SUMMER MILITARY CAMPS--II.

If it could be shown that the United States was today in danger of attack from some nation, merely lying in wait for a good opportunity to open hostilities, the CRIMSON would not simply support the Summer Military Camps, but would demand that this country spend its last dollar and its last man in the best possible defences. The United States is very evidently not in such imminent danger. Even our military authorities are agreed that the need today is for a carefully thought out policy which may be consistently followed in the future.

This country is supposed to have become a world power; consequently, it is argued there must be a reasonable increase in armaments which the Military Camps are expected to give. Adequate armaments, however, are relative armaments,--a fact which those militarists who use the insurance analogy ignore. Any increase in military strength on the part of one power no matter how reasonable--is sure to be met by a similar reasonable increase on the part of other powers. The menace which we face is that of permitting this country to enter the European reasonable armament competition which has no other limits than the complete exhaustion of the resources of any nation which consistently follows the advice of its military authorities.

No sensible man will today attempt to prove that war in the future is inevitable. On the contrary, he should feel called upon to analyze the causes which lead to war and then play as active a part as possible for their prevention in the future. Wars arise today either because one nation holds to the fallacious notion that it can secure some positive gain by defeating some other power, or else because it believes such an opinion is held towards it.

International finance and economic development have become so complex and interwoven that any injury to the trade or industry of one country is sure to do harm to every other. The belief that a "place in the sun" is constituted by holding colonies has long since been discarded by economists along with other such mercantilist notions. It is too evidently still held today as a part of the "governmental mind" so brilliantly analyzed by Lowes Dickinson. It is a remnant of that habit which leads men to think of nations, of certain colored portions of the map, and not of individuals, as ends in themselves.

At the same time one of the saddest and yet most encouraging features of the present war is the entire lack of any definite opinion on the part of the masses of the people concerned as to what the causes of the war are or what they as individuals will ever gain. Undoubtedly some mis-educated leaders on both sides have had aggressive desires; all who have come from the warring countries are agreed that to the people it is a war of self-defence.

Quite possibly there exists no better material in this country for military officers than our colleges and universities offer. There is not only no better, but there is no other material from which can be drawn those who will spread the doctrines of the futility of war and supplant those diplomatists and leaders of popular opinion who were responsible for the present conflict.