Evening star., 1915-07-22

!
stand helpless and naked before the
| world. we shall excite only contempt
| and derision if and when disaster ulti-
| mately overwhelms us.
Excuse for Unpreparedness.
! Preparedness against war does not
| invariably avert war, any more than a
fire department in city will invaria- :
! bly, avert fire; and there are well mean
| ing. foolish people who point out this
| fact Offering an excuse for unpre-
paredness. 1t would be just as sensi-
BILE if. after the Chicago fire, Chicago
had announced that it would abolish
its fire department as for our people
to take the same view as regards mlh-
tary preparedness. Some years ago
was looking over some very old news
papers cotemporaneous with the early
, establishment of paid fire departments
in this country and to my amusement
| came across Il letter which argued
against a paid fire department upon the
ground that the nowledge of its eX-
istence would tend to make household
erS careless and therefore Wouid GIL
courage fires.
Greece was not prepared for war
when she went to war with lufkey d
score of years ago. But thus 1act ulo
not stop the war. 1t merely naae tne
war unsuccessful for Greece. emma
was not prepared for war with Japan
twenty-odd years ago. nor for war win
the allies who marched to feklnS III
teen years ago.
"But the clearest teaching is con-
veved in the experience of emma ana
of Belgium during the last year ~
regards Belgium the comparison shouia
he made between 1T ana SWllzellaiiu'
The territory of Switzerland. ike tne
territory of Belgium, lay between 'ne
great combatants. one offered as ad-
vantageous 4 path OF entry 10 ttiose
combatants as the other a century
ago. for instance, when s"lt|ei ianu
was utterly unprepared LOT wal, tiie
Napoleonic armies used 1t as Il hieh-
wav in marching against the Austrians
and South Germans.
How Swiss Escaped Invasion.
absolutely the same fate would
have been theirs now save for the vital
fact that in the century Intervening
the Swiss people. having learned the
lesson. had prepared in advance ana
were thoroughly competent to defend
themselves They had first-class
citizens army of about one-tenth the
size of their whole population rms
army was instantly 'mobllIZed ana
thrown on the frontiers, and in conse-
quence Switzerland's territorial IN
tegrity was respected
But Belgium, alas. had not learned
learned For eighty years Belgium had
been at peace and had achieved an
extraordinary measure of industrial
prosperity. Her people had done funda-
mentally what ours have done. For
many years they declined to prepare
to defend themselves at all. 1t was
confidently asserted that the days of
great wars had passed, and that any
how Belgium was absolutely lnoffen-
sive so that nobody would invade her,
a nd hat threat
ened with invasion the opinion of the
civilized world would be sufficient TO
prevent the carrying out of the threat.
and besides. it was pointed out there
were treaties absolutely guaranteeing
Belgium against invasion, and further
more. it was explained that The Hague
conventions-which we ourselves sign
ed but which we Immediately treated
as scraps of paper when the demand
was made to show that our signatures
meant something-made the whole
world guarantors of Belgium terri
torial integrity.
"Curiously enough, it was the dis
tinctly workingmen's party which
finally became the most considerable
factor in insisting that a beginning
should be made in preparing for de-
fense. The beginning was made. But
it was only a beginning, and war over
whelmed poor Belgium before she had
more than. barely entered on the path
that Switzerland had so wisely trod.
China's Case Is Quoted.
China offers an even more perfect
parallel to the condition to which in
practice the doctrines of the ultra
pacificists would lead us. Fifty years
ago Japan and China occupied substan-
TALLY the same positions as regards
the world at large. Japan now stands
abreast of the leading civilized nations
of the world, her progress having been
on the whole more remarkable than
that of any other nation known to his
tory. This is not merely due to her
development of fighting efficiency for
the history of Turkey has shown that
mere fighting efficiency by itself will
not save a nation from ruin. But it is
no less true that without fighting eff
cheney, all other national efficiency
amounts to Is house built on the sand.
Japan's progress would have been abb
solutely impossible if it had not in
duced progress in fighting efficiency
exactly as in Industrial and social eff
cheney.
China, on the other hand had for
generations been trained to regard
peace as the most desirable of all aims,
and to look down upon war and SOL
diers. She has acted on the theory that
the worst peace was better than the
best war and therefore she has suf
fered all the evils of the worst war and
man took the view that China was too
proud TO fight, and in practice made