tackling him. The effects of that lack of adequate police power, if a world court were actually in operation, would simply be to make the whole process of international justice ridiculous. Every powerful litigant would be free to defy the court, and so would every weak litigant with powerful friends.
I believe that the United States could put an end to this unpleasant situation and at no great cost or risk. If it started tomorrow to arm in earnest, no other nation could hope to keep up with it: they’d all be bankrupt in two years if they tried to hold the pace. This fact became obvious at the close of the world war, when even England, the richest of the contestants and the one that hadprofited most by the war, saw clearly that she could not keep up with Uncle Sam on the seas. So she had her agents in Washington root hard for the disarmament conference that silly American pacifists had already proposed, and the result was that the United States agreed to keep the American fleet down to the level of the English fleet. This was a great folly. It left England still able to dream of tackling and butchering the accursed Yankee, and so opened the way for more wars. If the United States had built twenty or thirty battleships and then employed them to sink all the English and Japanese battleships there would be peace in the world today, and it would be genuine. True enough, the English would have yelled blue murder and called upon God to witness that they were being undone by an international criminal, but they’d have got over it quickly, and by this time they’d have become used to keeping the peace. As it is, they remain free to start another war whenever they please, and it seems very likely that, unless France undergoes a transformation little short of miraculous, they will do so very soon. The United States will be drawn into it and will have to pay for it.
My scheme, to be sure, would exact force and put the whole world at the mercy of the United States. But that would be nothing new. The world is at the mercy of force today, and it is exerted by powers that, in the main, are even less reputable than the United States. Our own stealings are in Latin America, where no one ventures to oppose us. The others scramble for the loot elsewhere and constantly threaten war. The way to make them stop is not to get them to sign a vast mass of puerile and meaningless agreements, but to sharpen a terrible swift sword and let them feel its edge.
Summary Judgment
From the Baltimore
Evening Sun
, June 12, 1922
My conclusions about the late war remain as follows: (
a
) that the American pretense of neutrality down to 1917 was dishonestand dishonorable, (
b
) that the interests of the United States were actually on the side of Germany, and against both England and France, (
c
) that the propagation of the notion to the contrary was a very deft and amusing piece of swindling, and (
d
) that the American share of the war, after 1917, was carried on in an extremely cowardly manner. Every day I meet some man who was hot for the bogus Wilsonian idealism in 1916 and 1917, and is now disillusioned and full of bile. Such men I do not respect.
The Next Round
From the Baltimore
Evening Sun
, July 18, 1921
The surest way to bring on a war, it would seem, is to prove that it would be in violation of the great ethico-cosmic laws which produce sunsets, the laughter of little children, and all the lovely varieties of roses and sarcomata, and hence cannot conceivably take place. This benign process now works magnificently toward a clash between the two great empires of promoters and usurers, Japan and the United States. The same American Association for International Conciliation which demonstrated conclusively, in the Spring of 1914, that all Europe was bathed in good-will, is now marshaling its unanswerable proofs that we and the Japs must not and shall not fight. And to the benign business a vast multitude of lesser uplifters, vision-seers, Shakers,
I believe that the United States could put an end to this unpleasant situation and at no great cost or risk. If it started tomorrow to arm in earnest, no other nation could hope to keep up with it: they’d all be bankrupt in two years if they tried to hold the pace. This fact became obvious at the close of the world war, when even England, the richest of the contestants and the one that hadprofited most by the war, saw clearly that she could not keep up with Uncle Sam on the seas. So she had her agents in Washington root hard for the disarmament conference that silly American pacifists had already proposed, and the result was that the United States agreed to keep the American fleet down to the level of the English fleet. This was a great folly. It left England still able to dream of tackling and butchering the accursed Yankee, and so opened the way for more wars. If the United States had built twenty or thirty battleships and then employed them to sink all the English and Japanese battleships there would be peace in the world today, and it would be genuine. True enough, the English would have yelled blue murder and called upon God to witness that they were being undone by an international criminal, but they’d have got over it quickly, and by this time they’d have become used to keeping the peace. As it is, they remain free to start another war whenever they please, and it seems very likely that, unless France undergoes a transformation little short of miraculous, they will do so very soon. The United States will be drawn into it and will have to pay for it.
My scheme, to be sure, would exact force and put the whole world at the mercy of the United States. But that would be nothing new. The world is at the mercy of force today, and it is exerted by powers that, in the main, are even less reputable than the United States. Our own stealings are in Latin America, where no one ventures to oppose us. The others scramble for the loot elsewhere and constantly threaten war. The way to make them stop is not to get them to sign a vast mass of puerile and meaningless agreements, but to sharpen a terrible swift sword and let them feel its edge.
Summary Judgment
From the Baltimore
Evening Sun
, June 12, 1922
My conclusions about the late war remain as follows: (
a
) that the American pretense of neutrality down to 1917 was dishonestand dishonorable, (
b
) that the interests of the United States were actually on the side of Germany, and against both England and France, (
c
) that the propagation of the notion to the contrary was a very deft and amusing piece of swindling, and (
d
) that the American share of the war, after 1917, was carried on in an extremely cowardly manner. Every day I meet some man who was hot for the bogus Wilsonian idealism in 1916 and 1917, and is now disillusioned and full of bile. Such men I do not respect.
The Next Round
From the Baltimore
Evening Sun
, July 18, 1921
The surest way to bring on a war, it would seem, is to prove that it would be in violation of the great ethico-cosmic laws which produce sunsets, the laughter of little children, and all the lovely varieties of roses and sarcomata, and hence cannot conceivably take place. This benign process now works magnificently toward a clash between the two great empires of promoters and usurers, Japan and the United States. The same American Association for International Conciliation which demonstrated conclusively, in the Spring of 1914, that all Europe was bathed in good-will, is now marshaling its unanswerable proofs that we and the Japs must not and shall not fight. And to the benign business a vast multitude of lesser uplifters, vision-seers, Shakers,
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