Chapter VIII: Part 8

And this comfortable sense of homeliness you may find in many an English bar-maid. If you wish to investigate upon your own account, you might try Bolland's Restaurant in Chester, or the Yates Wine Cellar in Manchester, or the Nelson in Gloucester, or the Crown in Salisbury, or--but I am not writing a guide-book to the bars of England, and, besides, every traveler is likely to fare best if he is left to his own devices. Of all the English bar-maids I have known, one (as is but natural) recurs preeminent in my recollections. I think that I shall tell you her name, because so many poems echo in it; but I shall not tell you more precisely where she may be found than to say that she is one of many who serve drinks in the bar of one of the great hotels that are clustered near Trafalgar Square. I think it was I who discovered Eileen; but I introduced her very soon to several of my friends in London, and thereafter (forsaking the clubs to which we had formerly reverted for a talk and a night-cap after the theatre) we formed a habit of gathering at midnight to meet Eileen and to chat amicably within the range of her most hospitable smile until the bar closed at half past twelve. Assuredly, in that alien metropolis, she made us feel at home; and we escaped out of the cacophonous reverberation of the Strand into the quietude of her presence like men who relax to slippered ease within the halo of a hearth. "She had a weary little way with her that made you think of quiet, intimate things,"--as one of us said at the outset of one of the many sonnets she inspired. There is a sweet weariness that reminds you of lullabying mothers and the drooping eyelids of little children drifting into dreams; and this was, I think, the essence of her. Her voice was like the soothing of a cool hand upon a tired brow. She was very simple in her dark dress and dark hair; and there was something maiden-motherly in her smile. You saw her most clearly when her frank eyes looked directly at you and deepened with a gleam of gentleness, and her lips parted tenderly to answer to the light within her eyes. Her hand, when she gave it to you in good-night, was like a memory of her voice; it had the same softness as of a whisper, it suggested the same sense of insuperable peace. I grew to know her very well, and could tell you her history if I would,--how she was brought up in the country, one of many children; how, when her sisters married and she did not (because the men who came were none of them the right one), she had to earn her living and began as a bar-maid in a railway station in the Midlands; how she came up to London and grew to be (though this she won't admit) a light in her particular occupation; of the long hours and the scanty leisure of her labor; of the compensation in the occasional people who come in and make an hour live with talk that is illumined and sincere, and in the occasional half-holiday rambles with a married sister over Hampstead Heath; of what is worth while in such a life and what is not; and of how it is that the eyes, though weary, can still sincerely smile with that glow as of a fireside, and the voice will evermore grow gentler through the years.

But my purpose is merely to help you to estimate her effect on us, who used to gather from the four quarters of London at the midnight hour for the sense of being near her; and, more generally, to estimate the effect of many women like Eileen, set in a position of publicity, upon the community at large. To gather for a social glass in such an atmosphere is to justify the best that poetry has claimed for the fruit of the vine. As Browning's Andrea del Sarto stated,--"So such things should be."

THE STORY OF A MICROBOPHOBIAC

There was once upon a time a man who underwent a severe and prolonged attack of Microbophobia. You may not find the term in the dictionaries, nor in the medical lexicons; but, as it is quite possible that there are a variety of things in heaven and earth not yet dreamt of in the lexicons, there is really no justification for denying the existence of microbophobia on that ground. And as to the name itself, there is hydrophobia, and photophobia, and Anglophobia--so why not microbophobia?

Microbophobia is a disease of advanced civilization, of recent origin, and infectious. Its victims are to be found among the married rather than the unmarried, in the city rather than in the country, and among the cultured rather than the uncultured. In a word, the disease rages most in college and university communities, but is also pronounced in high school, grade school, and kindergarten spheres of influence. As all these, however, are in close connection with colleges and universities, microbophobia may be said to belong to institutions of higher learning.

Microbophobia rarely succeeds in engrafting itself onto healthy organisms. No one in perfectly sound mental, physical, and spiritual health need fear its attacks. Its host is almost always in a state of depletion at the time of colonization, and the point of attack invariably the _sensus communis_, an organ situated in that part of the anatomy usually known as the cranial cavity.

Its symptoms--

But the history of the case shall tell you of the symptoms.

The subject was a professor. It seems that he had laid the foundations of the disease in his college days by exposing himself to _bacillus scientificus_, and contracting a case of _methoditis scientifica_, again an ailment whose attack is directed at the _sensus communis_, and whose ravages are greatest among the learned, especially those whose work necessitates intimate contact with symbols, chemicals, ancient manuscripts, and other odorous and dusty material. Its victims usually betray their condition by rushing about insisting that any and all the business of life is susceptible of the same orderly disposition as the material of their laboratories.

This explains how it was so easy for microbophobia to get firm hold of the professor in after days. After taking the degree of doctor of philosophy, he was called to a university chair, where, being still in a state of impaired vitality, he suffered from a recrudescence of _methoditis_, which left him so weak that without resistance he fell a prey to microbophobia in the very first year, the immediate cause of infection being without doubt his association with various of his faculty brethren who were in the school of medicine, or worked in the bacteriological laboratory and lectured on sanitation, or served on the university committee of hygiene. All of these men, he afterward learned, were in various stages of the disease--though all considered themselves in perfect health.

