This is our militarism; that of Great
Britain has been to maintain a fleet double our own or any other in
size, for it is her basic principle to maintain an unquestioned
supremacy on the highways of commerce. To this we have meekly assented,
while other nations absorb our carrying trade and our flag waves over a
fleet of perhaps a dozen respectable oceangoing trading and passenger
ships. It is under her rather patronizing protection that we fight our
foreign wars and by pressure from her that we manage the Panama Canal
with nice and honorable attention to her interpretation of a treaty
capable of quite a different one. Whether or not this be "militarism" of
the utmost efficiency by sea is not difficult to decide. But we have
never styled it infamous.
While I am writing, Germans, whose basic principle is the most efficient
"militarism" by land, are publishing all abroad that the "militarism" of
France must be forever stamped out, so that they may dwell at peace in
the lands which are their home.
Within a generation France has accumulated a colonial empire second only
to that of Great Britain, while she has incessantly demanded the
reintegration of German lands, and especially a German city which she
arbitrarily annexed and held by "militarism" for about five generations.
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