Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-05-12
What "Prebaredness" DID

w Estate. the New York Tribune bun too IT.
ing humorously when it declared:
| 1.-THE great lesson that preparedness is the
| best insurance against war seems already to
have been forgotten by most people?"
Just what nation, we wonder, does the
| Tribune have in mind as having been in
sured against war by military preparedness?
| Germany? For upwards Of forty years that
country was drill ground and great arsenal,
| being prepared, prepared, prepared. Spartans
| themselves were not more sternly schooleh
| to the ways of the sword, and to the print
! tive fighting instinct were added the equip
ment and accomplishments of wonder-work-
| ing science. Such a military machine as the
| followers of Bismarck built up was never
| known to other times or other lands. IL
making ready for war were insurance against
| it, Hohenzollern Germany would have been
as peacable as the Milennial lamb.
| The incessant sabre-rattling which went
on east Of the Rhine melted France to pre-
paredness such as she had not dreamed OF
| in other ages. So with Russia, so with Bril-
| tain, so with all Europe burdened though
her peoples were with taxation and nation
al debt needing though they did all avail
able resources and energies for arts of
peace. And the upshot of all this prepared
ness was world cataclysm which counselofs
like the Tribune seem indeed to have for
gotten.
To assume, however, that because "pre-
paredness as militarists use the term
makes for war, unpreparedness will make
for peace, is to forget history and human
nature. With axes of stone and maces OF
bronze, on battle plains now buried deep
under the drift of thousands of years, men
fought as Justify as with machine guns and
poison gas on the freshly SCARED fields of
Flanders We might sink all battleshps,
dispense all armies, raze all munition plants,
and then have war within a twelvemonth
unless to those negative measures Of pre-
vention we added positive forces of good
will and cooperation in the great common
interests of mankind. Disarmament by
agreement amongst the leading Powers
would be step distinctly worth while, for
it is undoubtedly true that with nations as
with persons posture and attitude of body
react upon mind and emotion, a clenched
fist making directly for hostile feeling. But
if there is to be a secure, a cordial, Gre
ative peace, instead of a mere sulking Of
Achilles in his tent, peoples must WORK
together for the general good.
Therein, as we see it, lies the peculiar
need and virtue Of a league of free peoples,
an association of governments and Of the
human millions behind them, not SO much
for purposes of restraint upon the lawlessly
disposed, important though that function
would be- as for the development of better
understanding and more fruitful co-working
amongst all who labor beneath the skies.
With that sort of an association fairly es-
tablished. the problem of ornaments and of
crushing taxation in the cause of hate would
solve itself naturally. while host of ener-
gies now fettered to destruction would be
free for the worlds upbuilding. May we
not hope that out of the present trend of
things made more significant by late de-
velopments at Washington! there will come
league for peace and progress in which
America will take her due part, losing no
right but gaining the glory of a friend in
Iced to humankind