e we are backing towards
disaster.

Sec. 3

In the present armament competition there are certain considerations
that appear to be almost universally overlooked, and which tend to
modify our views profoundly of what should be done. Ultimately they will
affect our entire expenditure upon war preparation.

Expenditure upon preparation for war falls, roughly, into two classes:
there is expenditure upon things that have a diminishing value, things
that grow old-fashioned and wear out, such as fortifications, ships,
guns, and ammunition, and expenditure upon things that have a permanent
and even growing value, such as organised technical research, military
and naval experiment, and the education and increase of a highly trained
class of war experts.

I want to suggest that we are spending too much money in the former and
not enough in the latter direction We are buying enormous quantities of
stuff that will be old iron in twenty years' time, and we are starving
ourselves of that which cannot be bought or made in a hurry, and upon
which the strength of nations ultimately rests altogether; we are
failing to get and maintain a sufficiency of highly educated and
developed men inspired by a tradition of service and efficiency.

No doubt we must be armed to-day, but every penny we divert from
men-making and knowledge-making to armament beyond the margin of bare
safety is a sacrifice of the future to the present. Every penny we
divert from national wealth-making to national weapons means so much
less in resources, so much more strain in the years ahead. But a great
system of laboratories and experimental stations, a systematic,
industrious increase of men of the officer-aviator type, of the
research student type, of the engineer type, of the naval-officer type,
of the skilled sergeant-instructor type, a methodical development of a
common sentiment and a common zeal among such a body of men, is an added
strength that grows greater from the moment you call it into being. In
our schools and military and naval colleges lies the proper field for
expenditure upon preparation for our ultimate triumph in war. All other
war preparation is temporary but that.

This would be obvious in any case, but what makes insistence upon it
peculiarly urgent is the manifestly temporary nature of the present
European situation and the fact that within quite a small number of
years our war front will be turned in a direction quite other than that