The Germs of War
A Study in Preparedness
By SCOTT NEARING
1. Peace Game or War Game.
The American people are being urged to "prepare." Is it preparation for peace or preparation for war?
If the preparedness agitation looks toward peace, it must meet with the approval of the people of the United States, because as a people they are for peace. Their ideals are peaceful; their traditions are not warlike. Both in theory and in practice the American Democracy has set its face toward liberty, justice, and righteousness—ideals that are most easily reached by travelers who take the paths of peace.
The point was well stated by the President in his Speech at Pittsburgh (January 29, 1916): "America is nothing if it consists merely of each of us; it is something only if it consists of all of us, and it can not consist of all of us unless our spirits are banded together in a common enterprise. That common enterprise is the enterprise of liberty and justice and right." Two days before, in New York, the President had said: "In all the belligerent countries men without distinction of party have drawn together to accomplish a successful prosecution of the war. Is it not a more difficult and a more desirable thing that all Americans should put partisan prepossessions aside and draw together for the successful prosecution of peace? I covet that distinction for America; and I believe that America is going to enjoy that distinction."
Liberty and justice and right are to be made the cornerstone of peace, and America is to be the builder of an enduring temple in her honor. This democracy, founded on the proposition that all men are created free and equal, stands first for those things that lead toward the equalizing of opportunity. With equal fervor the democracy stands against all things that point toward tyranny, depotism, and vested might.
