The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D.Moffett, Cleveland
History
The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D.
Moffett, Cleveland
Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction; Science fiction
Once in a century some Tolstoy tries to practise literally the law of
love and non-resistance with results that are distressing to his family
and friends, and that are of doubtful value to the community. We may be
sure the nations of the world will never practise this beautiful law of
love until average citizens of the world practise it, and that time has
not come.
Of course, Mr. Bryan’s peace plan recognises the inevitability of
quarrels or disagreements among nations, but proposes to have these
settled by arbitration or by the decisions of an international tribunal,
which tribunal may be given adequate police power in the form of an
international army and navy.
It goes without saying that such a plan of world federation and world
arbitration involves universal disarmament, all armies and all navies
must be reduced to a merely nominal strength, to a force sufficient for
police protection, but does any one believe that this plan can really be
carried out? Is there the slightest chance that Russia or Germany will
disarm? Is there the slightest chance that England will send her fleet to
the scrap heap and leave her empire defenceless in order to join this
world federation? Is there the slightest chance that Japan, with her
dreams of Asiatic sovereignty, will disarm?
And if the thing were conceivable, what a grim federation this would be
of jealousies, grievances, treacheries, hatreds, conflicting patriotisms
and ambitions--Russia wanting Constantinople, France Alsace-Lorraine,
Germany Calais, Spain Gibraltar, Denmark her ravished provinces, Poland
her national integrity and so on. Who would keep order among the
international delegates? Who would decide when the international judges
disagreed? Who would force the international policemen to act against
their convictions? Could any world tribunal induce the United States to
limit her forces for the prevention of a yellow immigration from Asia?
General Homer Lea in “The Valour of Ignorance” says:
Only when arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and
hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and
nations, as nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate
of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these
constitute the basis of individual impulse, so long will they control the
acts of nations.
Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard University and
trustee of the Carnegie Peace Foundation, makes this admission in _The
Army and Navy Journal:_
I regret to say that international or national disarmament is not taken
seriously by the leaders and thinking men of the more important peoples,
and I fear that for one reason or another neither the classes nor the
masses have much admiration for the idea or would be willing to do their
share to bring it about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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