PEACE MEETING

This year's mobilization for Peace, compared to the more spectacular methods of previous years, was an overwhelming success. New Lecture Hall was well-filled; the reception enthusiastic; some of the speakers excellent. But somehow or other, the tone of the whole affair, and of all the speeches, seemed rather negative in outlook, with lots of indignation, horror stories, and descriptions of the futility of war. No-one thought of suggesting a conservative way out.

Perhaps the idea was that the meeting itself suggested a way out,--education, propaganda, "mobilization", speeches. Perhaps Professor Langer felt that "careful study and hard work" was really the only and all sufficient solution. Perhaps Mr. Villard felt that the abolition of J. P. Morgan and Co. really would have prevented our entry into the World War, and is the only solution for the future. Perhaps Mr. Baldwin, forgetting Russia's Red Army, and the lucky political impossibility of Socialism in America, really and sincerely felt Socialism was the answer.

If these were the only solutions to the War and Peace problem which these men could think of, then we must come to the conclusion that the first of them is a brilliant pessimist, and the last two are idealistic fools.

Let us hope that in future years this experiment of a Peace Meeting, eminently successful as it was, may expand its outlook to include practical solutions. Propaganda, education, speeches, mobilizations, Peace Meetings are all in the right direction. But Peace can only be waged through the strength of the state, through the governments that each country is cursed with in the next years. Not until government policies are found and accepted which will really keep us out of foreign wars, and also prevent such wars from beginning at all, will Peace be possible.