The Road Toward Peace; A Contribution to the Study of the Causes of the European War and of the Means of Preventing War in the Future (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: else is feasible. Is there a person in this room who would advise Germany to consent to an arbitration on the reduction of armaments? Germany, as Mr. Smiley has said, is surrounded by alien armies which can be rushed on to her territory at a week's notice. Can the United States, off here across the ocean, in a position of singular security, propose even that Germany shall consent to a discussion of the reduction of armaments until there is an international court and a force behind the court ? It seems to me, from all my experience in carrying on reforms, that the first rule for a reformer is never to urge action toward a reform till he has prepared an adequate plan of action. We have no plan of action with regard to the reduction of armaments or the neutralization of ocean trade routes. Nobody has such a plan. We ought to have an international plan before we urge international action. CHAPTER IH THE FEARS WHICH CAUSE THE INCREASING ARMAMENTS1 All peace promoters have been cheered by the progress made since Russia called the first Hague Conference toward the substitution of arbitration for war, and this meeting in particular has been greatly encouraged and stimulated to-day. It is plain, however, that much remains to be done before a permanent international supreme court is established with some adequate force behind it, whether control of credit, or armed police, or effective world-opinion, and that the race for armaments is hotter than ever. There must, then, be some very strong reasons for the slow progress made toward an effective system of international arbitration, and for the continuance of the extraordinarily wasteful competition in providing armaments; for all the competing nations feel keenly the well- nigh intolerable burden of taxation which modern preparati...