army? Why
does Germany call so many youthful Germans to the colours? On what
grounds of moral sanction does Great Britain maintain a navy, whose
cost far exceeds all the burdens of German militarism?

Russia stretches across the entire area of Central Asia and comprises
much of the greater part of Europe as well. In its own territory, it
is unassailable, and never has been invaded with success. No power
can plunder or weaken Russia as long as she remains within her own
borders. Of all the great powers in Europe she is the one that after
England has the least need of a great army.

She cannot be assailed with success at home, and she has no need
to leave her own territories in search of lands to colonize. Her
population, secure in its own vast numbers and vast resources has, for
all future needs of expansion the continent of Siberia into which to
overflow. Russia cannot be threatened w