AMERICA'S INTERNATIONAL IDEALS
peace advocate ever had in his most somnolent moment. If it can be proved that there is a real probability that Germany will attack us, and that no diplomacy of an honorable sort could remove the probability, then let us regretfully abandon the American way and spend our billions in preparing a military program against her with whom we have co-operated so long!
And if this remote thing happens—that we are ever obliged to be "prepared" on a grand scale against the attack of any nation—let us at the same time work all we can to do away with such an abominable international situation as is based upon the futile doctrine that any great national interest is really subserved by murderous aggression or that any international problem can be permanently or rightly settled by other than rational means. This is what a sane peace movement means: relentless war upon the war system,—but, in the meantime, of course, whatever defense is truly necessary against any genuine peril to our country's integrity which the war system may create.
But amid all such suspicions which are so likely to result in militaristic hysteria, let us remember the main fact that many American thinkers, as well as many European thinkers, see that if there is any one thing which the European war has proved, it is that the sort of diplomacy which relies upon the never-ending competition in armaments is a diplomacy which leads directly toward war, not away from it. America will not be so anachronistic as to adopt the European way. Our strongest defense against Great Britain and Germany and Japan is our friendship, our mutual understanding, which results in a constructive international co-operation rather than a destructive international rivalry. In this day and
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