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 64th Congress 1 
 1st Session J 
 
 SENATE 
 
 Document 
 No. 443 
 
 PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC 
 DISCIPLINE 
 
 By 
 
 GEORGE W. ALGER 
 
 FROM 
 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 
 
 APRIL, 1916 
 
 PRESENTED BY MR. KERN 
 May 16 (Calendar day, May 17), 1916. — Ordered to be printed 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
 
 1916 
 
^^ 
 
 
 3. of D. 
 MAY 27 1916 
 

 -X 
 
 PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 
 
 By George W. AlcxEr. 
 
 I. 
 
 " The great word of the present day," said Emerson in 1838, " is 
 culture." It was the same word with a different meaning with which 
 the war began. Some of the defenses of Germany by which her 
 statesmen and professors sought then to justify her in the eyes of 
 the world raised not merely issues of right and wrong as to the war 
 itself, but issues as to fundamentals in ciA^lization. 
 
 The Germans asserted a high claim for Avorld power for the 
 Teutonic race, based upon a superior Kultur, a civilization which 
 Germany has evolved and which they declared demands through its 
 success, through its practical results, a far wider sphere of power and 
 influence in world civilization than it has yet received. 
 
 Some of these claims of Kultur we have forgotten, as they were 
 not often repeated after the first few months of the war. 
 
 The Germans said, in effect: We alone of the great nations of 
 modern times have succeeded in evolving a great organization of 
 government, a perfection of administration, unequaled in the whole 
 history of the world. We have done it against tremendous odds and 
 in an incredibly short time. France is a decadent and corrupt bu- 
 reaucracy, masquerading as a democracy. England is a patchwork 
 of disorganized law, feudal survivals, and precedents patched with 
 clumsy adaptations of transplanted modern German ideas — a civili- 
 zation gone to seed. What right does her civilization give her to 
 the choice place in the sun? AVhat is there about the organization 
 of English government which justifies its continuance except on the 
 basis of sea power and force? Rome lived and spread her eagles 
 through the ancient world by the superior genius of Roman law, by 
 the civilizing power of that law which lived even after the barbarian 
 laid his hands upon the city of the Caesars. The Teutons, declared 
 the German professors, are the successors of the Ca'sars. The right 
 to world dominion belongs and rightly belongs to this race, the race 
 alone capable of CA^olving a superior world civilization. 
 
 So we in America were compelled to think hurriedh% and for too 
 short a period, of world civilization. The train of our reflection — if 
 we reflected — was not entirely pleasant. We remembered that ours is 
 not the youngest but the oldest of modern democracies. We remem- 
 bered that many, if not most, of the general principles of democracy 
 
 3 
 
4 PEEPAREDNESS AND DEMOCEATIC DISCIPLINE, 
 
 were born, or first practiced, on our soil; that tliese ideas were, a 
 hundred years and less ago, the great contribution of America to the 
 transformation of Europe. The revolutionary principles which Met- 
 ternich and the concert of Europe a hundred years ago strove to 
 stamp out had thriven on the new and favored soil. We had no 
 feudalism to overcome. Our press was not fettered ; our religion was 
 free. No bonds of caste and heredity gripped us to the past. We had 
 no white peasants attached to the soil. We had a new rich continent 
 of unlimited wealth. We preached to the world the promise of 
 democracJ^ All the handicaps from which we were free bound 
 Germany, and many more besides. Yet, at the beginning of this great 
 w^ar, she was claiming in sincerity and good faith the right to a 
 world domain as justified by the results of a superior world civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 This is no place to consider the accuracy of the Teuton's prefatory 
 estimate of his civilization. No other country has made a similar 
 contention. No other nation has sufficient confidence and pride in its 
 accomplishments in the organization of national life to make such a 
 boast, even if, indeed, it would be willing to concede that such a 
 standard alone is a sufficient test for civilization. Last of all would 
 democratic America make such a claim. 
 
 Yet the issue is one at Avhich we can not blink and which has not 
 changed simply because we have ceased to think about it. The funda- 
 mental postulate of this w^ar is the failure of democracy as a system 
 of human government; that we need in place of it, in place of its 
 wastefrd, shiftless, haphazard character, and methods, a civilization 
 of intense and practical efficiency based upon autocracy and to the 
 existence of which autocratic discipline is essential. This issue 
 should make us, even in the midst of the smoke and thunder of war, 
 self-critical. On the accuracy of this fundamental postulate the 
 future history of democracy will largely be determined — our own as 
 well as the democratic spirit in other lands. 
 
