ABSTRACT
We live these days in an atmosphere of large words. Militarism, aggression, freedom, peace, national survival, destiny, race, we speak of them glibly as if we knew just what they meant. But where, for example, in the gradation from Tolstoi to Bernhardi does a man become a militarist? What constitutes aggression? Was it aggressive for Germany to send the gunboat Panther to Agadir, or for France to seize Morocco? Was England aggressive or defensive in South Africa, in Persia? Is it aggressive to try to monopolize the trade of backward countries? Are protective tariffs aggressive? Was Austria aggressive when it set up a tariff against Serbia’s commerce in pigs? Would it be aggressive for Italy to “redeem” Trieste? Were we aggressive when we took the Philippines? Is the Monroe Doctrine aggressive? And what is a war for freedom? Would the crushing of the Hohenzollerns by the Allies be a liberation of the German people? Was our refusal to recognize Huerta an act to further self-government in Mexico? What is peace? Are tariff wars, concession wars, labor wars, diplomatic wars, armaments races, all aspects of peace? What is national survival? Do nations die? Can nations be destroyed by the enemy? Is national destiny written in the stars or in the newspapers? When national destiny tells Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria in turn that its destiny is to control the Balkan peninsula to the exclusion of the others, what about the destinies that can’t be satisfied? Above all, what about race? Who are the chosen people? When German Emperors have 8English mothers and Russian cousins, how do they know which race they belong to? When Englishmen sweat Englishmen in nasty slums, who are the chosen people then?
