Will Preparedness Insure Peace?
MR. W. M. HUGHES, prime minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, in visiting London recently, made a speech in which he said: “The least that we can say of the navy is that it has saved Britain. But the truth is that it has saved the civilized world. Behind that impregnable wall of triple steel, we have had opportunity to remedy, in some fashion, our lack of preparation. But is there a man among us who does not pale as he looks back and sees the awful gulf which he has missed by a hair’s breadth? Who does not rejoice that there are men among us who shut their ears to the cries for a smaller navy? Think of the hundreds of millions we are spending to-day on this awful war. Think of the spectacle of the civilized world wallowing in blood, straining every energy in this awful work of mutual destruction. Think of the holocaust of lives, the fearful sufferings; and then think that had Britain taken heed of Lord Roberts’s warning voice, had we been as well prepared on land as we were on the sea, the peace of the world would have been, in all probability, unbroken.” It was arguments of that character that led the world, in the face of the enlightenment and civilization of the twentieth century, to build up the awful war preparations that are used so destructively to-day. Arguments of that character will cause men to continue these mad theories of building engines of destruction, for we are in the days