 When we marvel at Germany in this war, at her wonderful capa- 
 city for carnage, at the terrible efficiency and completeness of her 
 mechanism for destruction; when we see the disorganization of Eng- 
 land, the long wait for the development of sufficient ammunition, the 
 attitude of the trade-unions, the strikes of the workers, the fumbling 
 with the drink problem in a national crisis, the lack of adequate en- 
 listments — the claims of the German professors come back to us; for 
 in the final analj'sis this war is between the soulless Great State and 
 democracy. Those who believe in democracy in our own land should 
 not be blind to this issue. Drifting along as we are in America 
 to-day, without moral leadership, with public opinion a perpetual 
 pendulum between sentimentalism and materialism, with one class 
 so filled with the horror of bloodshed as to want peace at any price 
 and another counting its riches in war stocks and war orders and 
 reaching out for South American trade, we need to be made to see 
 the issue as it affects ourselves — not in our pockets but in our prin- 
 ciples of government — to see that the war, whntever its outcome, is 
 bound to influence profoundly, for good or for ill, our national life. 
 
 We can not keep out of this w\ar. We may avoid the conflict in 
 arms, but the question whether the democratic principle deserves to 
 live remains ours, at least. Whether it can live is the problem of 
 England and France. 
 
PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 5 
 
 Unless we can do one of two things, this war mnst mean moral 
 loss to America — unless we can enter it as a participant for something- 
 more than a trade reason; or unless, while keeping out of it, we can 
 prevent the soil of America from becoming engulfed in a morass of 
 materialism, by finding an issue upon which the moral forces of this 
 country can unite. 
 
 It is to make clear that issue, that fundamental issue of the 
 permanence of democracy, that America to-day needs leadership. 
 
 II. 
 
 We need to be made to see our own stake in this war. In 1815 the 
 concert of the powers expressed by their joint action a final de- 
 termination as to what the crushing of France should mean to the 
 intellectual and spiritual life of Europe. It Avas that the last ember 
 of the P'rench Revolution should be relentlessly extinguished. It 
 meant for forty or more years the triumph of reaction, the steriliza- 
 tion of life, the suppression of freedom of thought, of action, of 
 ever\i;hing remotely resembling the democratic impulse in every 
 countr}' in Europe. In no countrj^ was the power of that reaction 
 stronger than in Germany and in Austria under Metternich. Upon 
 it Bismarck built the modern Germany. The conception of the Great 
 State — the State as power; the subordination of the individual 
 wholly to the State, his rights considered as derivative and not in- 
 nate ; the State as the autocrat, the individual as vassal ; the new 
 feudalism headed by a divine-right monarch whose conception of 
 power was such as died in England nearly three centuries ago 
 with the ax which beheaded Charles I — this became Germany's 
 new principle of civilization. On it she has built a powerful, a 
 highly organized, an immensely efficient government. The German 
 militaristic government has made modern bureaucratic Germany 
 what she is to-day — a menace to the spiritual future of the Avorld. 
 It was the remorseless logic of the new Jesuitism, the concejition of 
 the State as power, superior and unconstrained by law, by duty, or 
 plighted word, which marched through devastated Belgium and 
 closed the sea over the drowning women and children of the 
 Lusitania. 
 
 What is to be the final effect of Germany successful or Germany 
 defeated upon American opinion and upon American life? For 40 
 yeai's liistorv traces upon Europe the reaction of European thinking 
 on the French Revolution. It was for the most part a reaction 
 against democracy, against the bloody shibboleth of " Freedom, 
 equality, fraternity.'" What will the present war do to American 
 opinion ? The character and the future of democratic government 
 will depend for many years upon the lines of thinking set in motion 
 among our people by this war. What will they be? Will they be 
 such as to send us foward as a nation, or set us back? 
 
 It is a time in which Americans should consider anxiously their 
 own country. Peace has its dangers no less menacing than war. 
 Even in the midst of war we can but see certain spiritual gains in 
 the countries which are pouring out their blood and treasure. The 
 development of national consciousness, the establishment in tears 
 and sorrow of the spiritual unity of a great people, is the thing 
 which comes to us from France, reborn in her resolve to make the 
 
