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CONSCRIPTION.

“If we, in a moment of unthinking panic, adopt the advice of our militarists and develop an Army based on universal service, we shall prepare for ourselves the very situation in which Germany finds itself at this moment.  However much we may protest that our aims are pacific, and that our Army is intended only for defensive purposes, foreign nations will view it with alarm, and will reflect that, by the help of our Navy, we can land an armed force in any country that has a sea coast.  We shall thus incur the risk of a coalition against us.  It is said that if we had had a conscript Army, the present war would not have taken place.  But it is not realized that a different and far more dangerous war would have been probable, a war in which we should have had no continental Allies, but should have been resisted, as Germany is being resisted, in order to relieve Europe of an intolerable terror....

“In a word, of all the measures open to us to adopt, none is so likely to bring us to disaster as universal military service.”—­By Hon. Bertrand Russell (in “The Labour Leader,” October 15, 1914).

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H.G.  WELLS ON THE REGULATION OF ARMAMENTS AND NEUTRALIZATION OF THE SEA.

“If there is courage and honesty enough in men, I believe it will be possible to establish a world Council for the regulation of armaments as the natural outcome of this war.  First, the trade in armaments must be absolutely killed.  And then the next supremely important measure to secure the peace of the world is the neutralization of the sea.

“It will lie in the power of England, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States, if Germany and Austria are shattered in this war, to forbid the further building of any more ships of war at all.”—­From the “Daily Chronicle,” August 21, 1914.

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THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY.

“It will be necessary soon to consider the relations of democracy to the war.  The war is a war of nationalities, but it was not made by peoples.  Its begetter was a comparatively small band of unscrupulous, blind, and conceited persons, who were clever and persistent enough to demoralize a whole people.  In so far as they permitted themselves to be demoralized the people were to blame, but the chief blame lies on the small band.  Europe is laid waste, hundreds of thousands of men murdered, and practically every human being in the occidental hemisphere made to suffer, not for the amelioration of a race, but in order to satisfy the idiotic ambitions of a handful.  Let not this fact be forgotten.  Democracy will not forget it.  And foreign policy in the future will not be left in the hands of any autocracy, by whatever specious name the autocracy may call itself.  Ruling classes have always said that masses were incapable