So far as I can ascertain, the advocates of what I may call mere disarmament propose to scrap this mass of interests more or less completely, to put its tremendous array of factories, arsenals, dockyards and so forth out of action, to obliterate its wide-reaching net of financial relationships, to break up its carefully gathered staffs, and to pour all its labor, its trained engineers and sailors and gunners and so forth into the great flood of unemployment into which our civilization is already sinking. And they do not seem to grasp how subtle, various and effective the resistance of this great complex of capable human beings to any such treatment is likely to be. In my supply of League of Nations literature I find only two intimations of this real obstacle to the world common weal. One is a suggestion that there should be no private enterprise in the production of war material at all, and the other that armament concerns shall not own newspapers. As a Socialist I am charmed by the former proposal, which would in effect nationalize, among others, the iron and steel and chemical industries, but as a practical man I have to confess that the organization of no existing state is yet at the level of efficiency necessary if the transfer is to be a hopeful one, and so far as the newspaper restriction goes, it would surely pass the wit of man to devise rules that would prevent a great banking combination from controlling armament firms on the one hand while it financed newspapers on the other. Yet the fact remains that this great complex of interests, round and about the armaments interest, is the most real of all the oppositions to a world federation. It supplies substance, direction and immediate rewards to the frothy emotions of patriotism; it rules by dividing us and it realizes that its existence in its present form is conditional upon the continuance of our suspicions and divisions. It does not positively want or seek war, but it wants a continuing expectation of and preparation for war. On the other hand its ruling intelligences must be coming to understand that in the end it cannot escape sharing in the economic and social smash down to which we are all now sliding so rapidly. It is too high a type of organization to be altogether blind and obdurate. It will not, of course, be represented officially at Washington for what it is, but in the form of pseudo-patriotic, naval, military and financial experts it will be better represented than any other side of human nature. One of the most interesting things to do at the conference will be to watch its activities.