In the first place, let me recall a statement made in the preceding chapter. To get any desired reform adopted and carried out, it is first necessary to get the people to imagine the reform in operation. I mean that they must have a clear mental picture of themselves living contentedly under the proposed plan. Let the proposition be made in such a way that the effective people who direct the government can not, or will not, in the mind’s eye see it in operation, and it will surely fail. Let them imagine its successful use and they will most likely find it unobjectionable. Likewise, if the people of the world could imagine a great coöperative union to promote peace, with enough force behind it to enforce the will of the union, if in their minds they could see themselves adjusted into such a system, with all its economy in taxes, human suffering, and ordinary governmental effort, it would not be very difficult to make such a scheme work in actual experience. The “practical” man has but little imagination. He has to be deceived into the acceptance of reforms. Make him believe that a given plan has been made to work and his objections are diminished, if not overcome altogether. This is not said for scolding but as a sober fact confronting the man who reasons his way through matters that perplex him. The “practical” man is not responsible for his weakness, and he is in the majority among men. On the other hand, the man with imagination is not to be faint-hearted. If he can see and talk, he may, by reiteration finally make his brothers see also. Fundamentally his position rests upon the reasonableness of his proposition: war is madness, brutality, useless waste of wealth and life, and the negation of civilization. It proceeds from the unnecessarily irritated state of the public mind. Reason demands that she be allowed to have an opportunity to exert her influence in a reasonable world over reasonable beings. Since law is the expression of the will of reasonable beings, let law be given the supervision of all the disputes which may possibly lead to war. How true all this sounds! And the preacher of peace says boldly that it is more worth while to plan, spend money, and take a chance in a great world effort to bring such a reasonable situation to pass than to go on planning, spending, and risking things in the efforts to make a system work that has ever led us around in a circle to the same old end, war and misery.