our
intellectual activities have developed during the last generation or
two, but something that "comes upon us" like the rain or the earthquake,
and against which we can only protect ourselves by one thing: more arms,
a greater readiness to fight.

In effect the anti-Educationalists say this: "What, as practical men, we
have to do, is to be stronger than our enemy; the rest is theory and
does not matter."

Well the inevitable outcome of such an attitude is catastrophe.

I have said elsewhere that in this matter it seems fatally easy to
secure either one of two kinds of action: that of the "practical man"
who limits his energies to securing a policy which will perfect the
machinery of war and disregard anything else; or that of the idealist,
who, persuaded of the brutality or immorality of war, is apt to show a
certain indifference concerning self-defence. What is needed is the type
of activity which will include both halves of the problem: provision for
education, for a Political Reformation in this matter, _as well as_ such
means of defence as will meantime counterbalance the existing impulse
to aggression. To concentrate on either half to the exclusion of the
other half is to render the whole problem insoluble.

What must inevitably happen if the nations take the line of the
"practical man," and limit their energies simply and purely to piling up
armaments?

A critic once put to me what he evidently deemed a poser: "Do you urge
that we shall be stronger than our enemy, or weaker?"

To which I replied: "The last time that question was asked me was in
Berlin, by Germans. What would you have had me reply to those
Germans?"--a reply which, of course, meant this: In attempting to find
the solution of this question in terms of one party, you are attempting
the impossible. The outcome will be war, and war would not settle it. It
would all have to be begun over again.

The Navy League catechism says: "Defence consists in being so strong
that it will be dangerous for your enemy to attack you."[11] Mr.
Churchill, however, goes farther than the Navy League, and says: "The
way to make war impossible is to make victory certain."

The Navy League definition is at least possible of application to
practical politics, because rough equality of the two parties would make
attack by either dangerous. Mr. Churchill's principle is impossible of
application to practical politics, because it could only be applied by
one party, and