e able to sustain a population of more than
a very few millions.--From an Article by "A Well-known
Diplomatist" in _The Throne_, June 12, 1912.

These are but samples; and this sort of thing is going on in England and
Germany alike. And when one protests that it is wicked rubbish born of
funk and ignorance, that whatever happens in war this does not happen,
and that it is based on false economics and grows into utterly false
conceptions of international relationship, one is shouted down as an
anti-armament man and an enemy of his country.

Well, if that view is persisted in, if in reality it is necessary for a
people to have lies and nonsense told to them in order to induce them to
defend themselves, some will be apt to decide that they are not worth
defending. Or rather will they decide that this phase of the
pro-armament campaign--which is not so much a campaign in favour of
armament as one against education and understanding--will end in turning
us into a nation either of poltroons or of bullies and aggressors, and
that since life is a matter of the choice of risks it is wiser and more
courageous to choose the less evil. A nation may be defeated and still
live in the esteem of men--and in its own. No civilized man esteems a
nation of Bashi-Bazouks or Prussian Junkers. Of the two risks
involved--the risk of attack arising from a possible superiority of
armament on the part of a rival, and the risk of drifting into conflict
because, concentrating all our energies on the mere instrument of
combat, we have taken no adequate trouble to understand the facts of
this case--it is at least an arguable proposition that the second risk
is the greater. And I am prompted to this expression of opinion without
surrendering one iota of a lifelong and passionate belief that a nation
attacked should defend itself to the last penny and to the last man.

And you think that this idea that the nations--ours amongst them--may
drift into futile war from sheer panic and funk arising out of the
terror inspired by phantoms born of ignorance, is merely the idea of
Pacifist cranks?

The following, referring to the "precautionary measures" (_i.e._,
mobilization of armies) taken by the various Powers, is from a leading
article of the _Times_:--

"Precautions" are understandable, but the remark of our Berlin
Correspondent that they may produce an untenable position from
which retreat must be humiliating is applicable in