ars, we regret that we shall be
unable to sell you wool and copper. We regret that we shall be unable
to buy anything from you. But, if you reduce this budget by half, we
are willing to give you one million metric quintals of wool and
125,000 tons of copper. Likewise, we are disposed to make purchases
in your market totalling one billion dollars. If your military and
naval budgets fall to nothing, we are willing to go much farther and
buy and sell everything with you in unlimited quantities." Suppose the
Allies make these proposals to Germany. Suppose they are put into
effect. Will they not be a better guarantee of universal peace than
all the Conventions and all the courts of arbitration in the world?

Then let no one disturb the peace of the world for his selfish
purposes. Left to themselves, the little Balkan States and Slav States
will not start great, long wars, just as the lone robber posted at the
edge of a woods will not endanger a province's communications for very
long. The formidable thing is the great country that is arranged and
planned along the lines of war, where everything is organized with a
view to war; just as the formidable thing for a city is the small band
of malefactors who are able to terrify half the citizens by the use of
highly perfected arms.

There will be no lasting peace until the most terrible war machine
the world has ever known shall have been destroyed, reduced to an
impotent state of non-existence. Ideals will not destroy this machine,
but practical means and getting down to the facts of the case will do
so. Pasteur did not overcome hydrophobia by writing treatises and
dissertations. He met poison with poison, he injected the healing
serum into the veins of the maddened dog. Now Germany is the mad dog,
and Germany must be inoculated. After that there will be time to pass
hygienic measures for the regiment of the entire world. Today Germany
must be killed or cured. Germany is the cancer that must be cut out,
lest it eat up the world.

It has been a matter of life and death for Liberty and Civilization.
Both of them have been sick unto death. Clutched foully by the throat,
they have heard their own death rattle; they themselves thought they
might not survive. Now they stand on their feet, so weak, so pale, and
so feeble that their life might still be despaired of. If we do not
obtain definite guarantees against the monster who has barely failed
to strangle them and to force the enti