For one of the worst things about microbophobia is that the victim has no suspicion of the real nature of his ailment; more than that, he falls a prey to the strange hallucination that it is his environment, and not himself, which is the seat of infection, and consequently will not listen to diagnosis. Individuals have been known to advance in the malady until the _sensus communis_ was all but absolutely gone, without realizing the gravity of their condition.

The professor might have gone on for some time; for, though he was in the grip of the disease, he had not yet begun to suffer, owing to a good constitution inherited from sound progenitors who were not university bred. But an event occurred which hastened the progress of his malady. He married.

Now, marrying is ordinarily a good thing for the _sensus communis_. Many sufferers of both sexes have found it a most efficacious remedy for the ailments of that rather uncertain organ. But it so happened that the professor's alliance was with a member of the Woman's Club, who was also college bred, a possessor of the degree of Mistress of Home Economics, and, unfortunately, already infected with microbophobia, and visibly impaired in health. Some of his bachelor friends had warned him that conditions in that part of town were notorious, but he laughed at them, and said that a little fumigation was the worst that could happen.

The gravest fears of the professor's friends, however, were soon realized. They saw him begin to sink before their eyes. In his low state of vitality, he was soon hopelessly in the clutches of the dread malady. Even if he had not been vitally reduced, his case would have been desperate, for his wife continued to expose herself week after week at the club. And besides, she took several Health Journals, all of which came from infected centers, and which not only she, but the professor himself, handled with all the carelessness of immunes. The professor read at first because he was amused, but it was not long before he, as well as his wife, hovered with almost religious devotion over the column headed Sanitas Sanitatum, by Doctor Septic Septington, which he ought to have known was swarming with _bacillus microbophobicus_.

The ravages of the disease in both of them were frightful to behold. The professor's case developed with especial rapidity, so that in a few months both were in the same stage.

Stage? Yes, the stages of this disease are very clearly marked. In the first stage, you are attacked by a noticeable degree of thirst for knowledge about microbes; you read and talk about them constantly, and attend lectures on them at the university and the club.

This is a mild stage. You are for the most part amused, and only occasionally entertain the strange hallucinations which afterward come to possess you so thoroughly. Just to quiet your conscience, however, you adopt a few precautions--such as the use of bottled spring water, and the increase of your interest in the appearance and personal habits of the dairyman. This stage is termed _microbophobia intellectualis_. The professor and his wife early passed through it, with no serious results.

The second stage is more grave. You insist on a certificate from your dairyman, visit his barns, have the milk examined by your friend in the university laboratory, and finally, to be absolutely sure, pasteurize it. The drinking water you begin to filter and boil, you withdraw your patronage from the Chinese laundryman because you have heard of the dreadful way he sprinkles the linen, and you take an active interest in the enforcement of the anti-salivation ordinance and the encouragement of the bubble-cup campaign.

It is at this point that Dread, the most characteristic manifestation of the malady, begins to assume really noticeable proportions. You dread going out to dinner, for example, because you are afraid that the water and milk on your friend's table will not be properly sterilized. You don't like to abstain from both, and you don't like to attract attention by taking a bottle of boiled water or milk with you. The result is, that you avoid going out at all, and when you are compelled to go, you take a double dose of microbicide. You dread the effects of the public school system, with all its opportunities for the distribution of microbes. Your dread extends even to the communion, and so grows on you that you omit the sacrament because of the common cup--or, if you are a Foot-washing Baptist, because of the common basin. The second stage is denominated _microbophobia alarmans_.

The professor and his wife were uncomfortable enough in this stage, but in the third they really suffered, though of course with cheerful resignation; for were they not enduring their hardships in the interest of science and for the good of mankind? The third stage is known to science as _microbophobia parentum_; in popular parlance, the baby stage. Its symptoms are most pronounced in the female. The first thing you do in this stage is to order Madame di Ana's Daily, "The Mother-Maker," together with her two fine volumes on "The Mistakes of Mothers," and "Microbes in the Home." You also join the Mothers' Club, and take your husband to the open meetings. You make him cut off his beard, because you have read how it looks under the microscope--and he _will_ kiss the baby. You boil not only the drinking water, but the water for the baby's bath, and the water you wash your hands in before you take him up; and you insist on the sterilization of all the baby's linen, and all the nurse's apparel. You are determined that the child shall be brought up scientifically, and not be exposed to the risks you ran in _your_ childhood. Having read that mothers are subject to excitement, and that excitement is bad for the fountain source of baby's sustenance, you substitute a bottle; and you use pasteurized milk scientifically compounded with other ingredients which nature forgot to employ in her chemistry; and warm it in a sterilized glass jar, set in sterilized water in a sterilized pan in a room which is disinfected twice a day, and you test it with a sterilized thermometer. You keep on hand a bath of boiling water in which you sterilize at frequent intervals all the usual playthings--nipples, rubber rings, rattles, etc.; and you make due provision for the little fingers which seem so bent on going into the little mouth.

