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ISSUES AND EVENTS
ment. ln View of the pro-English sentiment in this
country, it is significant, that any person is viewed with
suspicion if he suggests to increase our naval force that
it be larger than that of England. Why do we thus
yield the palm of superiority to England? For what
ieason? Why not begin on our coast defenses; perfect
them; enlarge our army, so as to properly man them,
thus securing our first line of defense; then at leisure
take our time to make such further additions to our
army and navy as experience during the period of
Europe’s recuperation may dictate? That is the com-
mon sense way. If we are to adopt the warlike policy
of a big army and navy, why not have the best and big-
gest on earth? Why accord first place to England or
anyone else? Unless we do this, have we secured the
safety which we pretend to seek by the enlargement?
The ex-President in his zeal to nag the President and
punish Germany, because of what he says she did to
Belgium, forgets that any other country other than
Belgium has been overrun in this war, and made deso-
late and waste. With a true man, this would not have
happened, but for a shifty politician and candidate, it
appears easy enough. The press of the country has
already made known Belgium's fate, and her sad story;
but Greece or Poland with a worse fate excites in the ex-
President, according to his recent Brooklyn speech, no
emotion of pity. His heart is not touched, save by
"votes.” It would be useless to sympathize with any
country whose miserable condition is not well adver-
tised by the British. Td do so would be wasted energy,
as it would have no effect on the people. The ex-
President has no time to sympathize, or assist in mak-
ing sympathy for Greece or Poland.
. Our Chameleon President.
But in this matter of political agility, the President
205
is perhaps more expert than the ex-President, for the
President after his nomination at Baltimore became ‘a
progressive, assuming positions condemned in his
writings, embraced Mr. Bryan, who he had hoped the
country could be rid of. He went back on the Panama
Canal tolls in favor of our coast-wise shipping to please
England. He now courts predatory wealth which he
once opposed. Three months ago when he opposed a
big army and navy, he said, “We are threatened from
no quarter”; he now says, “Every hour makes the sit-
uation more difficult to handle.” Yet he fails to tell the
country from whence comes the increased difficulty;
and in what way an increased armament would relieve
that situation or make it easier to handle. The Presi-
dent thus presents himself as a shifty politician, rather
than as a wise statesman. If he perseveres, he will yet
catch up with the ex-President.
Let the country get down from excitement which
' has been worked up by the munition plants, and r:e“n-
ly adopt a reasonable and proper plan for the better-
ment of our army and navy, and a gradual increase of
the same, even working out a system of military train-
ing suited to our need. And above all to inculcate les-
sons of economy and thrift among the people and
among the legislators and ofiicials of the country. Let
us learn first the arts of peace, so that when war comes.
we may be the better prepared to learn successfully the
arts of war.
The President and the ex-President in common with
many of the people have become unduly alarmed. It
is a case of hysteria. Let us get over this, then as sen-
sible people go to work. Adopt a reasonable program
of preparation for national defense. We will have plenty
of time before Europe recovers of its exhaustion to do
this. In the meantime, let the parties make suitable
choice of presidential candidates.
The Strong Nation
By CHARLES FERGUSON.
There is going on day by day-before the eyes of the
American people a demonstration of national strength
such as the world has not heretofore seen. The actual
strength of Germany is unprecedented. It is nothing
to what might be; the social organization of Germany
is full of archaisms, contradictions, imperfections-yet
‘Germany is, beyond all question of observant and un-
impassioned men, the strongest extant nation. If the
United States is to be made stronger than Germany--
which of course is possible-it is necessary that we clear
our eyes of passion and our lips of rancor, and that we
find out and declare to each other the real cause of
the strength of Germany. We may then consider ways
and means for bettering that excellent instruction.
Now the plain reason why Germany is stronger
than Great Britain or France or Russia or the United
States is that her working organization and her fight-
ing organization are not wholly discordant-as is the
case with the other nations. The significant, the sym-
bolic, fact is that a great organizer of private business
in Germany can become overnight a great organizer
of public business-without making any revolutionary
changes in his mental processes. Thus Mr. Karl Hel-
ferich can pass from a directorship of the Deutsche
Bank to the control of the imperial war treasury, with-
out reversing the methods or motives of thought that
have won him distinction as a promoter of private en-
terprises. And the most notable business men of Ger-
many, such as Ballin or Vonsiemans, when called into
war council in Wilhelm Strasse, are confronted merely
with an intenser form of the very same problems of
imperial economies with which their great private pro-
Jects in peace times have made them thoroughly
familiar.
Back of this significant fact lies the broader fact that
modern imperial Germany may be said to be the young-
est of the great industrial nations. The spirit of its
public law has been developed since the rise through-
out the world of that most portentous of all social
creations within the last semi-millennium, namely the
modern business system-the system of credit, contract,
corporate organization and instantaneous communi-
cation, which has developed the most powerful agencies
of social control known to the history of politics since
the decline of the secular authority of the mediaeval
church. England, France and the United States-with
their 17th and 18th century constitutions-are like
stiff old men with hardened arteries resisting the trans-
fusion of the hot blood of modern business. But Ger-
many-in spite of her disguise of feudal trappings-is
constitutionally young and mobile. She has undertaken
with considerable success to adapt her legal and politi-
cal frame to the new and dynamic order of the work-
ing world. The western nations, on the other hand,
have hitherto been content with legal arfd political
institutions that antedate the rise of modern business.
They have in general treated the consequent antagon-
ism between business and politics as if it were a fixed
fact of nature. They have made no serious effort to
resolve that contradiction.
The notion has been carefully cultivated in this coun-
try that Germany has simply feudalized its national or-