War and the Democracies

AMERICA SHOULD TAKE THE LEAD

By WILLIAM R. CASTLE, former Under Secretary of State and former American Ambassador to Japan

Before the Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, Virginia, July 8, 1939

HOW can a democracy avoid getting involved in war? That is one of the many questions of foreign policy which cannot be answered, except by asking another question. How can all mankind be made reasonable and wise? And that is a question which cannot be answered at all, today. If mankind learns to think wisely it will be only after ages of evolution, each generation being just one tiny bit wiser than the last; or else it will be because war and pestilence and earthquakes have left of mankind, only a solitary solon to consider the follies of his ancestors. Of one thing I am completely certain, and that is that wars waged in the name of democracy, or for the purpose of promoting democracy, are lies and delusions.

We fought in the World War to make the world safe for democracy, and we got a new kind of government, represented by Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, to go no further. If we fight another war for the same avowed purpose, we shall get dictators for all the rest of the nations, great and small. Even Great Britain and the United States would become dictatorships, although they would have the best chance of returning to normal, because the Republican tradition is pretty firmly bred into us. Nevertheless, we should have a hard time because there would have become infiltrated into our systems of government, trace of the poisons of the several kinds of dictatorships. We should have more than one kind to eliminate. We should have in our systems something of both fascism and communism, and there is not much to choose between them, except that the dictatorship of proletariats is probably harder to get rid of. It fools more people, and the people it fools are the kind who are easier to keep deceived than are the better educated. And then, of course, there are just the ordinary dictators who are neither fascists nor communists, the kind who flourish in the western hemisphere, and rule a large part of Latin America. These people have no patter of ideologies to justify themselves. They merely keep on ruling until the army goes back on them, or until they have become elder statesmen, by reason of age and wealth, and can retire, as they generally consider it wise to do, to some foreign country to spend their declining years. These are the story-book dictators, strictly local in their field of action, and have no thought of infecting other nations with their ideas— if they have any. They are easier to get rid of than the more pretentious variety, and the only danger of them lies in the fact that they get people used to the idea of a dictatorship. Even they, because they are our "good neighbors," would have some influence on our own post-war dictatorship.

What I want to emphasize now, however, is the indisputable fact that war and the aftermath of war tend inevitably to break down the Republican form of government. Parliaments and congresses at such times are compelled to delegate their power to the Executive because decisions must often be instantaneous and there is not time for debates. Political parties must bury their differences to unite in national defense, the economic system must be thrown into a new gear, and thus there is created, for the duration of the war at least, a totalitarian form of government. The Executive is commander-in-chief of the military forces and in case of a victorious war, he is almost certain to have the support of these forces after the fighting is over, if there should be a dispute with parliament. Men who have exercised great power are notoriously slow to surrender that power and, if they have exercised it successfully, great sections of the people urge them to keep on. The dictator is almost invariably a man of great qualities—almost invariably, also, a man with striking defects.

Dictators have a few things in common. They are almost always thoroughly conceited, which is probably natural as they have succeeded in putting themselves above their fellow men. They have no sense of humor, which is again natural, because a sense of humor is a sense of comparative values, and they weigh everybody against their inflated opinions of themselves. They tend to confuse themselves with the state. If dictators had the capacity to laugh at themselves, even if they could see themselves as history will depict most of them,strutting their little hour across the stage of life and time, they could longer be a menace. If the greatest of them, Napoleon Bonaparte, had had a sense of proportion, the history of the world would have been very different. If the littlest of them, those who confine their strutting to the narrow stage of their unimportant little countries, knew how absurd they were, history would not be changed because they do not make history but many a heartache would be transformed into rejoicing.

Let us stop for a moment to look at the dictators who confront the constitutional rules of today. How different the world would be if Hitler did not consider himself above the ordinary rules of morality, if he realized that all foreigners laugh at his bombast and his pretensions, even while they fear him because of the power he has over his own people.