In this stage you also avoid shaking hands, never allow yourself to touch a door knob barehanded, and leave off drawing books from the library, determined to be neither a borrower nor a lender of books or anything else; and, even though your church has deferred to scientific suggestion and introduced individual communion cups, you still shrink from the sacrament because the bread, too, is not individualized, and you are not sure about the linen which covered it, or the silver which contained the grape juice, or the person who picked the grapes, or the feet by which the juice was trodden out.

The fourth stage is known as _microbophobic moscophobia_, which is the pathological term describing the fear of flies as carriers of infection. You get new screens, interrupt the housemaid every half hour with orders to see whether there are more flies to be found, cover the baby and yourself with netting when you nap, have a cement pit made for the garbage can, and repaper or repaint your interiors--that is, the interiors of your house--every six months. You read, too, that mosquitoes carry yellow fever in the West Indies, and malaria in Italy--distant places, indeed; but still, why shouldn't mosquitoes fly across the sea and land and light on the baby, or yourself? So you screen the household by day as well as by night, and avoid evenings out and picnics in the shade.

In the latter part of this stage you also change your religion on account of the communion service, have your letters disinfected, leave off kissing the baby, steer to windward of rug-beaters and street sweepers, hold your breath as you pass dogs and cats, eat nothing not cooked, drink nothing not boiled, carry a bottle of microbicide in your pocket, dream that the earth is full of microbes as the waters cover the sea, and that the hand of every one of them is lifted against you, and have cold sweats at night and cold feet by day. You realize that you are uncomfortable, but the real cause of it never occurs to you: you attribute your condition to the uncleanliness of your environment, and to your willingness to sacrifice your own comfort to the cause of scientific sanitation.

By this time, too, your sense of humor, never very robust, has decayed, atrophied, and disappeared. Your fat, good-humored, unscientific neighbor calls out from his back porch as you come out to yours to get the milk bottle: "Dangerous stuff, that there! They say they's forty-three million four hundred an' ninety-nine thousand two hundred an' seventeen microbes in a half a drop of it"--and you don't laugh, any more than you laugh when you advise your professor friend to disinfect the contents of his pay envelope, and he replies, "Don't worry--there's no microbe could ever live on my salary!"

In the fifth stage you begin to be physically as well as spiritually uncomfortable. In the eloquent words of the old hymn, you are a prey to "fightings without and fears within." What with the insufficiency of your means to meet the demands of disinfection, and what with the difficulty of getting properly prepared food even if you have the money, and what with the continual strain of anxiety lest you entertain a microbe unawares, you grow thin and nervous. Of course you continue to lay it to microbes, and double your precautions--and worry more, and starve more. If you are not rescued, you finally pass into _delirium microbophobicum_, which is as much more awful than _delirium tremens_ as microbes are smaller and more insidious and wiser than serpents.

The professor and his wife entered upon the fifth stage, and were alarmingly near the last extreme. If this were a subject for levity, and not for high seriousness, I should be tempted to parody the essayist on Man, and say:

Lo, the poor professor, whose untutored mind
Saw microbes in the clouds, and heard them in the wind.

But they were saved. One night the professor's wife dreamed that a monster centipedal microbe slowly let himself down from the ceiling, and enveloped her in his hundred long wriggling legs. She awoke screaming, to find herself enmeshed in the mosquito bar.

The next day they called another doctor. Hitherto, their doctors themselves had been infected, though neither they nor their patients knew it. But this time they were more fortunate; Dr. Goodenough had been attacked by the disease, had made a brilliant recovery, and consequently was immune.

He listened to the history of their cases, gave them a thorough examination, using his new instrument, the cranioscope--of course more for the purpose of inspiring confidence in his patients than to find out anything; for he well knew what ailed them.

"Don't be alarmed," he finally said. "You really _are_ in a bad state; but I give you my word for it that you will recover. I find your _sensus communis_ all but disappeared. A little more excitement like that of last night, and you might have a hemorrhage--and there you are! Now put yourself entirely in my hands, or I'll not answer for the consequences."

He reached for his prescription blank, and after a few moments handed them a bit of unintelligible writing--the sort that only doctors and their druggist partners can interpret. As I happen to be in the secret, I may tell you that the prescription called for three fluid ounces of city water, not distilled, with two drops of aniline, a drop of nux vomica, a lump of sugar, and a teaspoonful of whiskey, and that the druggist charged them a dollar and seventy-five cents.

"Begin taking immediately," said the doctor impressively. "Take two drops and a half in a half glass of boiled water every three hours from six a. m. to nine p. m. And you must go into the country to-morrow morning, and spend your whole vacation there.... Leave orders for your magazines and journals of all kinds to be held here, tell your friends they are to write you under no circumstances, and don't dare to come back to town on any errand whatsoever. Cut loose from everything! Delay is dangerous, and might be fatal."