6 PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 
 
 France of her children free from the menace of militarism. Enghmd, 
 with her prosperous and self-satisfied bourgeoisie, her sporting- squire 
 government, her terrible and inexcusable poverty unrelieved except 
 b}^ the silly shifts of Lady Bountifuls and poor rates, her discon- 
 tented and jealous working classes; England, stale with an unequal 
 and unjust prosperity, is breaking up a caste system and reorganiz- 
 ing and revitalizing a national life. Belgium, devastated and ex- 
 ploited by barbarous invasion, wdll send down to generations yet un- 
 born the thrill of her King's rejoinder to menacing Germany, that 
 " Belgium is a country and not a road.*" The national consciousness 
 born of w^ar, the precious by-products of sacrifice, of tears, of common 
 and united effort for ^•ictory in arms, is not to be denied even to 
 Russia. The dreaming Slav sees the beginnings of a new era in holy 
 Russia. Germany, holding a world at bay and waging war with a 
 relentless and deadly efficiency such as the Avorld never saw, girding 
 her loins for fresh aggressicm, at once the menace and the marvel 
 of our time, shouts her " Deutschland fiber Alles," the hymn of a 
 nationalism which threatens civilization itself. The Avar means not 
 the destruction of national spirit but the creation of newei- and per- 
 haps finer diversities, the finding of the common soul of varied peo- 
 ples, the finding in common sacrifice and effort of the spiritual basis 
 for national life. 
 
 I am not glorifying war; but hate war as we may, it does these 
 things. The Nelson monument set among the lions at Trafalgar 
 Square, the tattered battle flags in the Church of St. Louis almost 
 touching the tomb of Napoleon, the trophies of war treasured in 
 public galleries in all great nations of the world, are not symbols 
 of victories, or of heroes and conquerors, but expressions of that 
 unitv of spirit which makes the soul of a nation. There is no true 
 patriotism, no true love of country, without this unity of spirit. No 
 true nation exists or can exist without it. It is a thing which money 
 can not buy or mere natural wealth create. 
 
 This is something which we Americans should remember. We hope 
 for the day when there shall be what William James calls a moral 
 substitute for war; that is, the attsiinment of true unity of national 
 spirit, without blood, without the tears of widows and the fatherless. 
 What will this Avorld war do to the largest country except China 
 now enjoying peace? Can we endure the hardships of a mean pros- 
 perity and kee]D our soul? Can we evolve from and by peace this 
 moral substitute for war ? Can we so revitalize democracy that when 
 the war is over America will mean to Europe something else than 
 the land which fattened on war orders and the trade salvage of 
 distress ? 
 
 Siq^pose we stop for a moment our everlasting talk about the pros- 
 pect of being the money market of the world, of being a creditor 
 nation, about opportunities for South American trade and the per- 
 petual ticker talk and the new nabobism of the war stocks. Suj^pose 
 we consider the demands which this war makes upon American patri- 
 otism. It is only a larger and finer democracy which can produce a 
 moral substitute for w^ar. 
 
 The President's addresses in his recent speaking tour have been 
 admirable in tone and have lifted the purely military aspects of pre- 
 paredness to a high ethical plane, where they belong. But what we 
 have to deal with is not mere military and naval preparation in 
 
PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 7 
 
 this narrow sense. The main problem with which we have to con- 
 tend, and for which we must find a solution if we are to be anything 
 better than a South African miUionaire among the nations, is the 
 problem of demccratic discipline. The wise editor of Life has put 
 it so well that I can do no better than quote him : 
 
 It is Prussian discipline that is crowding tlie world so hard, and the question 
 is whether democracy can produce u discipline to match and overcome it. If 
 it can not, Prussian discipline based on autocracy seems likely to possess the 
 earth. So the wnv seems still to he a contest between absolutism and democracy, 
 its main errantl being to compel democracies to develoj) and maintain an effec- 
 tive discipline. Collectivism may be the result from the war, l>ut it will be a 
 by-product. The main asset will be democratic discipline. 
 
 Where? Where else than on our own soil? Are we producing it? 
 Are we thinking about it at all ? Is this new militarism, this clamor 
 for armaments, for a bigger Navy, for a larger Army, this jockeying 
 for position among the politicians in the name of preparedness the 
 best we can do? A mean pacificism feebly denounces the principle of 
 preparedness. A stupid and blustering militarism talks aliout pre- 
 paredness with a tone of finality, as though a bigger Navy and Army 
 for America were all that was needed for the apotheosis of a shift- 
 less, undisciplined democracy for its transformation into something 
 which will fill the eye and sicken the soul. 
 
 III. 
 
 We are in a perilous period of American democracy ; we are threat- 
 ened with what bankers and fools call prosperity; we are threatened 
 with wealth which we have not earned and do not deserve. What will 
 it do to us? Can we evolve the higher democracy? No boy is proud 
 of his father simply because he is rich; no man is proud of his 
 country simply because it is prosperous. This war is creating in 
 every European country a flood of new and finer loyalties, patriotic 
 affections born of sacrifice and tears. Will the sea which separates 
 us from the war separate us from these finer things also? Can we 
 attain the high patriotism without war ? 
 
