THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 18, 1909. THE WORLD IN A BELLIGERENT MOOD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3192, 18 May 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MAY 18, 1909. THE WORLD IN A BELLIGERENT MOOD.

"The future historian of the first decade of the twentieth century wil be puzzled. He will find that thel world at the opening of the century was in an extraordinarily belligerent mood, and that the mood was well nigh universal, dominating the New World as well as the Old, the Orient no less than the Occident. He will find that prepartions for war, especially among nations which confessed allegiance to the Prince of Peace, were carried forward with tremendous energy and enthusiasm, and that the air was filled with pro phetic voices, picturing national calamities, and predicting bloody and world embracing conflicts." So writes Charles Edward Jefferson in the "Atlantic Monthly." His subject is "The Delusion of Militarism," and his article takes a world-wide sweep. He continues thus:—"Alongside of ths fact he will find another fact no less conspicuous and universal—that everybody of importance in the early years of the twentieth century was an ardent champion of peace. His perplexity will become no less when he considers the incontrovertible proofs that never since time b?gan were the masses of men so peaceably inclined us in just this turbulent and war-rumoUr-tormented twentieth century. He will find that science and commerce and religion had co-operated in bringing the na-

tions together, that the wage-earners in all the European countries had begun to speak of one another as brothers, and that the growing spirit of fraternity and co-operation had expressed itself in such organisations aa the Inter-parliamentary Ur.ion, with a membership of twenty five hundred legislators and statesmen, and various other societies and leagues of scholars and merchants and lawyers and jurists. He will find delegations paying friendly visits to neighbouring countries, and will read, dumfounded, what the English and German papers were saying about invasions, and the need of inn-eased armaments, at the very tittle that twenty thousand Germans in Berlin were applauding to the echo the friendly greeting of a company of English

visitors. His bewilderment, however, will reach its climax when ho discovers that it was after the establishment of an international court that all nations voted to increase their armaments. Everybbdy conceded that it was better to settle international disputes by reason rather than by torce, but as soon as the legal machinery was created, by i means of which the sword could be dispensed with, there was a fresh fury to perfect at once all the instruments of destruction. After each new peace conference there was a fresh cry for more guns. Certain facts will surely, some day, burn themselves into the consciousness of all thinking men. The expensiveness of the armed peace is just beginning to catch the eye of legislators. The extravagance of the militarists will bring about their ruin. They cry for battleships at ten million dollars each, and_Parliament or Congress votes them. But later on it is explained that battleships are worthless without cruisers, cruisers are worthless without torpedo boats, torpedo boats are worthless withoJt torpedo boat destroyers, all these are worthless without colliers, ammunition boats, hospital boats, repair boats; and these all together are worthless without deeper harbours, longer docks, more spacious navy yards. And what are all these worth without officers and men, upon whose education millions of dollars have been lavished? When at last the navy has been fairly launched, the officials of the army come forward and demonstrate that a navy, after all, ia worthless unless it is supported by a colossal land force. Thus are the governments led on, stap by step, into a treacherous morass, in which they are at first entangled, and finally overwhelmed. All the great nations are to-day facing deficits, caused in every case by the military and naval what a tangle the finances of Russia and Japan have been brought by militarists is known to everybody. Germany has, in a single generation, increased her national debt from ighteen million dollars to more than one billion dollars. The German Minister of Finance looks wildly round in search of new sources of national income. Financial experts confess that France is approaching the limit of her sources of revenue. Her deficit is created by her army and navy. The British Government is always seeking for new devices by means of which to fill a depleted treasury. Her Dreadnoughts keep her poor. Italy has for years staggered on the verge of bankruptcy because she carries an overgrown army on her back. Even United Sta'es faces this year a deficit of over a hundred million dollars, largely du; to the' one hundred and thirty mulbns they are spending on their navy."