The professor and his wife didn't dare to disobey. The doctor was a vigorous and imposing personality, and he had terrified them. They didn't know what a _sensus communis_ was, even though the professor was a Latinist; the doctor had disguised the term by using the English pronunciation, and imagination contributed the usual amount to the impressiveness of his words.

So they packed up all their pasteurizers and sterilizers and disinfectors and bottles and screens and other antiseptic paraphernalia, and drove into the country to a farm fifteen miles away from any car-line or railroad, where there was no telephone or other connection with the scene of their unhappiness.

They hadn't got out of sight of the town before they began to feel differently. No one but a college professor knows how big his institution seems while he is within its precincts, and how small and insignificant when he is out of sight of it. The tension left their bodies and minds, and a balmy sense of repose and freedom succeeded.

But they felt a shock when, just as their carriage disappeared from view over the hill on its return, they saw two dogs and a half dozen cats on the porch of the farmhouse, noticed that the well was not more than ninety feet from the pigpen, whereas all the journals said it should be one hundred, and became sensible of the drowsy murmur of swarms of flies about the kitchen door, attracted thither by a barrel which was wide open--and smelled!

That was not all, however. Fortune seemed against them. It was bad enough for themselves, though they could sterilize their drinking water and pasteurize their milk, and exercise many other of their wonted precautions; but when it came to the baby, they were almost powerless. Watch him as they would, he was continually getting into unhygienic predicaments of the most dreadful description. Before they even entered the house, he had grasped one dog by the tail, and been thrown down by the other, as a mere mark of welcome; and when he got up, crying, in the instinctive effort to console himself of course he resorted to the habit of sucking his fingers, and put into his mouth two of those on the hand which had grasped the tail. The next moment, too, he was licked all over the nose and mouth by the repentant dog that had knocked him off his feet. Horrors!

And then the cats followed him into the house, and rubbed against his legs and licked his fingers, while he gave little screams of delight at the novel sensation. At supper, he toddled to the table in advance of the rest, and before his mother realized his intentions, had an unsterilized spoon in his mouth; and after supper he succeeded in browbeating the baby of the house, who was a month or so younger, and more timid than his experienced guest from the city, into giving up his gum.

The professor and his wife were horrified, but helpless. He went on in that way for a week. They simply could not keep track of him. He drank out of the horse-trough, dabbled in the puddles, consorted with pigs and chickens, shared his bread with the dogs and his milk with the cats, picked up crumbs from the dining-room sweepings, looked upon half rotten, muddy, and fly-specked apples found on the lawn as the greatest of prizes, and reveled in delight with old scraps of rags and hats and shoes which he, with the little country comrade under his leadership, resurrected from the most unlikely and unsanitary places.

The frightened and powerless parents read up again on the periods of incubation of all the microbes mentioned in the books. They could at least be ready with plans to meet whatever came, and cope with it at the earliest possible moment.

But it didn't come. At the end of two weeks nothing had happened. The child slept well and ate all he could get, and was in the best of spirits. At the end of three weeks he had gained four pounds. It was in direct and flagrant violation of all reason and all science, and thoroughly incomprehensible; but what could you do?

After much marvelling at the failure of science, however, they concluded to make a virtue of what was plainly a necessity, and gave the baby the freedom of the farm. And more than that; after a decent period of worrying, they too began to tread the primrose path, and let the little child lead them. They drank unsterilized milk and unboiled water, threw all precaution to the winds, rough-and-tumbled with the boys and dogs on the lawn, napped under the trees unprotected from flies and mosquitoes, ate apples with the skins and all, and without even washing them, went fishing in the creek a mile away up the marsh, and when overcome by blazing thirst drank of the water in the stream, played peg and got their mouths full of dirt, drew pictures for the children on the slate and erased them in the old familiar way--and did all the other reckless things they had done in their own childhood, when the microbe had not yet made a stir in the world, when _delirium tremens_ was still the worst example of pathological misfortune, and nervous prostration had not yet spread to the masses.

When they returned to the city, clothed and in their right minds, they brought with them the half emptied medicine bottle, and charged smiling Dr. Goodenough with duplicity. He charged _them_--

Well, we shall not say what he charged them. Whatever it was, they engaged him for the next baby, and were grateful to him ever afterward. And as for microbes, before having to do with them in the future, they resolved to let them come at least half way.

THE STANDING INCENTIVES TO WAR

Each civilized nation protects itself from war by being ready at any moment to fight any other nation. Each other nation is supposed to be charged with the spirit of aggression, and it is supposed that that spirit can be allayed only by steadily increasing the risks involved in attack.

The modern War System has grown up unconsciously, by way of using war as a protection against war. The principle is that of fighting the devil with fire. As each nation, Great Britain beginning it, has increased its fighting material so as to assure its superiority over all rivals, so has each rival doubled its own armament with the same impossible ambition. All this has increased until the greatest security against war lies in the absolutely ruinous cost with which war is prosecuted.

