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Show COMMON SENSE AT . BOTTOM OF PACIFICISM Pacificists, in common with most humanitarians are ashamed that, after nineteen centuries of Christian Christ-ian civilization, the world should be watching the greatest "war game", in history, m which the killing of innocent human begins is reduced to "a scientific proposition," pro-position," and they are working and praying that our Nation may never be involved in such a cruel conflict. They dissent absolutely from the famous dictum of Von Moltke that "prcpetual peace is a dream, and not even a beatitude into "Blessed are the warm akers." They do not deny the need of honor to the brave men who go fearlessly to death for a cause they believe just, they recognize a real though prcverted idealism even in the armies of nations whose rulers have put them on the wrong side in the present conflict, and they are not unaware that war may purify a nation's life, or rather rath-er what is left of its life; but they think of how trngicalljr rmncces- savy it all is, and the ghost of the much proclaimed "armed peace" rises to haunt them. They remember re-member that every increase in European armaments was carried through as a "defensive" measure. mea-sure. As Count von Bernstroff stated in an address in New York in 3910, "our armaments are in, tended to preserve peace for our own people." This was doubtless an entirely sincere statement, just as the advocates of preparedness believe that a much larger American Ameri-can navy would be used right? The experience of Europe seems to prove that it is almost impossible to develop a great machine conducted con-ducted by a highly trained, intensely inten-sely patriotic and professionally ambitions group of men without running the risk of picking unnecessary un-necessary quarrels with other nations. |