nation to do so, bringing us right back again to the necessity of treaties, conferences, leagues, or, in other words, some machinery through which coöperation may be achieved and agreements reached. Not only in the outlawry of war group, but in many others of the plans, there is a more than subtle indication among the writers of a desire to have the United States assume leadership in the world peace movement. Recognizing that a pronouncement in itself will mean nothing in particular, many writers are nevertheless extremely anxious to have the United States make a series of "unilateral pledges" or, at the very least, a declaration of principles announcing that the United States has set its face against war.

This conviction, occurring in the able as well as the less thoughtful plans, is part of a general feeling that in some way or other, by some initiative, and preferably ours, the whole game of war should be sharply stopped, pending a more complete dealing with the causes. Over and over again, in literally thousands of plans, occurs the conviction that in some way or other, as an emergency measure, a sharp stop should be put to the war game by prohibiting the private manufacture of munitions and limiting or prohibiting government manufacture. A few papers ably discuss the manner in which even countries at war with one another contribute to one another's armament. Other writers, without such definite information of any kind, show a blind conviction that so long as private traffic in munitions exists, so long will it be a first cause of wars. The proposals for controlling the traffic in munitions include, besides the obvious government monopoly in

manufacture of munitions, holidays of various lengths in the manufacture of arms, and treaties to secure general agreement upon definite limitations.

The disarmament proposals, as a whole, are fairly vague. "The President of the United States shall call a conference," is the most usual approach to any practical step at all. The plans generally show a sublime faith in conferences of all kinds. But there are a few definite proposals for progressive disarmament, following the general lines of naval disarmament already familiar through the Washington conference. Frequent changes are rung upon the idea that the United States should use the foreign debts to force disarmament agreements by granting partial or complete cancelation and by moratoriums. of plans would require the balancing of budgets as a condition of American aid to Europe. Some of the plans dealing with debts and reparations are highly complicated in detail, but virtually all of these elaborate schedules come back to the simple fact that the United States is to furnish all the money.

A number

The short-cut, or first-principle plans, as opposed to those that conceive the substitution of law for force to be a slow and gradual process, are numerous. They are too often undeveloped generalities, the satisfying catchwords of a feeling rather than of a philosophy. Over and over again are proposed the conscription of capital"take the profit out of war"-and a popular referendum on war. The proposal of a referendum, occurring with startling frequency, reflects a fairly general feeling that wars are induced by leaders, by munitionmakers, by holders of great concessions, and that the only way to deal

with this is to have those who are to fight the wars pass upon declaring them. Over and over again crops up the idea that old men vote for war and young men do the fighting.

Many authors are intrigued by the problem of "de-popularizing" war generally. One perfectly serious paper on quite a different subject brings in casually the need of taking the pomp and circumstance from war, and proposes, as the best means of so doing, having the army dress in black instead of the becoming khaki, and manoeuver in the middle of the night, with none by for to admire and for to

see.

These plans are These plans are

A curiously artificial group-not a large one-comprises the plans that are purely partizan. full of a factitious bitterness for or against the League of Nations, and produce a curious impression of marionette proposals swinging awkwardly into place in response to all too familiar strings. These writers, with "the gentlemen on the other side of the aisle" obviously always in mind, conjure a dreary picture of how possible it is to create mighty issues in American life wherein the amount of bitterness shown may be in inverse ratio to be in inverse ratio to the amount of information possessed.

A rather glib group of plans "internationalizes" everything. They would have one language on the earth, Esperanto, or perhaps English. They would internationalize currency, set up a world government, a world treasury, a world bank to buy up cable lines, radio, etc., have one religion, and in general avoid disagreement by making the whole world one.

The tyranny of words over many writers is apparent. A very large group proposes to achieve world peace

and secure this country's coöperation toward it by substituting for the Department of War at Washington a department of peace, with a secretary in the cabinet. Or Congress is to establish a "department of comity," on the theory, apparently, that, if you get the name and the form, you get also the substance.

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Thousands of plans, including the most profound as well as the least literate, are based upon a conviction that no political and no economic scheme will be more than moderately effective. They believe that the attainment of peace is a matter of evolution, of a growth in human understanding, of spiritual regeneration under the influence of educational processes. In this position most of the thoughtful world agrees.

All possible ingenuity has been used in working out a wide variety of forms of education to produce a race that understands and is devoted to peace. Some of these are highly superficial, applying the catchwords and slogans of the community activities of the late war. The minds and hearts of men are to be turned from war to peace by peace flags, buttons, advertising, campaigns, peace days, peace postage-stamps. The tendency of the race is to be changed from war to peace by parlor meetings, fourminute speeches in the theaters, a judicious use of the motion-picture, community sings as a means of enlarging the "get-acquainted" theory, world peace councils divided into community councils all over the earth. and rewriting of history and civic text-books from the kindergarten up.