The average man in England, France and Germany still believes, with more or less insistence, that patriotism goes with armor plate. The fact that there exists no enemy who wishes to attack, or cares to attack, or hopes to attack, or could afford to attack, or would gain anything whatever by attack, counts for little in this discussion. It is always best to be on the safe side, and the money it costs is cheap insurance against burning seaports and plundered banks. The enemy will strike when he dares, but not against an odds of 2 to 1 or even 5 to 3. As the enemy swells his equipment to correspond, each nation is therefore certainly in immediate and imminent danger; its safety lies in more armed men and armored ships; and in each nation all resources of borrowing, taxation, and conscription must be strained, that the enemy may continue to realize that the odds are still against him.

To the observer on the outside, all this rests on a series of chimeras, the product for the most part of men financially interested in the war system itself. The war scares, the wars of talk but not of action, which sweep over Europe, would be ridiculous but for their baleful consequences.

And now we come to the secret springs of all this. The elements of the War System are not only armies and navies, but also war traders, armament builders, money lenders, the recipients of special privileges, the corrupt portion of the press, and all others drawn into its service by choice, by interest, or by necessity.

About war scares and war equipment, matters inherent in the War System, centre the grossest exhibitions of human greed. Those who scent from afar "the cadaverous odor of lucre" have for the most part furnished war's dominant motive.

The cost of it all, the war and the War System, is spread over the whole world. It is felt by you and by me and by everyone, in the rising price of all articles of necessity. The world, to the degree in which it is civilized, has become an economic unit. Whatever wastes its substance here or there, robs your pocket and mine.

It is among officers of the army and navy, especially those retired from active service, that we find the most ardent apologists for war. To this end they are trained, and in Europe alone they find justification for particular wars, as well as arguments for war in general as a means of securing peace. They can be counted on for scares or warnings in every case when petty differences arise.

Nowhere does the military class seem to have any thought or care for ways or means. Economic preparations, the saving of money, or even the ability to borrow it, counts for nothing with the militarist, to whom the need to avert war by war outweighs all other considerations.

There have been in all countries many noble exceptions to this point of view, great soldiers who have confessed with General Sherman, that they are "sick and tired of war," its "moonshine" glories and its cruel realities. There are in the service of every great nation generals and admirals whom every lover of peace is proud to honor. But the rank and file are creatures of the system, and as such their influence is felt on the side of war and waste. The advocates of "peace by preponderance," of peace through risk, of peace through assured victory, must be counted on the side of war.

The character of the service journals in every nation shows this to be true. Presumably these periodicals meet the demands made on them, and each and every one, so far as I know, is a purveyor of war scares, an advocate of expenditure, and an agency in behalf of the war system and all of its ramifications.

* * * * *

But the central force of the War System does not lie with the war makers but with the great war traders. We may never underrate a power which has such "big money" behind it. The manufacturers of war implements the world over form, through "interlocking directorates" and through other means, a gigantic coöperating international trust, perhaps the most powerful, because certainly the most profitable, organization of its kind in the world. It is the more efficient and the more dangerous because, alone among great trusts, it has a privileged character as the exponent of the highest patriotism, of the great fundamental duty of "National Defense."

The methods of organization of the syndicates for war, and of their influence on national expenditures, have been lately set forth in detail in two remarkable papers, the one by George Herbert Perris of London, entitled "The War Traders," the other by Francis Delaisi of Paris, entitled "Le Patriotisme des Plaques Blindées," (the Patriotism of Armored Plates).

Mr. Perris tells us of the affairs of the great British companies--the Armstrong-Whitworth Corporation, the Vickers, the John Brown, the Cammell-Laird and the Coventry Arms Company, with their allies, tentacles and satellites feeding the patriotism, under many flags, of nearly half the globe. Delaisi's memoir tells of the Krupps and other concerns in Germany, and of the Creusots and similar armament trusts in France.

The capital invested in all the British firms amounts to about $250,000,000, the dividends ranging each year from 7-1/2% to 15% of the capital stock. In this industry, ten per cent. is a satisfactory return, counting stockholders, employees, soldiers and pensioners. Mr. Perris claims that "it is probable that 1,500,000 adult able-bodied men, one in six of the occupied adult males in the United Kingdom, shares to some extent in the 73,000,000 pounds ($365,000,000) a year which 'National Defense' now costs us." Besides the minor outgoes which form a sort of bribe money to the general public, the distribution of dividends affects a smaller but most influential class. In the share lists of the Armstrong-Whitworth company, Mr. Perris finds the names of 60 noblemen or noble families, 15 baronets, 20 knights, 8 members of parliament, 20 officers of army or navy, and 8 journalists. Shareholding in the war syndicates and membership in the naval league go together. But rich and poor are alike affected by the large returns. "Militarism is strong in England because Lazarus gets some poor pickings from the feast of Dives."

