The churches also are pressed in war-time to undertake the defense of doing evil that good may come, and to strain their arguments over the verge of hypocrisy in making the worse appear the better reason. So altogether, "hell is let loose." The worst of it is that the lower passions, once let loose, do not willingly return under control, but remain to haunt the earth. Once more, Professor Hamlin shows how in each case after a war the whole horrible storm flattens out into waste, corruption and futility. The World War is the most colossal demonstration of this condition. If a people thought they knew what they were fighting for, they failed to get it; the victor proves often at last to be the vanquished. It is curious now in looking back to the Civil War to note that the reason which chiefly persuaded "good" and chivalrous souls to engage in it was to put an end to slavery. This at best was dealing in the wrong way with evil, that is, overcoming it with evil, as was abundantly proved after the war. But Mr. Lincoln would not admit that we were at war against slavery! We were at war, as the government held, to put down secession, whereas we had begun the national union by a war of secession; our government would have liked at the time of the war of 1812 to get Canada by secession or capture; we fought with Mexico to secure the results of the secession of Texas; we refused in 1898 to accept a peaceful method to separate Cuba from Spain but insisted upon fighting to effect the separation; and we still keep armed forces in the Philippine Islands against the protest of the inhabitants. Mr. Roosevelt was quick to postulate the right of secession in the case of Panama. As to the Great War, our President Wilson's proclamation in favor of the natural right of small nations to secede has become one of the slogans of mankind! As has been often remarked: "This is a queer world." Professor Hamlin's little book is at least an easy _reductio ad absurdum_ for war. CHARLES F. DOLE. Southwest Harbor, Me., August, 1926. CHAPTER I PATRIOTISM AND PEACE For the first one hundred and thirty-five years of the history of this republic the total expenditure of the federal treasury was approximately $66,000,000,000. Of this total expenditure approximately $56,000,000,000 was for warfare. From 1775 to 1923 the United States Army was engaged in no conflicts comprising about 8,600 battles and a casualty list of approximately 1,280,000 men. (See Ganoe, History of U. S. Army, page 490.) Of course most of these conflicts were minor. This study will include only the six major wars in which we have been participants.