These educational plans are naturally varied, and uneven in quality. The problem of restoring health to the human soul as the road to peace, of course, attracts many faddists as well as many wise men. Some of the educational plans place their dependence upon personal godliness, and disdain any further proposal whatever. Some believe that only a diet of fresh foods will produce a race capable of the conception of peace. Some catch at straws, which are usually mechanisms: there is to be a "peace congress of our best minds" or a "delegate union of civilization," meeting, of course, at Washington. The significant thing is that hundreds of able plans, recognizing the limitations of political and economic proposals, include an educational proposal as a necessary auxiliary to the political mechanism or economic scheme proposed. Some authors place their dependence upon an exchange of ideas, a community of interest, a growth of understanding. They work out fairly practical methods by which these things may be brought about. The methods vary from schemes for getting news of one country to another in some regular and systematic way to exchange professors, fellowships, and scholarships, traveling commissions, fact-finding commissions, etc. It is noticeable how many of the planwriters owe whatever understanding of foreign relations they have to some recent brief visit abroad. After all the bitter quips at those who tear through Europe in three weeks and then publish solemn books diagnosing the situation, it is nevertheless true, as a Middle-Western senator at Washington pointed out to me, that he had found three-weeks' information and

understanding a good deal better than no understanding at all.

One brilliant and powerful paper, which belongs to the educational group only in the sense that it depends on the power of the idea, is based entirely upon the theory that, of all men or groups of men, scientists are the only really internationally minded. The scientists of all nations are therefore to form a "technocracy." They are to take a kind of Hippocratic oath to devote the energies of science purely to the cause of peace. There is to be a fund to defend and support scientists who refuse to have their powers commandeered by their country for the prosecution of war. The resources of the human mind and soul are not to be available for destruction. A critic of the plan points out that it assumes in scientists a universal nobility and freedom from sordid motives hardly consistent with their common humanity. However that may be, it does emphasize the spiritual attitude and integrity of knowledge which are indeed at the heart of peace.

Touched upon blindly in thousands of the plans, and dealt with finely and clearly in a very few, is one of the most significant ideas turned up in the whole discussion-the need of a finer and truer conception of nationalism. A rare few delve into this problem with clarifying insight. The thing those few have in mind is not the familiar internationalism of the modern radical labor movement. It is a profounder philosophy, taking into account the deeper currents of life and art and human motives. Many allied papers, whose authors could not navigate in these deep waters, nevertheless constantly reveal a sense that a mistaken ideal of nationalism is at

the root of war and of the tolerance of war that marks our present civilization, a sense that a perverted nationalism permits wars when indeed it does not initiate them. Over and over again, by implication or direct expression, the "my country, right or wrong," theory is challenged as perverted. Over and over again the question is raised as to the wisdom or the viciousness of maintaining an educational tradition which permits leaders to induce people to think that the interests and welfare of people on one side an imaginary line can be radically different from the interests and welfare of people on the other side of that line, or that the welfare of the one can be obtained by measures that bring disaster to the other. They challenge the blatant patriotism of an older day that glorified the battlefield and emphasized the particular country's victories. And they challenge the just as blatant patriotism of to-day that emphasizes the particular country's prosperity. Just as the czar or king of old could prove that military victory over a neighboring community was necessary for the working out of nationalism, so the leader of to-day can point out that the American manufacture of tin cans is necessary for the prosperity of America. The modern forces exalting nationalism may have a less picturesque task than the task of the ancient ruler, but it is, after all, the same task.

Dangerous ground all this, perhaps,

but it must some day be trod. It was not dealt with in any of the "practicable plans," but there were clear eyes looking toward it.

There were two groups that figure little, if at all, in the competition -the apostles of non-resistance and the isolationists. There is not, I think, one thoroughgoing or typical "non-resistance" paper. And not fifty of the 22,165 plans take the line that we should remain isolated or that some form of coöperation between the United States and the rest of the world is not necessary or may not be found.

From all this it will perhaps appear that most of the ideas presented in the 22,165 plans must be imperatively taken into ultimate account in any courageous facing of the problem of peace as a whole. The jury's "verdict" reads, "We realize that there is no one approach to world peace, and that it is necessary to recognize not merely political, but also psychological and economic factors." The winning plan merely establishes the principle of mutual coöperation among the nations.

It recognizes the machinery of permanent conference as the first step toward more distant aspirations. It furnishes a meeting-place where the profound, not easily reconciled, national differences of race traditions and commercial interest may be surveyed in the light of the common welfare of all mankind.