Think of the position he held directly after Munich, and what he might have done for his nation if he had held himself to the same standards he expects from others. We sometimes wonder whether he knows that we know that it is the fault of the world that he came to power, that his own people revere him, not for himself, but because he knew the time had come to free Germany from the shackles of Versailles. He was clever enough to cash in on the national misery which we had done nothing to alleviate, even by words of hope. That cleverness was an attribute of greatness, but even a dictator cannot live by cleverness alone. This Hitler realizes and he seeks through his bombastic speeches, which are accepted because of his personal magnetism, and his seizures of territory, to strengthen the bonds which hold the German people to him. He does not realize that what he calls patriotism is fast becoming self-glorification; that his growing megalomania is dragging his country into bitter danger. He has already confused the nation with himself. Or Stalin, since we are only dishonest when we fail to include the Soviet in the list of dictatorships. Stalin takes us straight back a thousand years. Apparently without the military genius, he has the character of Attila the Hun; he is an oriental with all the brutality and cunning which one associates with the oriental character. Stalin talks little, His still professed communism is only the shield behind which crouches his limitless and sadistic lust for power. He is the most flagrant modern example of the ruthless dictator, upheld by an ideology to which he pays lip-service, and by the fear inspired by his methods of dealing with those who disagree. Nothing more terrible could happen to the world than a renewed outpouring of the dark hosts of Asia under the leadership of men like Stalin.

Mussolini started the fashion of dictators, and at first did great things for his country. Then he began to lose his sense of proportion and his splendid patriotism degenerated into eulogies of the glory of Rome—as though modern Italy had inherited the greatness of the Empire. He loves publicity as Hitler loves it and as Stalin hates it—which is one reason why Stalin is more sinister. Mussolini has become dangerous because nobody knows where his determination not to be outdone by Hitler will lead him. That was the apparent reason for the so-called "conquest" of Albania, since Albania was already under Italian influence. As an Army officer in Washington said, "It is high time that we proved the military glory of the United States by conquering Haiti." People say that Mussolini plays second fiddle to Hitler. He is a far bigger and finer man than Hitler, but leads a weaker nation. There is always danger that he will be irritated into taking some fatal action. One can only hope that he will restrain himself, will show his real stature by conserving wisely the interests of the Italian people. These do not lie in warlike adventures.

Or to touch on much smaller figures. Cardenas has been made a dangerous figure by us because we have permitted him to flout international law and practically to destroy our great interests in Mexico. He is dangerous to his country because he has turned what might have been prosperity into the deepest misery——all in the name of liberalism. I heard the greatest expert we have on Mexico say a few days ago that if we had had an Ambassador with courage, one able to think straight, he could have prevented all that happened. But Mr. Daniels was obsessed with the good neighbor policy in its aspect of a one-way street. He hated international bankers and was distrustful of all oil companies, so he seemed to be pleased with what happened. Cardenas is a small man, just well enough known to make one of our commentators say that the new Government propaganda ships which sail down the east coast of South America ought to be named, Good Neighbor, Cardenas, and Expropriation. And we must remember the dictator of Bolivia, German Busch, who calls himself a man of the right, of the fascist rather than the communist persuasion, who is quite willing, however, to keep the spoils which his racial predecessor had raped from foreign capital and to use them to build closer relations with Germany to the detriment of the United States.

So much for our modern dictators, who, it is believed by many, endanger the peace of the world. I have touched on only a few of them, but they are representative. In addition to the traits they have in common, they have, fortunately for the democracies, one strong negative desire. They do not want war. It is true that they are willing to take many risks because they have certain aims which conflict with the policies of other nations. They gamble on the chance that their gradual approach to those aims may not actually start a war. Therefore, the danger today is that, in the pursuit of their aims, they may sometimes go too far or too fast and bring on the very catastrophe which they dread. And the general character of most dictators, their vanity, which results in aggressiveness and contempt of the beliefs and ideals of others, makes the danger really serious. But please always deny vigorously the idea that the dictators want war or that they are eager to destroy democracy. They are not in the least interested in the destruction of democracy as such. They would probably prefer that the countries against whom they have predatory designs should be democracies because they believe that democracies would be less effective in either self-defense or offense.

For the dictatorships, a defeat would probably mean anarchy; a successful war would probably keep the rulers in power. For the democracies, there is not even a gambling chance—a war, successful or unsuccessful, would mean the destruction of democratic government. The dictators do not want to run the risk of war; the democracies must not run that risk.

So, again we ask the question, how to keep out? Even if there is no specific which will make us immune from danger, there are certainly many measures which can be taken to lessen the risks.

