OCR Text |
Show PEACE. The spectacle of Christian nations taxing themselves them-selves to the point of exhaustion in their efforts to make themselves impregnable is one which would be amusing if it were not so filled with tragedy. Each year we have a peace conference and each year the appropriations of the leading commercial nations for battleships and coast defenses are increased in-creased until now a protest has been sounded. The argument that a great navy is the surest guarantee guaran-tee of peace has been questioned by the delegates to the latest peace conference that at Mohonk. - V. and President Taft has been appealed to to take the initiative in calling an international conference con-ference to work for international disarmament. Certainly the peculiar position of the United States, with thousands of miles of ocean between our sbis and any nation which might contemplate contem-plate an attack, would give such an appeal from our president a prestige which that of no other presiding ruler could hope to have. The motive behind such an appeal would probably be somewhat some-what selfish, but it would be a big, broad selfishness self-ishness which had back of it the welfare of the whole world rather than a desire to promote the material interests of the United States to the detriment of other nations. It certainly is asking too much of the people of earth to produce a billion dollars a year more than they need just to protect the people from each other. If this load were removed from the shoulders shoul-ders of the producers, perhaps there would be more joy in the world, albeit less national glory. But that it will be removed some day there is no reason to doubt. The cost of preparation for war is so great and is increasing so rapidly that ere long the last straw will be placed upon the camel's back and it will break. The people of the world cannot afford to go armed ready for conflict, and it will be discovered unto the makers of laws and rulers of all lands before many years roll by. The moral side of the question will win by the addition addi-tion of the commercial side, and battleships will become obsolete, and no new ones will be built. |