"The fatalistic view of the war-function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise.... All these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline.... In the more or less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting, we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built--unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against commonwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood."[76] Any utterances about war, arbitration, and disarmament, are now likely to have their original meaning distorted by reason of what may justly be called the present fevered state of public opinion on such questions. It should be clear that the foregoing sentences were not directed to any particular question of domestic or foreign policy. They were part of a broad picture of the fighting instinct, and led up to a suggestion for diverting it into non-destructive channels. As to particular instances, circumstances were always to be reckoned with. James believed in organizing and strengthening the machinery of arbitration, but did not think that the day for universal arbitration had yet come. He saw a danger in military establishments, went so far--in the presence of the "jingoism" aroused by Cleveland's Venezuela message--as to urge opposition to any increase of the American army and navy, encouraged peace-societies, and was willing to challenge attention by calling himself a pacifist.[77] "The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not presume to interfere by violence with ours."[78] Tolerance--social, religious, and political--was fundamental in his scheme of belief; but he took pains to make a proviso, and drew the line at tolerating interference or oppression. Where he recognized a military danger, there he would have had matters so governed as to meet it, not evade it. Writing of the British garrison in Halifax in 1897, he said: "By Jove, if England should ever be licked by a Continental army, it would only be Divine justice upon her for keeping up the Tommy Atkins recruiting system when the others have compulsory service."