These must be carefully thought out, because they must not be measures which will merely penalize one nation for the benefit of other nations, nor must they be measures which will unintentionally put a democratic nation on the side of the aggressors. We must never forget, furthermore, that it is seldom any specific thing which involves a country in war. It is the combination of a great many things which gradually creates a war spirit. Only the will to war actually brings war. The will not to be involved is the best possible antitoxin. But, the will can always be influenced by propaganda.

In discussing the specific measures which may be taken to lessen the danger of war, I shall speak of our own country as representative of the democracies. This is necessary because we understand better our own problems and can better envisage world problems through our own. Furthermore, although our problems may be less acute as far as military defensive measures are concerned than are those of the

European democracies, they are more acute through the danger of propaganda and of unsound financial policies.

Let us, therefore, look first at propaganda. This is generally spoken of as foreign propaganda, but it is seldom that really foreign propaganda is effective. It is foreign only in the sense that it may be put forward by citizens whose roots go back to one or another foreign country, either in a racial or a philosophical sense. You know as well as I do that Russian propaganda put out from Moscow, and intended to show the glories of the Soviet as against the alleged miseries of our American form of government, would not have a chance in this country. But, you also know that the ideology of Moscow, disseminated in the United States by apparently good Americans who are actually working for the Communist Party, is poisoning many of our institutions, and is temporarily seducing many of our finest young people, both men and women. You know that such obviously foreign inspired propaganda as that of the famous—or infamous—Bund meeting in Madison Square Garden, has no influence whatever on American opinion except as an irritant. Good Americans, on the other hand, who advocate something like a fascist form of government, to rescue us from the economic trouble we are in now, may be plausible and dangerous through their very sincerity.

By far the most effective form of propaganda is that carried on by government. This is the very technique of dictatorship and when it happens in a democratic country, it indicates, even without any other signs, a rapid drift towards totalitarian government. Government propaganda at first is almost always indirect and has, for this reason, a certain subtlety. When aiming toward dictatorship it generally strives to build up the reputation of an individual so that he can be sure of getting more and more votes. This appears to be in the democratic tradition. The man who is being built up as dictator may not himself direct this propaganda, as he must seem to have nothing to do with it, but it is almost inconceivable that he should be unconscious of what is being done. At any rate, he is consistently built up as the friend of the poor and the oppressed, as the one who will bring justice to the forgotten man, as the sole individual who can keep the country out of war. Of course, the dictator-to-be talks modestly about these things; his speeches drip with the essence of humanitarianism and are full of light and hope. He never admits to himself that he is aiming at dictatorship, even for the good of the people, and when he becomes a dictator, he still does not admit the appellation as applying to himself. With government propaganda going on unceasingly through press and radio, movies and carefully planned official statements, often on quite other subjects, it is almost impossible for the man on the street or on the farm to keep firmly fixed in his mind the cardinal fact that so long as the democratic form of government is intact the individual does not so much matter; that so long as we have democracy the danger of getting into war is infinitely less than under the most benevolent dictator. The first and most important lesson to commit to memory is, therefore, that any drift away from democratic cooperation in government is a drift towards war. In a regimented society, the populace follows the will of the leader—they want war if he wants war—, whereas in a democratic society the threat of war instantly arouses conflicting passions and the necessity of popular agreement. There can be no participation in war until there is a common will. One might say that the dictator could be a man who would always will against war, but the chances are overwhelming that in the course of time, he would come into conflict with some liberty-loving faction and feel that war was necessary to maintain his own position.

Granted then, that we are convinced that our own Republic must cling to a democratic form of government and that other nations, whether monarchies or republics, must alsohold fast to democratic principles, what can we do further which will decrease the danger of involvement in war? In the first place, we should all be prepared to resist invasion, and, here in the United States, we must also prepare in such manner that invasion of any part of the western hemisphere will be perilous, if not impossible. The Monroe Doctrine, which was one of the most unselfish doctrines ever promulgated, is a part of our tradition and a part of our national life. We cannot scrap it without increasing war dangers, at least in the long view since if foreign nations are permitted to dominate, politically, any of the nations of Latin America, their hatreds and their problems are immediately transformed to the western hemisphere. Our ideal must be limitation of armaments among nations and for this ideal we must always strive; but, until it is realized—and I am afraid that it will not be realized in its fullness for many long years—we must be ready to meet force with force. Certainly, however, there is no sense in going mad on the subject, no sense in building up a military establishment beyond what is needed. Our navy will never have to meet the combined navies of the world, and when we turn back the Philippines to the Filipinos, we shall have no distant outposts to defend. In this we have the advantage over Great Britain, which must always consider the Empire, although, like us, Great Britain will never face the problem of building a navy to meet the world. All our possessions, including Hawaii and the Panama Canal, may well be called coast defense.