 A former hifalutin period in our country was vocal with manifest 
 destiny. The slogan has not been heard among thoughtful Ameri- 
 cans for a generation. It was based upon our natural resources, 
 boundless opportunities, the contributions not of man but of nature. 
 In the wasteful and orderless exploitation of these natural resources 
 a lawless, undisciplined, and formless type of government followed. 
 At a moment when the necessity foi a democratic discipliue comes 
 home to us we are forced to realize some of the ugly things which 
 come in our own country from the absence of that discipline. Take, 
 first, the "hyphen." 
 
 What is there about the much-berated hyphenated American which 
 irritates us? Is it not first and foremost a feeling of failure at a 
 point Avhere we had always blissfully assumed success? We had as- 
 sumed that, having carefully inspected the innnigrant for contagious 
 diseases and a few other matters before letting him loose upon our soil 
 to be exploited and to struggle with that new and pervasive lawless- 
 ness which we called American opportunity, he would straightway, 
 certainly after a few years, become an American. 
 
8 PEEPAEEDNESS AND DEMOCEATIC DISCIPLINE. 
 
 The menace of nonassimilated masses in our undisciplined democ- 
 racy has taken a new meaning in the presence of the possibility of 
 our own participation in the Avar. The disturbances in Lawrence, 
 Paterson, Colorado were mere labor troubles a few years ago. We 
 are uneasily conscious now of a new element of danger. We reflect 
 upon it from a new angle of vision to-day. Un- Americanized America 
 is a new aspect of the discontent which we had repressed with martial 
 law and which flamed forth in the I. W. W., the Socialists, the Syn- 
 dicalists, and the dynamiters. What could we expect for the defense 
 of our institutions from those who are taught by Socialism to-day 
 that our Constitutioji was formulated by grafters to make money out 
 of the depreciated paper currency which they had brought up in 
 anticipation of a rise after a more stable government had been 
 adopted? What could we expect from those who are taught by the 
 same teachers that patriotism is folly and that government is the 
 mere expression of conscious and purposeful class selfishness in its 
 effort to exploit the worker — the worker, moreover, who, in turn, is 
 urged to grasp for government; to rule, in turn, by making laws not 
 for the general good but for his own immediate and selfish interest? 
 
 What will democratic discipline do with the American immigrant 
 after the war? Will it continue, as before, to consider him merely 
 as a human mechanism, an asset for industrial exploitation, or as a 
 man, a potential unhyphenated American? Shall we wait until 
 after the war to begin to formulate a program, wait until the flood- 
 gates are open and the inundation begins? Shall we content our- 
 selves with abusing our foreign born as though the love of the old 
 country were not a virtue, a potential benefit to the new? There 
 are no hyphenated gypsies. Do we want more of them? 
 
 Shall we organize our Army under the stimulus of the clamor for 
 preparedness on a basis hostile to or auxiliary to democracy? An 
 army may be a menace to democracy. Many European armies are 
 of this character. An army may also be a training school for demo- 
 cratic discipline, a means for the union of all classes and conditions 
 of men for service on the basis of a common duty to the state in such 
 fashion as to create new and desirable conceptions of national unity ; 
 a means, moreover, of creating a closer association of men from dif- 
 ferent walks of life, as good for democratic government as plowing 
 is for the soil. Shall the army for preparedness be made an instru- 
 ment of democracy or a menace to it, a sheer adventure in militarism 
 foreign to our traditions and repugnant to our ideals? 
 
 The " hyphen," the immigrant, and the Army are in the fore- 
 ground. I3ut the great America, the America large enough to meet 
 the obligations of a new world, must respond to new reactions, which 
 will result either in a larger and finer conception of democratic dis- 
 cipline or a humiliating failure to attain a triumph for democratic 
 ideals which will means loss not merely to us but to the whole world. 
 
 One of the first problems which will come to us will be a result of 
 certain new reactions due to a confusion of militaristic Germany with 
 German social and industrial organization. A considerable part of 
 the industrial legislation which Germany had adopted for the physi- 
 cal well-being of her people is associated now in our country with a 
 conception of the state which is distasteful to us and wholly foreign 
 to our own ideas — a conception of the state in which the worker is a 
 
PREPAEEDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 
 
 9 
 
 feudal dependent upon an autocratic, militant, but otherwij^e benevo- 
 lent, overlord, and under which, as we are now told, his individual 
 initiative and personal freedom have been so fully suppressed that 
 the average workman is unconscious of their absence. Industrial 
 Germany conserves her human resources; militant Germany to-day 
 uses those resources. This principle of con.servation is new with us, 
 is practically untried, and much needed. Individual initiative and 
 personal freedom as political rights are our oldest and most cherished 
 doctrines. The wreckage occasioned by our failure to work out effect- 
 ive modifications of our individualism to meet a new industrialism 
 had in recent years inclined many of us to experiments with German 
 industrial legislation for the conservation of human resources to meet 
 our own economic conditions. The workmen's compensation laws of 
 recent years are of German origin. They have taken firm root and 
 are not likely to be dislodged in the near future by any reaction 
 against what is now called the German conception of the servile State. 
 But the compulsory pensions, the occupational-disease, old-age, and 
 sickness insurance plans, the State-controlled housing systems, all of 
 which are parts of German social legislation and which honest and 
 efficient management have there brought to a high degree of perfec- 
 tion, are already being considered with critical eyes and their avail- 
 ability in a democracy is being questioned. The logic involved seems 
 to be this : German social legislation has produced a vast number of 
 physically fit soldiers for the German armies. Therefore, the system 
 which makes them fit as soldiers is evil and should be avoided in a 
 democracy. The startling figures on the unfitness of the English as 
 soldiers, shown by the percentages of rejections for physical reasons, 
 which Price Collier^ gave us a few years ago, do not disturb us. We 
 dislike to think of our own workers as possible .soldier.s. 
 
 We prefer to ignore the great fact of modern warfare, that war 
 to-day is no longer the mere putting into battle array of a small 
 percentage of the population, leaving the great majority of citizens 
 to their ordinary employment. The war which is going on in 
 Europe is a war not merely of soldiers but of nations. Every par- 
 ticle of economic power is being invoked to make military success. It 
 will not be soldiers, but the discipline of nationality expressed in 
 countless ways which will triumph. In such a warfare how would 
 the discipline of American life, of American Government, of Amer- 
 ican industrial and social organization stand the test which would 
 be placed upon them? 
 
 ' Price Collier says, in his England and the English: 
 
 "The followins table, covering a twelvemonth ended September 30, 1907, gives a commentary upon 
 the physical condition of the men offering themselves as recruits for the regular army! 
 
 
 Offered for 
 enlistment. 
 
 Rejected 
 
 for 
 physical 
 reasons. 
 
 
 Offered for 
 enlistment. 
 
 Rejected 
 
 for 
 physical 
 
 reason-s . 
 
 
 20,975 
 
 1,8.58 
 
 2,523 
 
 1,031 
 
 791 
 
 8,807 
 
 1,084 
 
 1,821 
 
 363 
 
 452 
 
 Newcastle 
 
 1,493 
 ■ 776 
 2,905 
 956 
 1,500 
 
 1,046 
 
 Birmingham 
 
 Sunderland 
 
 282 
 
 
 Glasgow 
 
 1,135 
 
 ShetTield 
 
 Dundee 
 
 680 
 
 Leeds ... 
 
 Edinburgh 
 
 628 
 
 
 
 ^ " These men were yoimg men and men wiih a taste for outdoor life. Nor is the standard itself very 
 high which they arecalled upon to pass." 
 
10 I'ltKI'AIIKIiN'KSS AND DKM (XUtATlC DISCIIT.I N K. 
 
 In tlie r('|»«)il ot the Sec'i'ctary oi" tlic Iiitcrioi' for 1'.>1.'> occur some 
 wise words oil (his subject which will heai- repetition. 
 
 SoiiH' iiKtiilhs mIikv I koukIiI I" Iciini wlml I coiihl oi' llic nsscis id' llii>. i'i»uiitry 
 as llu-y ml!,'lit 1»<' rcncMilctl l».v lliis (It'iinrduciil, wlicic \v«' were in point of dovel- 
 opnionl, niid wliiil we liiul witli wlilcii lo mcci tlic world widcli was U^aching 
 us Hint war was im lonj^cr a set conlcsl Ix'lwccii nior<> or loss nioMlo arnuxi 
 forces, hid an oiidurin;; contest hctwccn all tlio life forces of the coiileslinfj; 
 |)arli«'s lh(>ir linancial slren;;lli, tluMr industrial organization and adaptalnlity, 
 their crop yields and their mineral resources; and that it iiltiiiiately counts to a 
 lest of tlu> very ;,'eniiis of the peoples involved. l''or to niohilize an army, even 
 a jxreat army, is now no more than an idle evidence of a siniile foi-in of striMi'jt!i, 
 If hehlnd this army the nation Is not or;,'anized. 
 
