Note 6 — PART I PEACE AND WAR

In March, 1911, when every pulpit and every newspaper, under the influence of President Taft's message, promised us within a brief period universal peace and disarmament, the German Chancellor, Herr Bethmann-Hollweg, had the courage and the common sense to stand apart, and, speaking for his Emperor and his nation, to lay it down as a maxim that, at the present stage of the world's history, the armed forces of any nation or empire must have a distinct relation to the material resources of that nation or empire. This position seems to me as statesmanlike as it is unanswerable; but in applying the principle to our own country, I should be inclined to modify it by saying that the armed forces of any nation or empire ought to represent, not only its material resources, but the spirit which animates that nation or empire—in a word, that its armed forces should be the measure of the nation's devotion to whatever ends it pursues.