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Show 06 G7 <0 this new nationalism has always come. upon the nations in the hour of victory, not indeed as a sign of moral strength, but as a symptom of moral degeneracy. war is an unmitigated . at it from whatever point of View you may. (Ap- .. , look curse . _ plause.) \\'e have heard tonight that we have a false idea, that only the fighter is the great and strong maxi, all others are what they call ‘Sniollvcoddlesfi If that is the case. then I misread the life of the best man that ever trod on earth. lle may be for you more than he is for me. For me he is the Great Teacher. .W hat is the lesson of his life? Did he. draw the sword? His people did not greet him as they should. because he did not Come With a sword as they expected their Messiah to come. Did he go forth with a lance? lle received the thrust of a lance into His lovin;r breast. lle suffered. but did not strike, and the greater hero (is he who may strike if he must. but who will ft'irego strik~ inq. not because he is a coward or because he is weak. but because he is in the full consciousness of his strength, in the full posses itawmuumuw u, sion of his noble courage. They who do not light are. after all, the better and the stronger men. \Vhat glory is there to a nation of eighty millions to have defeated a weak and decayingr nation of sixteen millions? You might as well say the bully who goes out to fight the little boy wins glory in that expedition. No, the greater glory is with him who forbears and forgives, who appeals to instice unto all. and we wish to create the impression that it is possible for the nations of this world to create a court where all (lissctlsions. all disputes and all differences may be adjudicated by reason and by justice. not by an appeal to pa. ion and by an appeal to the greater guns and the stronger uavies. As far as navies are concerned. in five years our present battleships will have become antiquated and ready to be thrown on the scrap heap. Now they are buildingr airships. Only yesterday I read a German article depicting a war of the future between America and Germany, and there we found the Americans, of course, defeated. It was a German who wrote that. If an American had written it the Germans would have been defeated. Defeated how? By a navy 0f airships. Our great Dreadnoughts were annihilated by a navy 0f airships. Out of the clouds, before they knew anything about it, came dynamite bombs and other bombs with fearful explo- sions, and that was the end of the American navy. (Laugltte r.) And so we have to join in the mad race to build the latest inven- tions, lest we be found not fully equipped for the contest which is to come. Now. if you have navies and airships you are just in the position of a boy that has a pistol. lle wants to see it go off occasionally. for why should he have a pistol? If he carries that pistol with him he is very apt to draw the pistol and shoot it, and sometimes to forget that that pistol is charged. And so with the navy-armed nations; they must use that navy sometimes , for they are a fearful investment. They are sent out on missions of friendship. and suppose they land in japan and some ylapanese takes affront at the appearance of the navy. and he, in a moment of illieonsidered wrath, proceeds from murmuring to blows. Then we will have international complications, and then, of course, we must use these navies. for why did we build them? \\ie have the pistol like the boy has the pistol. and we must see the pistol go off, Sometimes we come out Victoriously. but occasionally the game might be played the other way and we might have to pay for it. it is a very dangerous game in which we are engaged. lt would be nmeh better if we did not have the pistol: we would not get into all sorts of complications then, even at the risk of being called a nation of "mollycoddles." it is better to be a nation of mollycoddles. \\'hat gives us our national strength? What gives us our frreatest national strength? The sense of justice. the devotion to liberty, the recognition that we are rich enough in this country not to want possession of other people's land. We still have [and enough and will have for many and many a decade. 'l‘here may be rivalry in commerce. rivalry in industry. but the markets of the world will be open to us all the more readily the less the nations 0f the world will have to fear that we shall employ our resources to their undoing. llow our taxes pile up in consequence of this passion for war! The nations are groaning under a load which they cannot carry mttch longer, and we have other things to do. \\'e have to tight the white plague; we have to go into our shuns and bring: daylight to human beings that never had the opporv tunity to look up at the day star: we have to save little children that never knew the whole of life: we have to do a thousand and |