War Preparations Cannot Bring Peace
By Editor
The meaning of this last successful experiment is tremendous. To the enterprising officer and inventor of this bomb, and also of one far more deadly, it is at least one of the letters in the word "peace" for the world. We wish we could see it that way. We love peace. We honor the men who are working for it. But increased and superior war preparations will not bring it. They may delay, postpone, retard; but the conflict will be more sanguine and cruel when it comes. The breech-loader and repeating rifle did not stop war. The iron-clad war-ships did not check it. The great armor cased Dreadnoughts or the 13-inch fifty-foot rifle has not had that effect. All these have stimulated rivalry. If the soldiers had to settle the matter, we believe there would be peace. But in nine cases out of ten the soldier has little to say about it. The greed of commerce, the national bondage under [not bombs, but] iron-clad bonds, increasing taxation for war expenditures, ambition of rulers, earth hunger of government, religious and race antagonism, singly and together supply plenty of initial causes from which may spring world-wide war. Jeffries and Johnson together in a logging-camp might never fight; but the managers of Jeffries and Johnson feel quite different. And if Johnson seems too strong to-day, the manager of Jeffries hopes he will make good to-morrow. And then, if Johnson is still superior, there are other men in the world who may easily be thought to be his superior. So among the nations national pride will not admit that another nation is superior, or if superior just now, that it will be to-morrow. And we know that skill, invention, bravery, are not confined to one nation. A call to close Port Arthur or Santiago would be answered to-morrow with as much alacrity and as numerously as it was yesterday.