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effective than war as an antidote against unemployment. War producesa more complete result but it is temporary, passes swiftly, andleaves behind it immense dislocations. But preparation for war cango on for a long time—for forty years,in Germany and France andItaly. War or preparation for war establishes the government as theone big customer for the one big industry to which almost all industriesbecome tributary: the armament industry. Preparation for war—national defense, it is called—can take a million or more men inthis country in peacetime out of the labor market and put themin the army while at the same time three times as many can be drawninto the industries which provide them with tanks, planes, guns,barracks, food, clothes, etc., all paid for by the government withfunds raised largely if not altogether by debt.It has been the pacifist, the liberal, and the radical who have beensupposed to be the bulwark against militarism—here as elsewhere.Yet even in their armor is a flaw, which originates in the profoundeconomic necessity upon which the true-hearted militarists havefloated. A good many years ago William James, an avowed pacifist,could twist out of his own mind an argument for universal service.He wrote:Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it religiously.It is a sort of sacrament. Its profits are to the vanquished as well as to thevictor, and, quite apart from any question of profit, it is an absolute good,we are told, for it is human nature at its highest dynamic. Its "horrors" area cheap price to pay for rescue from the only alternative of a world ofclerks and teachers, of coeducation and zoophily, of consumers' leaguesand associated charities, of industrialism unlimited and feminism unabashed.Here was an excellent half-ironic statement of the shallow nonsensethat was spread around Great Britain, which was tackling the WhiteMan's Burden and singing Kipling's Recessional. But, alas, James wasto add:So far as the central idea of this feeling goes no healthy-minded person,it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it. Militarism is thegreat preserver of our ideals, of hardihood, and human life with no usefor hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or prizes for thedarer, history would be insipid indeed. So long as anti-militarists propose209