So far as aeroplanes are concerned, we should build as sanely, and even more cautiously than we increase our ships. I heard a man recently, discussing the projected tremendous increase in the number of our aeroplanes. "We need the planes," he said, "but our planners do not realize that above all we must build up a tremendous anti-aircraft defense. A billion dollars would not be too much to spend immediately in the defense of New York against enemy aeroplanes." (You will probably gather the fact that the man was himself a New Yorker.) "That is very interesting," I said, "but who is going to attack New York, Canada or Mexico?" I have no doubt that he considered the question bad form, but after fumbling for a moment, he answered, "I am convinced that Germany has so developed its aviation that it could send out a fleet of planes able to bomb New York and then return to Berlin."

Talk of that kind is meant, of course, to frighten us into adoption of an over-balanced program. We need reasonable defenses, naval and aerial, and we need adequate land forces, but we do not need to turn our country into an armed camp, and above all, we must never give the impression that we are preparing for an aggressive war. We must not make other nations afraid, for fear is a potent war-breeder.

One great danger to the democracies, ourselves included, is that, when building up military defensive weapons, we may neglect the most fundamental aspect of material preparedness. Without financial soundness, we shall never be able to meet difficulties on short notice, nor, in case of a general war, to supply the deficiencies of our allies. Government credit must be, at all times, beyond question. It is not a proof that credit is good when banks absorb government bonds in order to prevent a collapse of values which would wreck them. Credit is good when men are hopeful of the future and are glad to put their savings in government bonds because they are the safest among many safe investments. Such schemes as have recently been introduced in Congress for the conscription of wealth in wartime would have only the effect of drying up the reservoir from which war expenses must be drawn. Politicians would like to saddle the rich with the responsibilities of all and this can never successfully be done, because when wealth has been conscripted it is gone, whereas if it is reasonably taxed it is an inexhaustible spring.

It may be that you will get a more satisfying meal from chicken than from eggs, but when the chickens have all been eaten, there will be no more eggs—and no longer any possibility of chicken. I doubt whether the dictators, if they have any designs on us, would want to see the United Stares adopt a dictatorial form of government, because they believe that this would mean an immediate attempt to curtail expenses, to balance the budget, to put the nation on a financial basis, capable of meeting sudden and dangerous emergencies. The democracies must remember that every dollar wasted makes them that much less prepared for war, that dollars spent on useless armaments, furthermore, are just as much wasted as dollars spent on roads and bridges which fulfill no economic necessity, far more thoroughly wasted than dollars spent on projects which have some secondary economic value, such as stadia, where physical strength can be built, or libraries in sections where they may not be vitally needed. The democracies must remember that if a nation has not the self-restraint and the courage to be thrifty, it makes itself the prey of the rapacious. Financial instability invites war just as surely as military impotence.

Absolute confidence in representative democracy as the best form of government; this confidence backed by military and financial strength; the whole machine manipulated by an alert and wary citizenry—these are the fundamental bulwarks against war, which are common to all democratic countries. But, there are also certain specific measures which may be taken. You cannot, by legislation, make a people neutral, but you can enforce such measures of neutrality as international law has proved to be useful. There are also possible deterrents from war in local regulations, which must generally be in the nature of restraints on the free action of citizens. This brings us, so far as the United States is concerned, to a discussion of the so-called neutrality legislation, insofar as it is meant to keep us out of war.

