Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1906-12-30
HOT AIR WARRIORS ACTIVE
Again They Are Planning, for Exer-
else, One of Those Wars that
Never Happen.

They are at It again, Those profoundly
wise experts who have the war map of the
future plotted out in their imaginations
conclude that nothing can save the United
States from war with Japan-some say
within twenty-five years and others within
five years. Among European military men,
1t is said. this war is being freely discussed
They foresee even the course of the strug-
gle. Japan would at once occupy the
Philippines, and thus compel the United
States to conduct campaigns across the
wide ocean under immense disadvantages.
The sorry plight of America may be al
ready a source of enjoyment in European
capitals.
The experts who predict future wars,
however, are old acquaintance. Their
military records as forecasters throw all
the village weather prophets into the deep,
deep shade. It is true that they predicted
every war that ever happened But i'm
agine, If you can, the number of wars
they predicted that never did happen. The
year does not pass in which they do not
have some nation preparing to let loose
the war dogs. No little unpleasantness can
arise anywhere under the blue skies that
they do not Immediately set the drums to
beating. Did you hear the bugle sound?
Well, a Russian was seen sketching south
of Khyber pass another German family
has landed in Brazil, Frenchman was
seen in Alsace to make faces at picture
of the kaiser, an Italian subject was
lynched in Louisiana, a German trader sold
the first brass earrings to the sultan Of
Timbuctoo. A great international crisis
turks In each of those putative Incidents
each 50 menacing to the peace OF the
world. The war forecasters are kept very
busy.
They have been hot on our trail for a
number of years, and, since we began to
build navy second to one or none We can
not much complain. Not long ago, our war
with Germany was apparently to break out
sometime between u and p. m. You heard
that Germany was going to annex Brazil,
or set up a coal heap somewhere on a West
Indian reef. That meant war! The Repub-
lican really was obliged to show that the
United States navy was more than equal
| to the terrible emergency, in order to quiet
the fears of some of it's readers. But where
| is that war with Germany now? Even the
! Hottentots in South Africa are more than
Germany can masticate in oversee war
fare. The kaiser has just dissolved the
Reichstag to save the national honor
from the grim catastrophe Of surrender to
naked savages in a desert alongshore.
| Americans must expect that the war
prophets will always be with them, both
| abroad and at home. A fight, a scrap a
| collision in which someone gets hurt, must
| necessarily be show in which the melo-
dramatic taste of mankind finds a certain
creepy satisfaction. Every little spark on
the horizon, consequently, has the posi-
bilities of a connagration to people Of this
temperament or to the professional gentle
men whose business 1t is to study war as a
! fine art. According to the logic of their
! calling, a mere school controversy, or a
display of race antagonism in the corner
| of a country, signifies that eventually two
great nations must resort to the explosive
J argument of shrapnel. There is no class of
| people who count common sense and self
control SO low in the valuation of the ma
TONS mental outfit as the sleepless and in
satiate forecasters of war.
| The war with Japan will join the last
| war with Germany, the war with England
before that the war with Italy before that
| the war with Chile before that, and a long
string of wars stretching back a century,
that never occurred. Here's a toast to the
wars that never took placel Every one
was predicted, but national common sense
fattened them out before the fuse was
| lighted. They represent a forgotten ma
| tional achievement, an achievement that
will grow into ever widening amplitudes of
solid splendor as the future wars that
will never occur are added unto them
Springfield Republican.