These great companies especially promote the patriotism of Great Britain, but they are controlled by no narrow nativism. Under other flags the same people develop the same noble sentiments. These British corporations, individually or coöperating, maintain three ship building companies in Canada: hence the recent movement for a Canadian navy, to be built in Canadian Yards. They have five tentacles or subsidiary companies in Italy, (Pozzuoli, Ansaldo, Odero, Terni, and Orlando), one in Spain (Ferrol), one in Portugal, and one in Japan. "Time was when Englishmen bled for Portugal; now our old-time ally must bleed for us." The relations of these British trusts with similar groups in other countries are most close and friendly. In the "Harvey United Steel Company" (wound up in 1911), we find them in international combination with the Bethlehem Steel Plant in Pennsylvania, the Creusot company in France, and the Essen and Dillingen concerns in Germany, with a similar international combination of supporting banks. "In forty years," observes Perris, "all the Peace Societies have not succeeded in effecting such a Franco-German reconciliation as this. In the share list (of this company) Mr. Newbold found the names of one British general and two major generals, and behind these were the shadowy figures of a vast host of princes, peers, ministers of the Crown, soldiers, sailors and clerics. A veritable Brotherhood in Arms! I cannot believe that the Harvey United Steel Company is really dead. Somewhere it surely has had a glorious resurrection! Under some metamorphoses it lives and works to prove the pettiness of national prejudice and the ease of forgetting such sores as Alsace-Lorraine, when men have learned the golden wisdom of 'good business.'"

A needed accessory of such good business is a series of commercial agents, "the strong silent men," who frequent every court of Europe. Incidental to their work of making sales, is to _create_ a market. This is done by means of the recurrent war scares. A third element of importance is the reiteration of the constant fact that only the latest inventions can serve in war, and that all former purchases should be "scrapped" as rapidly as possible. Were it not for the scrapping process, the world's market for implements of destruction would be speedily glutted. The machinery of war has reached such marvelous perfection and such an acme of cost that the work of a day may bankrupt a whole nation. The issue of a campaign may be decided by the control of a single murderous invention. Thus science has been called into the service of war, to a degree that inspires the hope that, by carrying its risks to madness, it makes war virtually impossible. But meanwhile the expenses go on.

And under such influences half the people of England, let us say--professors, business men, manufacturers, workingmen, heads of colleges, and dignitaries of the church, with nine-tenths of the army and navy, are agents, conscious or unconscious, of the British armament trust. The greater the stock of weapons, the newer and more varied the instruments of physical defense, the more pitiful and more persistent are the fears of invasion. A most striking example of the collective cowardice of a great but over-armed nation, made up of men individually brave, is found in the fear to open a tunnel under the British Channel. Every need of commerce, of travel, of the friendliness with France, demands the removal of a most unpleasant and expensive obstacle. Nowhere in the world is there tolerated another such stumbling block in the way of a gigantic traffic, as that of the present system of crossing the English Channel. And yet half of England cries out against the simple remedy, lest, having over-powered Northern France, the German hordes should come pouring into Dover, before the watchman at the portcullis should have time to drop the gates.

The triumph of the war trades in Germany has been even more rapid and complete than in Great Britain. By the system of interlocking directorates, the house of Krupp is in alliance with all centres of German finance. The army, the aristocracy, the ministry, the armament syndicates, are all bound together in that mailed-fist coöperation in which the power of Germany seems to lie. The King of Prussia himself inherited from his august grandfather stock in the Krupp concern to the amount of five million of thalers, an investment now estimated at about $12,000,000.

The House of Krupp by various means has placed itself at the summit of German war patriotism, and it has made most thrifty use of its opportunities. It employs 250,000 persons, 60,000 of these on salary; 5,000 engineers. It maintains, according to Delaisi, a great hotel, the Essenerhof, "l'Auberge de la Mort," in which are entertained most royally all emissaries of all nations who come as purchasing agents of tools of death. Its specialty is "National Defense," and "Defense not Defiance" is said to be the "international code signal."

In France "armor plate patriotism" is sustained by the same methods, and in part by the same money. The leading industries bear the names of Creusot, Homicourt, and Châtillon-Commentry. A special feature of the French system, not unknown to the others, is its free use of representatives of the army and navy. Some twenty admirals and generals have left the public service for the better paid work of selling guns and ships. This transfer of allegiance is said to be "perfectly legal," but it is also dangerous to the morale of the public service. And it is to these men that we owe most of the militant revival of French war patriotism, which had lain dormant from the time of the "Affaire Dreyfus," to that of the "Affaire Agadir."

As to the war-syndicates in the United States, little that is definite is on record. Like conditions produce like results. The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Daniels, reports the existence of a combination among the three chief producers of armor plate in America, the Midvale, Bethlehem, and Carnegie Companies. He is reported as saying: "When this administration came into office, we found that the Navy was apparently, or, so we were assured, hopelessly, at the mercy of the three big steel corporations, who submitted practically identical bids for armor forgings and other materials, and then divided the work between them to suit themselves." As a result of this condition, the Secretary rejected their bids, and by going outside, recorded a saving of $500,000 on the battleship in question.