Some two years ago, just after the present mis-named neutrality act was passed, I happened to be speaking on the subject, on the same platform with one of the principal Senatorial proponents of the bill. As we left the platform, he said, "Some day you will be mighty sorry that you criticised this act, which is as nearly perfect as any legislation ever passed by Congress." It gives me a certain satisfaction that today this same gentleman has been vigorously attacking some of the same points in the legislation that I attacked that day and is vociferously insisting on changes in the law. It is fair to say that he does not agree with me on all points because he believes in adding specific powers to the already broad powers which belong to the President under the Constitution, many specific powers which make him actually the arbiter between war and peace. (Please remember that when I speak of the President in this connection, I speak of the office, not of the man, although I have to admit that the temperament of an individual President would make the powers granted him more or less dangerous.) Congress must never abdicate its last remaining prerogatives, the power to declare war and the power to send American troops abroad. Quite aside from the fact that it means dictatorship, I do not want to place these powers in the hands of any one man. You remember what a southern Senator said, in a different connection, a few years ago: "No good man would ever want such powers and no bad man should ever be given them." On this point of giving extraordinary powers to the President the Senator and I shall always disagree, unless he finally realizes what such powers may lead to and has another change of heart. When Mr. Hoover was President, a similar situation arose, but when I urged him not to take such powers, he said I ought to trust him not to be foolish.

The neutrality act forbids the shipment of arms and ammunition to any belligerent as soon as the President declares that a state of war exists. This was the principal point onwhich the Senator and I parted company originally, but on which we are now in substantial agreement. I can see very clearly the arguments in favor of an international pact that no one shall sell implements of war to any belligerent. The economic argument against such a pact is, of course, that if sales are prohibited, every nation will be compelled to build up vast armament factories, a thoroughly wasteful procedure which would tend to prolong depression. The arguments in favor of such an international pact are moral, rather than economic. Should materials for the slaughter of human beings be bought and sold any more than materials like narcotics which bring about the slow destruction of human beings? In this conflict between the economic and the moral is the dilemma, when we speak of an international pact. Yet you must remember that this moral issue is totally new, that until recent years nobody thought there was any more evil in the sale of arms than in the sale of umbrellas. The trouble with a local law on the subject is that it prevents our manufacturers from selling but does not restrict international sales, which continue, just as before we made any law.

It is true that this general prohibition against the sale of arms is technically neutral, just as it is technically neutral to sell to all concerned. When the law applies only to us it merely forces belligerents to buy elsewhere or to intensify their own production. It puts us out of step with the rest of the world and makes neutrality, more than ever, difficult to interpret. But there is in the embargo a very serious danger at the present time, one that is psychological. It is the result of the division of nations of the world today. What I mean is this: the only demonstrable effect of our embargo in the case of an European war would be that it would prohibit American sales to England and France, nations which would presumably be our friends. It would not change the situation for Germany because the blockade would have largely prevented Germany from buying in any case. In other words, in case of such a war, we should see ourselves penalizing only the democracies. The almost certain result would be an outburst of popular feeling, which would force Congress to drop the embargo and permit general sales. And you must never forget that such a change of rules during the course of the war would almost inevitably mean our own involvement. Even if I had believed in this prohibition at the beginning, I should, today, whole-heartedly agree with the Secretary of State that now, before it is too late to do it with safety, we ought to return to the custom prescribed by international law, that neutrals may sell what they want so long as they are willing to sell to all comers.

The suggestions made by Mr. Hull in his letters to the Chairmen of the appropriate Committees in the House and the Senate on the subject of new neutrality legislation seemed to me excellent. But it is quite unfair to hold Mr. Hull responsible for the so-called Bloom Bill, a very dangerous piece of legislation, based, to be sure, on what he said in his letters, but introducing many other provisos which dangerously concentrate all power in the hands of the President. For example, Mr. Hull suggests prohibiting American ships from entering combat areas—a worthy, if somewhat Utopian ideal. The Bloom Bill expands this idea by giving the President the right to define combat areas. This would give him another chance to be unneutral, as he has been in declaring, or refusing to declare, that a state of war exists according as to whether he felt the embargoes and prohibitions of the act would aid the popular or the unpopular side. It would give him the authority through his definition of the combat areas, to drag us into war whether we wanted to fight or not. We can be perfectly certain that so long as the President is a human being, with the likes and the hatreds of a human being, he would declare combat areas to be those in which the entrance of American ships might be of assistanceto the particular belligerent he hated and that equally war zones in which American ships might help the belligerent he liked would never be so defined. It is fair to say that this particular clause of the bill is considered by all, except those who cringe under the lash of the Administration, as one of the most dangerous bits of legislation ever presented to an American Congress. According to the Bloom Bill, Americans are prohibited from traveling on ships of the belligerents. Would it not be wiser and more statesmanlike, more consonant with the liberty of the individual in a democratic country merely to rule that Americans traveling on ships of the belligerents would do so at their own risk? I have no sympathy with any American who risks the peace of his country by traveling on a belligerent vessel merely because he wants to, and I am sure that most Americans would agree. If every passport issued stated that such travel was at the risk of the traveler and that the United States Government took no responsibility and if such ideas were widely publicized, people in general would condemn those who ignored the warning. Such travel, however, can never be made actually a crime in the eyes of the public and a change in wording would avoid the invitable comparison with the old prohibition law, the discussions on curtailment of individual rights.

