Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1916-04-22
Selected by Tavenner

international policy from that which
has ended thus is to many of US in
comprehensive, And yet. at this
very hour, with Europe torn and
bleeding, burning and dying before our
very eyes, we have here in the United
states men who dare to draw from this
situation this lesson only: That Amer
lea, now on scale such as she has
never before practlced, must arm and
give herself to the gospel OF prepar-
edness for the mysterious enemy, Just
as Europe has done for the last 40
years. Lord Rosebery said recently,
and he expressed the sentiment Of the
best minds of Europe:
Il know nothing more disheartening
than the announcement recently made
that the United States-the one great
country left in the world free from
the hideous, bloody burden Of warts
about to embark upon the building OF
a huge armada destined to be equal or
second to our own"
We are being asked not to see that
the very thing which has landed Eu
rope In hell is this same gospel Of
preparedness. More than anything
else, that which has brought Europe
TO her present plight has been brut-
al belief in the efficacy of force--a
stupid superstition that national sta
bilfty. commerce, art, civilization, and
in the last analysis even Christianity
itself rests not upon conformity to the
moral order Of the world but upon
force, and that nation which could
mobilize the greatest number Of highly
trained soldiers or build the greatest
number of battleships would be the
strong and safe nation. According to
its size and resources, about every ma
ton now engaged in this bloody
struggle has lived fairly we'll up to
this military dogma, with the net re-
suit that they all together finally fall,
through fear and suspicion and mu-
tually engendered Observation-Disclosures
which were intensified thousandfold
by their heavy armaments-intot this
wicked. wasteful, and stupid slaughter.
Now, the very men who are most
insistent that America shall join more
vigorously in this ornamental rivalry
are those who also insist that all paci-
fists, and all workers for a world
court which may serve ultimately to
do away with war, are a set of dream
ing, impractical fools. bent upon ig-
noring 1.-The most fundamental and
unchanging facts of human nature"
They tell us that this is a practical
world, and that any program which
does not conform to human nature as
it is now, always has been, and al
ways will be is doomed to failure"
Our first answer to them is that so
reasoned the wise and practical men
Of Europe, and yet how Europe could
be any more of a failure than it is at
this moment is inconceivable. 1t has
been suggested that if every cabinet
and council over there had been made
up OF members taken from their luna
tic asylums it is doubtful if they
could have wrought such havoc and
universal misery as that into which
these wise and practical statesmen"
have led, who are supposed to hold a
monopoly of all knowledge concerning
human nature.
Europe's wise and practical states
men, who know all about human nat
ure, have just been wise enough to
take all the surplus earnings of her
toiling millions, and then mortgage
the bodies, brains. and bread of the
unborn generations for a hundred
years to come, with which to buy in
struments OF death and destruction, so
that when war has come, it has come
on such a scale and with such havoc
as bleeds Europe to death, and stag
gers and largely paralyzes all the rest
Of the world. Marvellous wisdom.
Two more generations Of such wisdom
and practical guidance, and ciyiliza-
ton will lose all that 1t has gained in
the last thousand years. Oh, they
hAio" an dDuuL uuuldU nature, DuC
they do not know this: That it is of the
very essence of human nature to grow
suspicious and fearful and finally mad
to the point Of lighting if mailed fist
is always showed up under a mans
nose, saying you dare not" No big
preparedness man In Europe has
known enough about human nature to
believe that men Of other nations
would resent and fear and finally
night over what they themselves would
not stand. If man can look back
through the long. fighting history of
this earth, and not see that it is in
human nature to resent with the last
drop OF blood the bullying fist and the
brutes might, he is but a tyro In his
knowledge OF what is in the human
heart. lie who does not know that men
or every race under heaven can be led
further through intelligent kindness
and trust and justnce, than they can
be driven with club, morally still |
llVeS in the stone age.
Ito Be Continued)