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Behind the war traders, stand their allies, the finance houses who lend money for the war system. These are not bankers, rather pawnbrokers, dealing in the credit of nations for a certain per cent., according to the straits in which the borrower finds himself. The banking system of London avoids this class of risks. Paris is now the centre of the system, and it is usually stipulated with every foreign war loan that the materials it covers should be bought in Paris. In earlier times, before the great nations had borrowed to the limit, the heads of these finance houses as "Masters of Europe" exerted great personal influence, permitting or forbidding wars. Of recent years this personal power has greatly dwindled, as joint stock companies of greater capital and more or less impersonal management, have largely taken their place. The present influence of the money-lenders is against war, but in favor of the war system. Minor wars it permits or even encourages, but these have their risks. The second Balkan war, unforeseen and undesired, is said to have entailed a loss of some $30,000,000 to the Paris backers of Bulgaria.

Interlocking with the finance houses are the great exploiting corporations of the world, operating mostly in the backward nations of the tropics. These "interests" are often all-powerful in foreign affairs. They are frequently able to control the operations of the foreign offices to such a degree that the foreign policy of a great nation is often but the expression of their will. The desire for colonial expansion, the "mirage of the map," is a reflection of these interests, and most "imperial wars" have been undertaken for their benefit. Abundant illustrations may be had from the recent history of each of the leading nations. Civil wars in the tropics, as a rule, have their origin in conflicting interests of people remote from the field of battle.

Another factor supporting the war system is the hereditary aristocracy, waning in influence, but still powerful through its control of money, of the army, and of the Church. The profession of arms is almost the only one not unworthy of the caste of nobleman. The military constitutes the right arm of aristocracy; the state church, the left; while the monarch stands as the visible head. The leaders of official religion are, with many and honorable exceptions, upholders of the war system, and apologists for the "God of Battles." The dissenting churches, having no alliance with privilege, are almost as unanimously on the side of peace.

With all this, and working toward the same end, is the false education which the war system has unconsciously produced. For generations it has obstructed sound teaching of history, of patriotism, of morals, of religion. It is only after reaching manhood, if at all, that we realize that Thackeray's "redcoat bully in his boots" has not been the maker of England's greatness. In the schools of all nations, the man of violence is the hero--the man on horse-back, the man who bears the flag, even if in defiance of justice and order.

We have been taught that nations grow strong through war, and that through war they achieve their destiny. Each man who falls in battle on any side, in any cause, is a patriot hero, giving his life for fatherland and for religion. Each boy learns that his own nation was in the right in every quarrel, that in every battle it was victorious against great odds, or else defeated through base treachery.

For the war system as it exists to-day, first and finally responsible are the people who pay for it, the common man in the nations concerned. The government belongs to him. It is his own fault if it does not. It cannot go far ahead of him, and it never lags much behind. When it is laggard, the fault still rests with him. He has neglected to look after the machinery of government, and it has been turned against him. This is the case in Germany and in Russia, where the government represents only part of the people. In these nations, the man belongs to the state. In the more democratic nations, the state belongs to the man, who has therefore the more pressing responsibility.

And this man on the street, the unit of the nation, whether noble or commoner, whether educated or illiterate, overlooks one fundamental fact. The other nations of Europe are made up of men about like himself. What he thinks, they think; what he hopes, they hope. If he has no designs of aggression, neither have they. If he is "hungry for peace," so are they. If he finds his taxes distressing, so do they. If he is one of a majority favoring more cordial relations between states, they belong to a like majority. If he is one of a minority who would do away with the war system, there is a similar minority which will meet him half way. If he is a workman, his problems are those of all other workmen; if he harbors no evil designs of a war of invasion, neither do his fellow-workmen across the border. If he is swept off his feet by a burst of martial music and resounding patriotism, so are they, and it is just as easy for them to recover as it is for him. If he is scared by the reckless talk of pangermanists across the channel, or of chauvinists on the Paris Boulevards, or of panslavists in St. Petersburg, or of jingoes in London or New York, let him remember that he finds just such people at home, wherever his home may be--just as many, just as noisy, and possessed of just as little permanent influence. The force of mere noise grows less and less, year by year, in each of the "settled nations." If you are convinced that other nations need have no fear of your jingoes, by the same token you need not fear theirs.

The War System is making this great, rich, resourceful world a bankrupt concern in the hands of its creditors. The nations of the earth still owe some 40 billions of dollars in gold for the wars of the last 100 years, from Waterloo to Adrianople. But one nation of all the number (our own) has made any progress whatever in paying its share of this debt. The tendency is ever to borrow more, up to and beyond the limit of credit. The interest is paid, perhaps by borrowing, but there is no haste about the principal. Except for war, no nation on earth would ever need to borrow a dollar.

And this interest money of a billion and a quarter every year is only an incident in the cost of the War System--about a fourth of its annual expense, even in what we call times of peace. Under the armed peace of the War System, a kind of frustrate war goes on, an antagonism the more repulsive because no one has the slightest idea what it is all about. This antagonism is simply part of the system, and the system itself is only organized cowardice, for it is perfectly well known that not one of the great nations has any design to attack any other. Only the poor crude Balkan people have taken the War System seriously. Because they have done so, and interfered with trade, they are now under the ban of Europe, as they lie supine on the floor of the arena.

