If war is a necessity for man, it is a necessity for woman. If it is good for men, it is good for children. If it is good for nations, it is good for states. If it is good for states, it is certainly good for cities. If it is good for peoples, it is good for individuals.
War is Hell, and from Hell. Hell may not be abolished, but it may be regulated.
Wars may not be abolished from the human heart, but they may be restrained from breaking forth to the destruction of the innocent and the guiltless.
There is only one practical way to do this, and that is to have nations under restraint, just as nations have states and cities under restraint. Then international courts of justice may perform the same work national courts now perform in respect to differences between states.
Man has come up from the individual, or dual, unit through family and tribal relation, the walled city, the policed state, into the armed nation. He is now steadily stepping forth into the world as ruler of himself, the creator of his own government, the heir and sovereign of the world. He can step into the kingdom of manhood suffrage or government only so far as the rights of his fellow men are recognized. Evil holds its own destruction, and nations that live by the sword perish by the sword.
For the United States to rush into the maelstrom of war, with organization of armies and the building of armaments, is to invite its own destruction.
For just one hundred years the North American continent has held the practical example of the impotency of the war-spirit where there is no war machinery.
By the Bush memorandum of agreement one hundred years ago it was provided that there should be no guns, forts, or naval ships on the greatest national boundary line of the world--4000 miles across the American continent between the United States and Canada. Nowhere else in the world have armed men attempted invasion, and yet provoked no war, no reprisal. What might have been the relations between the United States and Canada when the "Fenians" armed in New England and attempted a raid across the border, if there had been armies and fortifications on that border?
How securely now dwells in Canada $100,000,000 of the Bank of England reserve gold! When German representatives in the United States talk of Germany's right to invade Canada and get that gold. Uncle Sam only smiles and frowns. And the smile and the frown are potential. That boundary has been consecrated to peace; and what would be thought of the proposal, did Germany command the seas, that Uncle Sam accept some money or promises to pay and permit the German armies to go through, according to the proposal to Belgium?