Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1916-04-28
Preparedness From the Thinker
BY DIR. FRANK CRANE.


N LWAYS the one to whom the people should 60
~ for council in a. crisis is the thinker, not the
doer, not the talker.
The United States is now in crisis. The vast
and complicated issues of the in Europe are
upon us, full of unknown menace perhaps also OF
opportunity.
We are flooded with advice from business men,
bankers trust magnates. engineers, army othcers-
doors all. Their views are unsafe. They lack per-
spectve. They too close to the days duty, and
cannot grasp the counsel of years, the deep Sig
nifcance of historic forces.
Congress is full of plans But congressman are
takers. Their eye is too much upon immediate
eXpediency.
The very biggest idea ABOUT preparedness we will
find in the study of the college professor, the re-
mote student the psychologist, the thinker-Wil-
liam James, the greatest American thinker since
Emerson.
I'm war is an appeal to the spirit of idealism
that expresses itself in magnificent courage and
self-abnegation If the world were to give TINS up
without securing substitute there would be I'M
mense loss. That substitute may be found in the
development of spirit of devotion not destructive
but constructive, not leading to the narrowness in
inseparable from the intense and bitter partisan
ship of war, but leading to a finer conception of
public service, and, at the same time, creating
sturdier race
Read that over carefully. Most things you
in a newspaper you may skim. But these words you
ought to drink slowly. tasting every drop, digest
ing them we'll.
For here you see in nutshell all the advan-
tage of war, and why people love it, 1t is ideal
ism. 1t is chance to get out of petty, narrow
living, to do something big, magnificent, noble.
Anybody see the woe and waste of war;
few see its spiritual compensation.
And here you see how a nation can get all this
advantage of idealsm, of devotion to public serv-
ice, without the horror and ruin.
II is to organize the youth of the country into
constructive army, with military enthusiasm de-
voting itself to public works
Says President James A. B. Scherer of Throop
College of Technology:
Take leaf from the wise little book of eco
nomical Switzerland. Under the civil control of
the government why should we not organize upon
the slopes of mountains, in the wastes of the
deserts, and along the food-threatened valleys,
great camps of constructive army of peace, train
ed to the conservation of resources Injured to
wholesome hardship, and drilled also sufficiently
in military tactics that they would find noble
moral substitute for in saving life and hus-
banding the bounty of nature, thus serving the
state as soldiers of the common good yet ready
also for defense whenever defense may be re-
quired? Not dollar of their pay would be wasted
but every cent permanently invested. The hard
ihood of fibre would be toned up, the loss of bill
lions averted, the pressure of unemployment ale
Waited, and a peaceful army of a million men
gradually built up, inspired not with military ambI
tion but with the joy of creative achievement in the
service of the state, and therefore, because they
have put their own bone and muscle and blood
into it, all the ready in time of national peril
to stand like stone wall against the threatened
invasion?"
Copyright, 1916, by Frank Crane.