Only if one of the nations should discover, and guard as its secret, some diabolically horrible means of destroying human life and property by wholesale and over materially unbridged distances, can armaments even temporarily put an end to war. In such event--and it is by no means an improbability--the whole world might suddenly be made to bow in terror before the will of the all-powerful nation. Before this approaching crisis, can we do less than earnestly pray that the translation of physical progress into armament may be halted until the brotherhood of man has been further advanced? Dare we stop to contemplate what would happen to-morrow if Germany, with half the civilized world arrayed against her, should come into possession of some imponderable, and to the untutored mind mysterious, means of directing her torpedoes, exploding magazines, mines, shells from distant bases? Undoubtedly we are close upon the employment of certain vibrations for this deadly purpose. Shall we veer in time and take a safer course, or are we doomed to the inevitable? For the certain result of pushing forward relentlessly on the path of preparation for war--in the name of peace--is the dominance of a single nation and the destruction or subjugation of all others. This is as inevitable as is death. If we would preserve and foster racial and national diversity of traits, promote social individuality as we so eagerly foster the diversity of selves, we must speedily focus attention upon human nature and seek that knowledge of it which shall enable us to control it wisely rather than to destroy it ruthlessly. Even were I able to do so, I should in no degree belittle the achievements of the physical sciences and their technologies, for I believe whole-heartedly in their value, and long for the steady increase of our power to control our environment. But when these achievements are offered as means of creating or maintaining certain desired conditions of individual and social life, I must insist that other knowledge is essential--nay, more essential--than that of the physicist or chemist. Knowledge, namely, of life itself. Most briefly, the situation may thus be described. In peace and in war there are two large, complex and intricate groups of facts to be dealt with by those who seek the welfare of man. The one group comprises the phenomena of physical nature as the condition of life--environment; the other is constituted by the phenomena of life and the relations of lives. Those who sincerely believe in preparedness for war as a preventive measure, misconceive and attempt to misuse the emotion of fear and its modes of expression. It is as though we should strive tirelessly to develop machinery and methods for educating our children, the while ignorant of the laws of child development and branding as of no practical importance the fundamentals of human nature.