Very few people in these days would seriously object to legislation that goods bought by belligerents be paid for before they leave the United States. It was not the unpaid bills which dragged us into the World War to help the bankers, as so many radicals claim, but the fact remains that nobody, after our experiences in the last war, could successfully object to an embargo against loans, or to strict regulations covering the collections of funds in the country. If these things do not actually cause war, they do irritate and this is dangerous. Nor can anyone bring up valid objections to the Munitions Control Board, so long as it is not political and so long as its purpose is to insure publicity on all sales of arms and ammunitions. In other words, what Mr. Hull asked for in his letters is to preserve government neutrality while giving individual citizens as much liberty as is consistent with the safety of the majority. He would never have written the clauses of the bill which contradict his own purposes and there may well be truth in the story widely believed in Congress that the Bloom Bill was the work of the President himself. Whether or not the bill becomes law, we must never forget that it gives to the President in advance of war dictatorial powers far greater than those which war would actually give him, that it makes him a dictator while the United States is at peace.

The Government itself should never sell arms to belligerents or to prospective belligerents. The Government should not loan money to them, but on the other hand, it should not prohibit normal transactions of its citizens. The sad era of national prohibition of liquor should have taught us the dangers of any prohibition which people do not consider fair. The Government has always, however, its own heavy obligations. It ought, above everything, to realize its own responsibility to keep things on an even keel to prevent the growth of a war spirit. It should refrain from propagandawhich stirs up this spirit; it should restrain its officials from making insulting remarks about other nations. Whatever Mr. Ickes or Mr. Roosevelt may think of Mr. Hitler—and probably what they think of Mr. Hitler pretty well agrees with what we think—neither of them is able to speak unofficially and, therefore, when they go out of their way to insult, they are not only forgetting the decencies and amenities of international relations, but are endangering the peace of this country. You may remind me that Mr. Chamberlain spoke bitterly of Hitler after that indefensible seizure of Czechoslovakia. He certainly did. But, he made the entirely proper and accurate accusation that Hitler had personally promised him to go no further, and then had broken his word, the word pledged to Chamberlain himself. In other words, Mr. Chamberlain sticks strictly to his own business. He does not fling insults about, but holds fast to facts. He knows that one of the best bulwarks of peace is courtesy. He knows that unnecessarily to spread and intensify hatred is an assured road to war.

Governments must always be accurately informed as to what is going on in the world. For this they must have a first-class foreign service, men trained and thoughtful and honest. In 1914, we had no suspicion that war was about to break. In 1939, we have been fed on war stories, have been led to think war inevitable. Yet our wiser foreign service officers have patiently pointed out that nobody wants war and that it can and should be avoided. It is the political appointees who talk before Congressional committees and they preach that war is inevitable. This fits in well with a drive for expansion of armament. The same thing always happens when foreign policy is exploited for its effect on domestic politics. But the game is far too dangerous for any democratic government to play. It cannot, like a dictatorial government, put out the fires it has started. A democratic nation is very slow to rouse, but once roused, it is also slow to cool.

All the suggestions I have made do not insure peace, for peace is not a matter of legislation. It is the full flowering of common sense, which demands good temper and self-restraint, honesty and courtesy. It demands that neither we, nor any other democracy should try to interfere with the form of government our neighbors choose for themselves, unless that government directly meddles in our concerns. There can be no permanent peace until mankind has learned to think wisely, but that does not mean that we should give up hope or falter in the work we have to do. Every believer in democracy can make himself the focus of sane, constructive thought. He can gather others around him, can spread the gospel of peace until, in the course of time, its tenets take root in all the nations. For two or three hundred years after Christ, it would have seemed merely silly to any except Christians to suggest that Christianity had a great future, but, in spite of this, it soon dominated the civilized world. There is no reason why this will to peace should not be made to dominate the world of today. But, to bring this about, there must be thousands of intelligent, thoughtful and enthusiastic workers. America should take the lead.