The War System has exhausted its own resources. The great nations have no money with which to fight, and no stomach for fighting. The concert of Europe is content with the suppression of discords among its own players. And the reason for this is clearly indicated in the words of Mr. H. Bell of Lloyds Bank in London. He calls the attention of bankers to "the great spectre which will rise up in future before the monied classes when they are invited to lend their money for warlike purposes. There is going to be very clearly written in the handwriting on the wall the word 'REPUDIATION.' The peoples of Europe will say: 'We know we ought to pay our interest. We know we ought to pay our debt, but we cannot. We are human beings, we must live; we are overtaxed; we cannot get enough to clothe ourselves; we cannot get enough to eat. We can get no profit from our work!' The men who find money for purposes of war will not get their money back again."--(H. Bell. Remarks before the Institute of Bankers, Jan. 17, 1912.)

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War cripples the nation physically by cutting off without posterity its strongest and boldest men. The key of national strength in the future is found in the good parentage of to-day. The basis of national greatness is indicated in the principles of Eugenics. To be well born is the first step to an effective life. "Like the seed is the harvest." This is the law of heredity. It applies to races of men as well as to breeds of horses or of sheep. No nation has ever fallen from leadership, intellectual or physical, save through breeding from inferior stock. The causes of all decline may be sought among these three factors, emigration, immigration, war. Rome fell when her streets swarmed with the sons of slaves, scullions, sutlers, adventurers, men who were not Romans. When, after her wars, internal and external, "Only cowards remained, and from their brood came forth the new generations." The culture of Greece passed away when war had obliterated the Greeks. "Send forth the best ye breed" and you will breed from the second best. First best, second best, third best and fourth among the yeomanry of Europe have been swallowed up in war in the "Obscene seas of slaughter" over which Europe has gloried and gloated through all these deluded ages.

The decline in the physique of the average man in France has been usually cited in evidence of this tendency. But the same causes have produced like effects in every warlike nation, and the decline in stature is one of the least important of the results of reversal of selection. These changes are just as marked in England and Scotland, as in France, and they are not wanting in Germany. The loss of dash and initiative is one of these results. Havelock Ellis observes: "The reckless Englishmen who boldly sailed out from their little island to fight the Spanish Armada were long ago exterminated; an admirably prudent and cautious race has been left alive." Better men would make better history. Braver men would not cower at the war scares of to-day. Men of character and initiative would not wallow in the London slums. The sons of those war could not use, swell the records of pauperism. It is not the strength of the strong but the weakness of the weak that invites and perpetuates paternalism and tyranny, two names for the same thing. "Slaves may have wrongs, but only free men have rights."

Another count against the War System, not unrelated to this, is its pollution of the blood of the race. The "White Slave Traffic" goes with the "Conscription Act," both outgrowths of the War System. Army movement and barrack life have been leading, though not exclusive, causes of the widespread diffusion of infectious diseases, one of the most alarming features of civilization to-day.

Another count against war, as yet scarcely realized, is found in the vandalisms by which it has destroyed so much of worth as well as of intellectual importance in the art and the architecture of the past. War respects nothing. It was German bombs which burned the library at Strassburg. The devastation of the art world is chargeable to war. As I write this there rise before me the paintings in the gallery at Munich, of the twenty-one cities of Greece, from Sparta to Corinth, from Eleusis to Salamis, not as they are now, largely fishing hamlets by the blue Ægean Sea, not as they were in the days of the glory of Greece--but as ruined arches and broken columns, half buried in the ashes of war, the war which blotted out Greece from the world history.

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It is plain that sooner or later such a system must come to an end. The influences that have abolished cannibalism, slavery, and religious persecution must in the end do away with international war. It seems also clear that this result will not be obtained primarily in any direct way by official action. The administrators of nations must follow public opinion rather than create it. Where public opinion demanded the burning of witches, the officials had only to see that it was done decently and in order. At the most, they could only limit the number to be consumed on any one occasion.

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What is our line of attack on the War System?

For the suppression of war we must have a public opinion. And this opinion must not rest only on the fact that war is brutal and hideous. That is only half the struggle. There are many good men to whom the brutal is also the heroic, and still others to whom evil methods are condoned by success. We must further convince the world, that is, the common man, the man on the street, that modern war attacks his pocket.

The modern phases of the Peace Movement differ from the earlier ones in being educational rather than emotional. The early workers were convinced that war was wicked and unholy, and with this they were usually content to rest their case.

With the same conviction as to the immorality of war, in the bottom of his heart, the modern worker tries to find the facts. What is the historical evolution of war? What are its effects, economic, biological, moral? What can be found as a national substitute? And side by side with the study of war and war problems, rises the fabric of international law. We may not say that the modern method is more righteous than the earlier, or even more effective. But the treatment of the subject from all its various points of view, and not mainly from that of morals and religion, reaches a much wider audience and has a more immediate effect upon public opinion.