 Onr croj) ^nehls, our miiieral and liiiaiiciid resources ai'e doubtless 
 exc(dhMd and sutisfvini^. I liaxc oiscn in ^ footnote .some statistics 
 on (he iiiilitness of the Kn«;lish worker for service in (he Army. 
 ^\\\ni are the American statistics on (he same subjects I have be- 
 fore me as I wri(e (hi- s(atistics cu)m])ikHl by the Tnited States 
 MaiiiK- Corps for the year 15)15. showipo- the luimber of applicants 
 exitmiiii'd. (hose accepted for iMdislmciit, and (he j)ercenta<;e ae- 
 cepd'd. For (he whole Dnited States, the appliciints were 41,168 in 
 number. Of tiiese. ii,S;5.'i, or 1).81 \)vv cent, were found physically fit 
 for the service; in other woi-ds, 1 mnii out of every 11 examined, 
 Eleven thousand and twche men applied in New York City, and 
 of (lu>sc. ;)1('» were* found lit for service, or •2.^i(){) i)er cent. Those who 
 lind (hcmscht's now siiddcidy in(erested in physiciil fitness as a great 
 elenu'iU. in military preparedness may profitably consider these 
 s(a(is(ics. lndus(rial anarchy in peace does not make for physical 
 pre})aredness in war. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It is because (he oroaui/a(ioii of national life is so eminently im- 
 j)ortan(, because its absence is t)ne <d' the uuiin sources of our peril, 
 thid we should be interested priuuirily in the developuient. of a national 
 consciousness and a discipline, which are good for petice, and which 
 can be forwarded now by the peril of war if statesmen of vision 
 can be found to give the movement leadershi]). Any reaction of 
 opinion which tends to retard or fru-strate that devel()|)ment is a 
 national peril. The lack of just that kind of leadershi]) to-day is 
 conspicuous. The time is ripe for the develojnnent of a discipline 
 adapted to and expressive of the ])hiloso|)hy of democracy for a 
 definite antl concrete program. Instead of such statesmanship, we 
 have nothing as yet which is constructive, unless a i)ropaganda for 
 large exjienditures on purely military and naval matters deserves 
 the name. 
 
 There is with us. mt)reo\er. now as always, a ty[)e of mind which 
 is not entitled to leadership, which often successfully claims it, 
 which learns nothing and forgets nothing, which for the needs of 
 a far-reaching future has nothing but a morass of learning and a 
 perpetual ajipeal to the traditions of the past, which clamors for 
 the revival of the eighteenth-century philoso[)hy of an agricultural 
 democracy, for "' a return to those ])rinciples of individual liberty 
 on which our country was founded" — principles truly American, 
 but which need now as never before expansion and adaptability to 
 new and changed snrroundings. These men ai'e proclaiming to 
 
PREPAIIEDNESK AND I)KM(K;KATHJ rJlHCtI»r.lNK. H 
 
 sli^4)tly hon!(] list(!iicr.s, at oouiitloss piiMic (Jinnors, tlic. dcisirsihility 
 of tciicliin^ the l'oi'(;i^ri(!r oomin^ to our .sfiorcjH ('.]}r\\irvt\l\\-<-v.t\Uu'y 
 individiiJilisiri as an esscuitial arnJ prccioiiH Arncrir-an (Joftriric, jm- 
 cnliaily dcsirahlo for the iiri(J(',rf(;(l and tlic overworked. 'I'hi.s lyfje. 
 of |)r(;acliin^. to^'ctlier with tfie n!f>r^'ani/,ation oi' our viowH on tlie, 
 adaptability to our soil of (jreruian (;onf;e.ptions of Hooial le^rishdion, 
 has hrou^dit industi'ial legislation nearly to a starirj.sl ill. 
 
 A reaetion a«rainst all social le^rislation has Ix-^nin. The manu- 
 facturers' or^'anizations are already solif;itin^ funds frotn ouc an^ 
 other to wipe out .social legislation; to prevent the continuance or 
 extension or the new type of law for tlur irnprovetrK-nt <)\' the coruJi- 
 tion of the worker. A n(;w ally lias jf<ined Ihetn. 'I'lu; selfish desire 
 artificially to stimulate the /:(ro\vth of lahor unions \>y taking' away 
 from all workiti^ p(;r;ple evej-y oth<!r form oi' pi-r^tectirm fi-om ex- 
 ploitation has inrliu-ejj Mj-. f/omfjers to announce recently a f;ani- 
 pai^n by t\\(t Am(!rif;an I'"e(Jeral.if>n <>\' I>;ibor against Hur;h le^'isla- 
 tiori thiou^diout the country. He is aj^ainst industrial boards and 
 commissions e\'(!n more tJjan tfie manufacturers' or^'ani/.atir^ns. " Re- 
 peatedly," he declares, "the warning has been ^'iven that ilu-Hn 
 numerous attempts to rej^ulate industrial conditions and evils by 
 law are insidious dan^'ers to the hest int^jrests and welfare of the 
 wage earners." 
 
