reasonable claims, and nations
must make common cause against them. I see no reason why all this
should not apply to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look
forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as
between civilized peoples.

All these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist
party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be
permanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized
preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently
successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the
more or less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting we
must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which
answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We
must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which
the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the
enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of
private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon
which states are built--unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions
against commonwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite
attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded
enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood.

The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the
martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war,
are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and ambition
in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more
general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is no
reason for supposing them to be its last form. Men now are proud of
belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down
their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off
subjection. But who can be sure that _other aspects of one's country_
may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be
regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame? Why
should men not some day feel that it is worth a blood-tax to belong to
a collectivity superior in _any_ ideal respect? Why should they not
blush with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in
any way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this
civic passion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark till the
who