No
violent convulsions should be needed to make us free, if men were but
consistent: we should find ourselves wakening from a wicked dream in a
bloodless and beautiful revolution. We are in the desert truly and a
long way from the Promised Land. But we must get to the higher ground
and consider our position; and if one by one we are stripped of the
prejudices that too long have usurped the place of faith, and we find
ourselves, to our dismay, perhaps lacking that faith that we have so
long shouted but so little testified, and tremble on the verge of panic,
there is one last line that gives in four words with divine simplicity
and completeness a final answer to all timidity and objections: "Fear
not; only believe."
CHAPTER XIV
MILITARISM
I
To defend or recover freedom men must be always ready for the appeal to
arms. Here is a principle that has been vindicated through all history
and needs vindication now. But in our time the question of rightful war
has been crossed by the evil of militarism, and in our assertion of the
principle, that in the last resort freemen must have recourse to the
sword, we find ourselves crossed by the anti-militarist campaign. We
must dispose of this confusing element before we can come to the ethics
of war. Of the evil of militarism there can be no question, but a
careful study of some anti-militaristic literature discloses very
different motives for the campaign.
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