 'J his reaction is not confinerj (/^ the field of hit*or lefrishifiof). 'I lie 
 existence of war affords an opportunty i'ov Toryisru. fialf stupifj and 
 half cunning, to clamor against, "regulation," against /neddlesome 
 Goveinrnent chjgging tfie wfieels of industry, tiirottling indu-try, 
 and so forth, 'i'here is a vary considerable cla.ss in America of thofWJ 
 who are against demfx;ratic discipline, becauw; they 'nu make money 
 or attain power by its absence. Infiustrial feudalism, well cntab- 
 lished, drj<?s not wish to be disturbf;d by the law. If the 'I'ory reac- 
 tion against German industrial legislation can be extenrjed to cover 
 the whole field of social and economic legislation, the future of 
 American dem'^K-racy will be .seriously and injuriously affecteri. 
 
 Will it succeed ? It is perhaps too early to say. Jiecent years have 
 made rereiations wliich are too fresh to f^e forgotten and wfiich ought 
 to make the reaction less extreme. Tt was only a few years ago, for 
 example, that the principle of Government regulation of railway 
 securities was declared an outrageous int<^;rference with individual 
 and corporate rights. Kecent railroad history has tFirown a flood 
 of light upon the tr\i(t motives of thos^- who led the clamor against 
 this kind of legislation. Tt is not likely that the exposures of Kock 
 Island. Frisco. \ew Ifaven. and half a dozen similar but smaller 
 .scandals, will be readily forgotten. Tlut Toryi.srn which is a^n'im^ 
 interference and regiilation is largely slupid. hut it also is largely 
 eelfi.sh and di.shonest. Will the anti.s*;rvile State propaganda be 
 effective to thwart or delav genuine and needed refoiTn tm lines con- 
 fcistent with American principles? 
 
 German ideals are largely expres.«*d in making the b<fttom of the 
 social seale comfortable and. -till wors*;. contented: ours, until rjuit^ 
 recently, in more or less inefferrtive att^-rnpt- at m^kir;g the ton of 
 the s'^K-ial scale uncomfortable, le, tri all 
 
 the justified discontent which ir , - in a 
 
 politically demrxj;ratic state, linn farrt that our antitnjst acts, like 
 the English penal laws of a century ago. have been both dra.stic and 
 
12 PBEPAEEDNESS AND DEMOCEATIC DISCIPLINE. 
 
 ineffective, is beside the mark. The point is that, however stupid the 
 effort may have been, American democracy aimed to limit the undue 
 "Wealth of the powerful rather than the undeserved poverty of the 
 poor. 
 
 Social legislation in America is likely to receive a new turn as a 
 by-product of the war. It may for a time cease altogether. The 
 cost of government has increased enormously in recent decades. 
 The clamor for efficiency in the past few years has been largely a 
 demand for the elimination of " regulatory " legislation of all kinds. 
 This clamor will increase. The thinking behind it, real or alleged, 
 is for the most part a composite of the views of those who believe 
 in the economic gospel of Herbert Spencer and of those whose con- 
 servatism is social blindness carried to the point of stupidity. It 
 is this combination, which is far more dangerous to the future of 
 America than the Socialists, who are teaching the immigrant that 
 ours is and from the beginning was a purel}^ capitalistic Govern- 
 ment, cunningly devised for the purpose of sucking his blood. 
 
 The conflict in America will be intensified in the next few years 
 between those who believe in the evolution of American law ade- 
 quate to meet not merely political but economic and social de- 
 mands, to which it must respond or fail, and those who believe 
 in Mr. Carnegie's gospel of wealth — anarchistic individualism tem- 
 pered by ostentatious philanthrophy ; the philosophy whose fullest 
 practical expression is recorded in the Pittsburgh Survey — a hid- 
 eous cartoon on Democracy. 
 
 The next few years will require from most of us a deal of think- 
 ing to knoAv in which camp we belong. Great changes of one 
 sort or another are coming. The anti-German sentiment is be- 
 ing utilized by those who hope to develop not only a hatred of 
 Prussian autocracy and despotism — against which the German peo- 
 ple themselves were struggling before the war and which they must 
 meet after it is over — but an equal prejudice against the wonder- 
 ful system of government by which in spite of militarism Ger- 
 many has evolved in less than 45 years an intelligent, coordinated, 
 intensive, highly educated, and e"fficient nationalism such as the 
 world never knew before. 
 
