if the people feel that the war is a necessary or a just one. But even then its effects upon the political as well as the moral sense are confusing. When the fortunes of war are unfavorable, almost everything that can restore them will be called legitimate, whether it be in harmony with sound principle or not. When the fortunes of war are favorable, the glory of victory goes far to justify, or at least to excuse, whatever may have been done to achieve that victory, or whatever may be done to secure or increase its fruits.

History shows that military glory is the most unwholesome food that democracies can feed upon. War withdraws, more than anything else, the popular attention from those problems and interests which are, in the long run, of the greatest consequence. It produces a strange moral and political color-blindness. It creates false ideals of patriotism and civic virtue.

Nobody is inclined to underestimate the value of military valor. But compared with military valor, we are apt to underestimate the value of other kinds of valor, which are equally great and no less, sometimes even more, useful to the community. I do not refer only to such heroism as that of the fireman, or the member of the life-saving service on the coast, who rescues human beings from the flames or from the watery grave at the most desperate risk of his own life, and whose deeds are all the more heroic as they are not inspired by the enthusiasm of battle, and pale into insignificance by the side of any act of bravery done in killing enemies in the field. I speak also of that moral courage more important in a democracy, which defies the popular outcry in maintaining what it believes right, and in opposing what it thinks wrong.

Blood spilled for it on the battlefield is often taken to sanctify and to entitle to popular support any cause, however questionable. It is called treason to denounce such a cause, be it ever so bad. It is called patriotism to support it, however strongly conscience may revolt against it. Take for instance the man who honestly believes our war against the

Filipinos to be unjust. If that man, faithfully obeying the voice of his conscience, frankly denounces that war, and thereby risks the public station he may occupy, or the friendship of his neighbors, and resolutely meets the clamor vilifying him as a craven recreant and an enemy to the republic, he is, morally, surely no less a hero than the soldier who at the word of command and in the excitement of battle, rushes against a hostile battery. You can no doubt find in our country an abundance of men who would stand bravely under a hailstorm of bullets. But many of them, if their consciences condemned the Filipino war ever so severely, would be loath to face the charge of want of patriotism assailing everybody who opposes it. This is no new story. War makes military heroes, but it makes also civic cowards. No wonder that war has always proved so dangerous to the vitality of democracies; for a democracy needs to keep it alive above all things the civic virtues, which war so easily demoralizes.

You will have observed that I have treated the matter of militarism in the United States in intimate connection with our warlike enterprises, as if they were substantially the same thing. I have done so purposely. As I endeavored to set forth, the development of militarism in European states can be explained on the theory that each power may think the largest possible armaments necessary for the protection of its safety among its neighbors, and for the preservation of peace. With us such a motive cannot exist. Not needing large armaments for our safety-for this republic, if it maintained its old traditional policy, would be perfectly safe without them-we can need them only in the service of warlike adventure undertaken at our own pleasure, for whatever purpose. And here I may remark, by the way, that in my opinion, although such a course of warlike adventure may have begun with a desire to liberate and civilize certain foreign populations, it will be likely to develop itself, unless soon checked, into a downright and reckless policy of conquest with all the "criminal aggression" and savagery

such a policy implies. At any rate, that policy of warlike adventure and militarism will, with us, go together as essentially identical. Without the policy of warlike adventure large standing armaments would, with us, have no excuse and would not be tolerated. If we continue that policy, militarism with its characteristic evils will be inevitable. If we wish to escape those evils and to protect this democracy against their dangerous effects, the policy of warlike adventure must be given up, for the two things are inseparable.

I have referred to the current events of the day only by way of illustration, without giving full voice to the feelings which they stir up in my heart, and the utterance of which might be somewhat warmer than what I have said. My theme being the relation of militarism to democracy in general, and to this great American democracy in particular, I may be permitted to express, in conclusion, my views of what our policy as a democracy should be in order to keep the vitality of the democratic republic unimpaired.

We should, in the first place, restrict our standing armaments to the narrowest practicable limits; and those limits will be very narrow, if this democracy does not suffer itself to be carried away by the ambition of doing things which, as history has amply shown, a democracy cannot do without seriously endangering its vital principles and institutions. There is no doubt that a regular standing army is a more efficient fighting machine, especially at the beginning of a war, than citizen soldiery. But our experience has been that, in the peculiar position we occupy among the nations of the world, we need not have any war unless, without any compelling necessity, we choose to have it. It would be most unwise to shape our whole policy with a view to the constant imminence of war, there being no such imminence, unless we ourselves choose to create it. We should have as our main armed force, and as the natural armed force of a democratic republic, the citizen soldiery to be called out for specific purposes in extraordinary emergencies, the efficiency of that

citizen soldiery to be increased by the training of men to serve as officers, and by the organization of staff corps, upon a plan similar to that adopted in Switzerland. We should have a navy strong enough to do our share in the police of the seas, but not a navy rivaling those of the great naval powers, for, as our history has conclusively taught us, we shall not need it if we keep out of quarrels which do not concern us, and cultivate peace and good will with other nations-a disposition which the rest of the world will be glad to reciprocate. In this way we shall avoid the burdens and evil influences of militarism, and give even our pension roll at last a chance to decrease.

Following a policy essentially different from this we may have our fill of military glory and conquest, but with them, other things which in the course of time will make the American people ruefully remember how free and great and happy they once were with less military glory and with no outlying dominions and subject populations.