The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-03-08
REPUTATION OF
DEBTS STARING
EUROPE IN FACE
All Nations Must Reconstruct
Financial Systems.
This Is the Opinion of Noted
British PubIicist.
THE END OF MlllTARlSM
When Peace Comes the People
VIII Rule Their Rulers.
No Indemnities Because All Ma
lions Will Be Broke.
This Is the Opinion of Noted
British PubIicist.
THE, END OF MllTARISN
When Peace Comes the People
VIII Rule Their Rulers.
BY BROUGHAM VILLERS.
Noted British Publicist.
Copyright, 1910

London, March 81 may have a
perverted way of looking at things
but whereas at the beginning of the
war 1 had little hope that British
ideas, as distinct from British arms
would triumph, 1 now believe that
almost everything our idealists hope
for will actually be achieved. Not
that they will come about in the way
people eXpected-that is never wholly
true, even with the considerate states
monship of peace. 1t will be alto
gether too much to expect from the
chaos of compromises and makeshifts
that is inevitable in war.
Stripped of rhetoric, believe most
of our people have desired three re-
suits from the war: ~
First-The rescue and restoration
of Belgium.
Second-The end of PruSsian mill
tarism.
Third-The freedom of oppressed
ma tionalities. $50
1t may still be necessary to fight
for the first, but I believe that the
second and the third demands are al
ready obtainable whenever peace is
made and on whatever terms and that
in way more secure than could pos
sibly have been attained by any
| treaty dictated by the allies in Berlin.
For what could we have got that
way-''a scrap of paper!"
| AS long as Russia and France are
armed to the teeth, Germany must
strive to keep a powerful army too.
Indeed, the allies themselves will
want to do so; for if you decree the
disarming of Germany you become
morally responsible for her defense
and nobody wants to undertake that.
And how can we free oppressed ma
tons of Europe and that merely by
| fighting Germany? How about Fin
| land and Ruthania? And with re-
gard to the nations held down by
enemy powers. what after all do Brit
ish statesmen know about them and
| their wishes?
Militarism Dominates All.
The problems of militarism and ma
| tionality are not special Prussian and
Austrian; they arise out of the coI1di-
tons of modern Europe. 1 think it
| true that Prussia has been and is the
center of militarism while Austria is
| the typical anti-national state
| But militarism dominates more or
less the whole of Europe: it is a dis
ease which Germany may have got
very badly but with which very ma
| ton is infected. And it is modern
militarism that creates the national
problems; it is the armies of the great
centralized bureaucracies that render
| 1t possible to govern nations against
| their will
If the military system of modern
Europe were to break down. it would
| be easy enough for the people to set
tie problems of nationality in the real
ly effective way-by themselves. They
will never be solved by the British
cabinet or by cocksure British jour
| nalists.
| But the crisis thru which Europe is
passing cannot possibly leave militar-
ism as it found it. Modern militarism
| has an economic basis, a chara cteristic
structure of its own, differing from all
earlier military systems.
| Primitive war, however murderOuS,
! costs very little. Arms were made by
the combatants themselves; commits
sariat was simple; after a short march
and a decisive battle those left alive
| could continue their hunting or fish
ing very much as before. AS society
and invention advanced, however, war
became more complex and extensive.
| Militarism, which is parasitic growth