be the first steps in an attempt to extend our sway over the relatively feeble nations below our borders. And we must confess that our diplomacy has not always been such as to remove these fears. A South American of eminence is reported to have said recently, "To live on the shady side of the big stick is not pleasant."

It is unfortunate that the Monroe Doctrine, intended for the protection of our weaker neighbors, should have come to be construed in some quarters as an attempt to dominate them. President Monroe's words were "The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers." They were intended as a warning to the world that we should not allow any further permanent occupation of territory or acquisition of political control in the American hemisphere by a non-American power.

Now that some of the South American peoples have become stable in their government, and powerful nations, it would be courteous to cease talking of ourselves as the guardian of their liberties, and to consider the Monroe doctrine as upheld by the united will and might of the peoples of North and South America.) In Mr. Wilson's address to the Pan-American Conference, he declared that there is in it "no claim of guardianship or thought of wards, but instead, a full and honorable association as of partners between ourselves and our neighbors, in the interest of all America north and south . . . All the governments of America stand, as far as we are concerned, upon a feeling of genuine equality and unquestioned independence."

The Monroe doctrine is, after all, nothing but a special application of the principle of the self-determination of nations, for the sake of which we fought in the Great War. Indeed, Mr. Wilson has proposed "that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world; that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful."

Nothing is of more vital moment than that we should convince the world of our pacific intentions, our absolute determination to infringe on the rights and liberties of no other people, together with an equal determination to stand with the other moral forces in the world in opposing such aggression on the part of any other nation. While maintaining a reasonable preparedness for possible emergencies, we must avoid belying our pacific declarations by seeking to outbuild the navies of other nations or by maintaining a large standing army. As we are the strongest and securest among the nations, it is our plain duty to lead the way toward disarmament. Happily we are so situated that we can avoid the creation of a great military establishment-which, as Washington warned his countrymen, is always "inauspicious to liberty, and particularly hostile to republican liberty."

The common sense of the American people refuses to believe that the war of man against man is a necessary evil, ineradicable from human life. We confidently look forward to the time of man's coming of age, when he shall lay aside his foolish passions, his

insensate will to destroy, and learn to put all his energy and his devotion into the great common war against nature. That this time may come quickly, we must keep before our people the remembrance of the horror and the wickedness of war-not to belittle the heroism of our forefathers, or of the youth of today, but to remind ourselves that such terrible sacrifices must not again be necessary, that a better way must be found to maintain justice among men.

The Great War took the lives of some eight million men in battle, and was directly or indirectly responsible, according to the Danish Bureau of Statistics, for at least forty million deaths. We, to be sure, because of our tardy entrance, lost but one in two hundred of our young men. But England lost one in four, and France one in three. The great increase in the prevalence of many diseases will take many years to offset. The influenza epidemic, due to the war, killed its millions-very largely the young and strong; tuberculosis has a new hold all over Europe; syphilis has been widely spread; famine and pestilence are not yet under control. In the third year after the Armistice, millions of people are close to starvation; many of these must still succumb.

The suffering of this war touched our people but lightly. But it has come close enough to us to teach us its lesson. The horrors of the trenches; the heartbreak of wives, sweethearts, and mothers; the miseries of the inhabitants of occupied territory-property plundered, homes destroyed, women violated, whole sections of the population deported; the terror on land from the air, the terror at sea from the submarine; the constant strain, the lack of food-it is a wonder that any human beings remained sane after the ordeal.

The lesson should be seared into us. For if another great war comes it is likely to be far worse than this. The potentialities of destructiveness in high explosives have been but half revealed. Whole cities could be wiped out in a night by bombs from a fleet of giant airplanes. Submarine warfare is capable of indefinite expansion. Already many new poison gases have been discovered; and, in spite of international agreements, any big war will almost certainly make greater use of this type of weapon. Tank warfare, warfare by means of poisons and disease-germs—with the experience of this war to build on, we should find another great war far more terrible and involving more and more completely the entire population.

Materially, Europe has thrown away the progress of a generation. Scores of thousands of towns and villages have been wiped out of existence, fruit-trees and shade-trees have been cut down over great areas, the soil has been so torn up and buried under the subsoil as to be in some places irrecoverable. The enormous waste of the world's none too large supplies of oil, coal, copper, platinum, and many other natural resources, is a permanent loss to mankind. Much of the machinery of the world is badly worn, railways are in poor shape, tools and raw materials are everywhere lacking. In addition to this loss of capital, the warring nations have incurred two hundred billion dollars' worth of debts which it will take generations of toil to pay off, if indeed they can ever be paid.

Even we, who got, relatively speaking, but a taste of the war, have found the cost of living practically doubled for the time being. And our expenditures for war, past and prospective, will continue to eat up far the greater part of our revenue. According to a report of the United States Bureau of Standards

for the year ending June 30, 1920, the national expenditure for that year was divided as follows: 1 per cent for public welfare, including agriculture, development of natural resources, education, public health, and labor; 3 per cent for public works; 3.2 per cent for the administration of the government; 92.8 per cent for war and the maintenance of the military establishment.

Moreover, the loss is not merely material, it is moral. There comes, to be sure, a wave of patriotism and courage, of fortitude and national solidarity, that for the time being makes war seem a moral blessing. But with the relaxing of the strain there follows the inevitable moral exhaustion, a tired acquiescence in selfishness and graft, a wave of restlessness and crime, a great increase in license of all sorts, prodigal expenditure, wild frivolity, and sensuality. Cruelty, callousness to suffering, and contempt of life are, of course, from the first engendered, as well as the spirit of animosity toward the nation's enemies; and these linger long after peace is signed. We have been sad witnesses in this country to the prevalence of prejudice and hatred, directed not only toward our enemies, but toward those who have differed from the majority in their views. Minority opinion has been persecuted, and intellectual dishonesty has been fostered. It will take us as a people some time yet to quite recover from the distorting effect of the war-passions, and see many matters in their true perspective.

Finally, every war turns men's energies away from the other problems that cry to be solved, diverts their enthusiasms from the undertakings of peace and the reforms that are needed. We have to pay for the hatred stirred up against the enemy nation by a