Great Navies Insure Peace
By Editor
WE are gravely told by many people that the best insurance for peace is the greatest navies and the greatest armies. The more formidable the preparations for war, the better the insurance of peace. So they argue. There have been times and places in this country, and in many other parts of the world, for that matter, when it was considered that the best way for a man to be sure of personal peace was to go about with two or three revolvers hanging from a belt, and to keep himself well practised in using them. But if we consider the individual to be warranted in going thus heavily armed, we will have to picture him in surroundings where the country is infested with a very lawless and possibly barbarous element. It is only when robberies and various kinds of outbreaks become quite general, that the private citizen thinks of going armed in order to meet attack. Now if it is essential for the governments of the world to keep themselves so heavily armed in order to insure peace, have we reached the time of universal peace that we have been told about so much? Or are we in any sense bordering upon that time, if it is necessary for us to build greater and greater navies in order to keep the peace? This old world of sin has been infested with wars ever since it violated God's order of things and started on its career of wickedness. The divine Book says that "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse," until the very end of time. The evidence is clear that the men who demand the building of the large navies will have plenty of arguments in their favor because of world conditions. Yet in the face of the clearest fact, there will also be thousands of men who will think that we may have peace, regardless of the elements of anarchy and strife that are becoming stronger and stronger everywhere.