The Topeka state journal., 1905-10-08
The Whole World Wants to
Avoid 1t.
Russia and Germany Nations
Whose Aims May Bring War.
No Danger From Japan If She
Be Let Alone.
WANT TO EXPLOIT ASIA
Russia Forced to Strive in Sheer
Self-Defense.
Germany's Dream Of Duplicat-
ing Dominion of a Caesar.
WANT TO EXPLOIT ASIA
By KENNETH MAITLAND.

0NhS les il tRS &aFls aasss Of the Gods
ours, there Will be peace
~ peace on every paral-
lei peace on every
meridian. But the fields of that
peace lie beyond the fields of
great battles still to come. Before the
dnal arbitrament of love shall be-. men
viii call, perhaps many times, on the
ancient arbitrament of the sword.
With the far-reaching costs of the
war that is past beginning to clamOr
for payment at the doors of every na-
ton of the world, big and little, there
Is none just now that wishes war, Or,
indeed, views it with anything except
great fear. If the next war comes
soon, it viii not come because any ma
ton would have it.
Nations, like their individual units
learn sharper lessons from experience
than from reasoning. Reasoning told
US all that modern war would be
fearful thing economically and NOR
ally; but until Modern War actually
made its own CHASTITY demonstration
the nations were only accidentally
aVerse to war. The fire brand" fer
which Europe is proverbially ready
would not have met the earnest Efforts
to extinguish it that it viii meet now.
BURSTING ITS FETTERS.
But the Old WOrld-aud that means
ali the white mans world, America as
ing to burst fetters of geography and
politics. Its house, vast as it is, and
still containing vast empty spaces as it
does is too small for it. 1t can no
more help growing than boy can;
and short of annihilatiOn there is
nothing congresses, arbitra-
uOnss alliances or mutual good will
that can stop that growth any more
than boy can be stopped by any
method short of killing him.
The nation that does NOT craf T0or7 fe
doomed, and they all know it.
Where lies the future? In the pur-
pie east. in the sea discovered by Bal
boa in the lands of Marco Polo, in
the realms Of Sinbad the Arab
The future lies there not merely be-
cause there is wealth still ungathered.
dominion still untouched, empire still
unmade. 1t lies there because there
Is no elsewhere.
And so even now. before the battle
delds of Manchuria have ceased 10
smoulder, the great and real struggle
is on In the open as it has been for
centuries in the dark and in secrecy
the nght for the hope of the white
world. the Pacific ocean and its gol-
den lands and that means not only
Asia and Polynesia, but Africa as well.
Tor the gate to Africa's treasure house
is in the east.
That fight is and will be war=grinl
bitter, remorseless war; whether it be
'fought out with dollars and polite al
lance Dacts and commercial treaties
or with the more plainly read utter
ances of artillery. How soon it NAV
pass from one form Of war to the
other, none may say.
The fire Of battle may leap forth at
q breath that fans some obscure sna7.l-
somewhere in an unmatched quarter
That is the present fear of every gov
ernment on earth; for the great game
is only begun and none is ready to
grasp for the stakes by violence until
the hazard shall have been bettar
weighed.
But it is a very present danger
much more so than it has been in
many decades: for the settlement Of