In such a war the prime fact to be remembered is that the men really responsible for it would not be those who would pay the penalty. The ultrapacificists are rarely men who go to battle. Their fault or their folly would be expiated by the blood of countless thousands of plain and decent American citizens of the stamp of those, North and South alike, who in the Civil War laid down all they had, including life itself, in battling for the right as it was given to them to see the right. CHAPTER II THE BELGIAN TRAGEDY Peace is worthless unless it serves the cause of righteousness. Peace which consecrates militarism is of small service. Peace obtained by crushing the liberty and life of just and unoffending peoples is as cruel as the most cruel war. It should ever be our honorable effort to serve one of the world’s most vital needs by doing all in our power to bring about conditions which will give some effective protection to weak or small nations which themselves keep order and act with justice toward the rest of mankind. There can be no higher international duty than to safeguard the existence and independence of industrious, orderly states, with a high personal and national standard of conduct, but without the military force of the great powers; states, for instance, such as Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Uruguay, and others. A peace which left Belgium’s wrongs unredressed and which did not provide against the recurrence of such wrongs as those from which she has suffered would not be a real peace. As regards the actions of most of the combatants in the hideous world-wide war now raging it is possible sincerely to take and defend either of the opposite views concerning their actions. The causes of any such great and terrible contest almost always lie far back in the past, and the seeming immediate cause is usually itself in major part merely an effect of many preceding causes. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was partly or largely due to the existence of political and often murderous secret societies in Servia which the Servian government did not suppress; and it did not suppress them because the “bondage” of the men and women of the Servian race in Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria was such a source of ever-present irritation to the Servians that their own government was powerless to restrain them. Strong arguments can be advanced on both the Austrian and the Servian sides as regards this initial cause of the present world-wide war.