Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-11-15
The Greatest Power Behind


the Disarmament Conference
~ ARELY before If ever in the high tides
X of history has force of public opinion
beaten so steady or so strong as it does
today upon the conference on limitation of
armament. From the fouI winds of heaven
and the farthest booming of the seas come
hailings and urgings and hopes and pray
ers that the nations in counsel at Washing
ton may make fruitful use Of the cause and
opportunity that brings them together,
Many time in years and centuries gone
have ideasists met in the name of peace, and
many a time have kings and diplomats
thus foregathered. But the present confer
ence is different from its prototypes; it is
different in circumstances, In mood, in char
acter, and especially in the mass thought
and impulse that throbs behind it.
A peculiarly predetermined undertaking
1t is. Three autumns after the Great War
the larger part of the world finds itself verg
ing on financial ruin. Not only are govern
ments debt-whelmed, but peoples are debt
pinched and burdened. Prior to 1914 it cost
the average American family thirty three dol
lars to pay the national taxes; this year it
costs two hundred and fourteen dollars, ap
proximately nine-tenths of which goes for
war, past or future. For the United States,
Great Britain, France and Italy together, the
1913 was eighty-two dollars to the family;
in 1921 it is five hundred and nine dollars.
Although it is assumed that America with
her vast vigor and natural wealth can sus-
tain her own share of this crushing world
weight, she assuredly cannot prosper if the
energy and buying-power of others is absorb
ed in ever-mounting bills. Nor can those
others recover from the world catastrophe
and war contribut. Alright to the enrichment
and forwarding of our common civilization,
if their backs must bend under loads that
grow ever more streSSful as the machinery
of destruction piles ever higher. Common
sense revolts at the thought of spending nine
ty-two and six-tenths per cent of the national
income on war, and less than eight per cent
on the arts and ideals of peace. Yet, that is
what America did last year, and it is sub
stantially what she will do for years to
come unless the burden and temptation of
huge ornaments be in some wise lifted from
the world. Upwards Of four and a half bill
lion dollars our people paid into the national
treasury sum that battles Imagination
Gut from those billions, the interests of pub
lie health, of scientific research, and of edu-
cation and development received only one
and three-ten his per cent.
If facts like these give a peculiarly practi-
cal turn to the conference and array in it's
behalf the best business thought of America
and of mankind, the humanitarian appeal
also is peculiarly definite and strong. Minds
and hearts have been bordering what it
means tnaC ten mll1On men were killed in the
late war, and more than six and quarter
million severely wounded. "In thoughts
from the visions Of the night" they have been
p1cturlng to themselves the individual TRACE
dies and griefs, the hours of agony, the years
of limping, the life-times of sorrow which
that great grim record bespeaks And they
wonder why, if statesmen can be half as
wise as common folk can be sad, some safe
guard against recurrence of the Terror can
not be found.
The beginning of the new counsel to this
good purpose is suspicious in that a nations
and worlds popular will pulses behind it.
May the end prove golden in results