 Those who just now are talking almost hysterically about a policy 
 of preparedness are making certain false assumptions. They are 
 advocating a national policy which, if adopted in the one-sided 
 and incomplete way in which it is at present being presented, will 
 set us back 50 years in possibility of true progress. The notion 
 that preparedness is a mere military thing, to be had by superim- 
 posing upon the most wasteful, extravagant, and inefficient army 
 and navy establishment in the world a new mass of similar ex- 
 penditures, is a delusion. If we are so insistent upon preparation 
 for war, and if we are, as we say, still unprepared after spending 
 on such preparations over three billion dollars in the last 20 years, 
 exclusive of pensions, let us at least in our preparation recognize 
 an essential part of its true basis. The power behind military 
 Germany is industrial Germany. The organization of German life 
 is doubtless extreme, but the current preparedness doctrines, how- 
 ever much they may differ on military or naval estimates, agree 
 at least in this: they ignore absolutely "every necessity for improv- 
 ine; the industrial organization, the economic basis for national 
 
PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 13 
 
 unit3^ Sweatshops, child hibor, industrial anarchy held in check 
 by martial law, the exploitation of the worker, lack of an intel- 
 ligent policy in handling the immigrant, industrial accidents crip- 
 pling and burdening the worker, industrial diseases unregulated 
 and unprevented, the almost total absence of effective labor legis- 
 lation on the side of inspection and regulation, the exploited ten- 
 ant farmer, the stupid chaos of liquor legislation, the whole mass 
 of haphazard, slipshod laws which seem to def}^ all attempts at 
 coordination and economy of administration — all these and a hun- 
 dred others are true problems of preparedness which are to-day 
 ignored. 
 
 It is a disciplined democracy which America needs, a democracy 
 disciplined to a capacity for true leadership such as will effectuate 
 a Pan American federation, as a new world contribution of democ- 
 racy toward the foundations of peace. The strident patriots who are 
 expounding crude preparedness propagandas, in principles and pur- 
 poses identical with all the armed peace propagandas which have 
 proved wrong in a hundred j^ears, ignore all such considerations. 
 If they have their wa,y, there ma}^ be an additional reason for ignor- 
 ing the economic basis of national unity, the plea of poverty — that 
 we can't afford it. The propagandists of preparation seem ready 
 to do an3'thing but improve the quality and character of our democ- 
 racy. To them it is all a matter of guns, soldiers, submarines, and 
 huzzas for the flag; not the establishment of a democracy supremely 
 worth fighting for. 
 
 True preparedness calls not merely for an external but for an 
 internal and industrial program. The national-defense orators who 
 to-day fill the papers with their speeches seem to have in mind 
 only enormous naval and military expenses — a program which leaves 
 pressing industrial problems as usual to private initiative and to 
 philanthropy. Already, for example, one organization of public- 
 spirited citizens is planning a program for the alien which ought 
 in its essential features to have been a governmental policy ex- 
 pressed in effective law at least 25 years ago. 
 
 E^ery destructive and disintegrating force in America is logically 
 and by instinct on the side of the militant, for the militant program 
 retards the normal development of a sane industrial program, an 
 effective government, an organized democracy. Most of us, except 
 the extrme pacifists, are entirely willing to haae our Government 
 expend all the money which may be reasonably necessary for na- 
 tional defenses and the protection of our national honor. We are 
 also willing and quite anxious to have the funds provided, in part 
 at least, by cutting millions out of the fraudulent pension rolls, 
 out of the impossible naval stations and absurd Army posts, out 
 (.f the countless lootings of the pork barrel of Congress for ex- 
 travagant and unnecessary public buildings, and the endless appro- 
 priations for river and harbor improvements, which improve noth- 
 ing but the political fences of statesmen. No country in the world 
 has so little to show for her enormous expenditures on military 
 and naval establishments as our own. A timely and patriotic pro- 
 gram of preparedness might well begin with a policy of retrench- 
 ment against waste and extravagance, an expression of self-denial 
 akin to self-discipline. Nothing so revolutionary and so desirable 
 lias as yet been more than suggested. There are pending as I write, 
 
14 PREPAREDNESS AND DEMOCRATIC DISCIPLINE. 
 
 thus early in the session of Congress, bills involving the expenditure 
 of $300,000,000 for munition factories where they will do local po- 
 litical interests the most good. 
 
 How can a sane program for the perfection of a democracy of 
 peace be even thought of in the midst of such a clamor for military 
 preparedness — and appropriations? Yet that program must be con- 
 sidered. The danger to America to-day is the ascendency at this 
 time of shortsighted men, unduly excited over preparation for war, 
 who can not visualize the America whose great need is prepara- 
 tion for peace, for the evolution by patient labor and infinite pains, 
 by the love and loyalty and wisdom of her freemen, of that difficult 
 and ideal democracy, which harmonizes and blends political and 
 industrial freedom — the only liberty which can enlighten the world. 
 
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