indifference of the majority of the people, who have been selfishly and self-complacently attending to their own affairs while the world has been drifting into a bloody welter of war. It is only by chance that the United States has not already been drawn into it. Complications may at any time arise which will involve this nation in war.

An interest must be awakened as tense and vivid and all-compelling as would be instantly aroused by an actual invasion of the United States by a foreign enemy, and it must be awakened far in advance of that invasion, to make sure that it never happens.

For nearly two thousand years the gentle admonition "On earth Peace, Good Will toward men" has been the ideal which the human race has been struggling to attain.

And after all these centuries we are in the midst of the most bloody and destructive war the world has ever known.

Civilization has crashed backwards into the abyss of barbarism, in Europe at least, and no one can foresee the end.

In the United States the trend is in the same direction. This country will soon become a great military nation if the present tendency is not sharply checked.

Mere ignorance and indifference on the part of the people of the United States must not be allowed to stand in the way of the adoption of the national policy advocated in this book—a policy that will bring permanent and enduring universal peace to the world.

That policy must be adopted. There can be no alternative. The final triumph of militarism would be too appalling to contemplate.

Must every woman who bears a son live under the terror that she may have to dedicate him to be mangled in the service of the War God?

Must every home remain liable to be ruined and destroyed by the fires of war?

Must every fair and beautiful garden-land continue to be subject to the menace of devastation by marching armies or the bloody ruin of the battlefields?

Must the flower of the world's manhood continue to be flung into the jaws of death to satiate the blood lust of militarism?

Must the wheels of industry turn, and the sweat of human labor, for all time, be given to make machinery for human slaughter?

Is there no inspiration to patriotism that will move the people to action but the death combat?

Is there no glory to be won, that will stir heart and brain to supreme effort, except by causing human agony and devastation?

Is there nothing else that will bring out the best there is in men but the stimulus of war, and its demands for sacrifice, even of life itself?

Is there no higher service to their country to which women can give their men than to die fighting to kill the men of other women?

Must this nation, as well as others, so impoverish itself by war and preparation for war that nothing is left to pay for protecting itself against Nature's destroying forces, flood and fire and waste of the country's basic resources?

The intelligent and patriotic men and women of the United States would answer every one of these questions, with all the fervor of their being, in the way they must be answered to save civilization, if the questions could be put to them, face to face, by anyone who was ready to show them what to do to make good that answer and transform the desire into actual accomplishment.

We must therefore arm the multitude with the facts and burn into their minds the clear-cut definite vision of the plan that must be carried out to make certain that accomplishment.

That plan must provide that we shall first do the things which the people of this country can do by themselves alone without saying "by your leave" or "with your help" to any other nation.

The influence of the adoption of a right national policy by the United States will draw the world into the current as soon as its practicability and benefits to humanity have been proved, but we must not begin with a plan that will fail unless adopted by all the great powers of the world.

We cannot allow the success of our own basic plan for peace, and for safeguarding this nation against war, to depend on the coöperation of any other nation.

That has been the difficulty with nearly every plan heretofore proposed for the permanent establishment of peace throughout the world. The agreement of all the nations could not be had, and without such agreement the plan was futile.

Disarmament or the limitation of armaments is impracticable without the consent of all the great powers.

Nationalization of the manufacture of armaments, if it is to be a world-wide influence, must have world-wide adoption.

No plan for a peace tribunal can be successfully made effective without all nations agreeing to abide by its decrees.

And then it will fail unless given power to enforce its decrees.

That power will never be vested in it by the nations, not in this generation at least.

All plans for arbitration rest on the same insecure foundation.

Arbitration voluntarily of any one controversy between nations is practicable, where consent is expressly given to arbitrate that particular controversy.

But a general plan based on an agreement made in advance to arbitrate all future unknown controversies would be unenforceable and would afford no assurance of peace.

The plan for an international force, either army or navy, is too remote a possibility to be depended on now for practical results.

Agitation of these projects is commendable and should be encouraged, but we cannot wait for their adoption to set our own house in order and insure its safety.

In framing a national policy of peace for the United States, we must constantly and clearly draw the line of distinction between the deep-seated original causes of war, and causes which are secondary, or merely precipitating incidents.

The assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo precipitated the present war, but it was not the cause of the war.

Fundamentally, that cause was the check imposed by other nations on the expansion of the German Empire. The necessity for that expansion resulted from the rapid increase in the population, trade, and national wealth of Germany.

The same problem faces the United States with reference to Japan and we cannot evade it by any scheme for arbitration or disarmament. We must squarely face and solve the economic problems that lie at the bottom of all possible conflict between this nation and Japan.

A lighted match may be thrown into a keg of gunpowder and an explosion result. It might be said that the match caused the explosion. In one sense it did—but it was not the match that exploded.

And gunpowder must be protected against matches, if explosions are to be avoided. So with national controversies. The economic causes must be controlled, and conflict avoided by action taken long in advance of a condition of actual controversy.

In our dealings with Japan, as will be shown hereafter, we are sitting on an open keg of gunpowder, lighting matches apparently without the remotest idea of the danger, or of the way to eliminate it.

But the situation on the Pacific Coast with reference to Japan is not the first instance of similar risks that have been run with most appalling losses as a consequence.

The danger of an earthquake in San Francisco was known to everybody. Likewise it must have been known, if the slightest thought had been given to it, that an earthquake might disrupt the water system of the city and make it impossible to quench a fire that might be started by an earthquake.

As San Francisco is