Thus the whole excitement passed off in rumblings; there was no war.  But it was revealed a few months later that the nations had really approached to the very brink of a Titanic struggle, which would have desolated the whole of Europe.

And here is the peculiar tragedy of Militarism.  The mere threat of that great “Unfought War” cost Europe billions of dollars.  Moreover, as a result of Germany’s discontent at what she rather regarded as her defeat in this Morocco affair, she in 1913 enormously increased her army and more than doubled her already heavy military tax upon her people.  Then France and Russia felt compelled to meet Germany’s move by increasing their armies also, extending, as she had done, the time of compulsory military service inflicted upon their poorer classes.

Norman Angell, an English writer, has recently stirred all thinking people by a remarkable book of protest against Militarism.  He here discusses the Moroccan imbroglio under the title of “the Mirage of the Map.”  Sir Max Waechter is an authority of international repute upon the same subject.

NORMAN ANGELL

The Press of Europe and America is very busy discussing the lessons of the diplomatic conflict which has just ended.  And the outstanding impression which one gets from most of these essays in high politics—­whether French, Italian, or British—­is that we have been and are witnessing part of a great world movement, the setting in motion of Titanic forces “deep-set in primordial needs and impulses.”

For months those in the secrets of the Chancelleries have spoken with bated breath—­as though in the presence of some vision of Armageddon.  On the strength of this mere talk of war by the three nations, vast commercial interests have been embarrassed, fortunes have been lost and won on the Bourses, banks have suspended payment, some thousands have been ruined; while the fact that the fourth and fifth nations have actually gone to war has raised all sorts of further possibilities of conflict, not alone in Europe, but in Asia, with remoter danger of religious fanaticism and all its sequelae.  International bitterness and suspicion in general have been intensified, and the one certain result of the whole thing is that immense burdens will be added in the shape of further taxation for armaments to the already heavy ones carried by the five or six nations concerned.  For two or three hundred millions of people in Europe life, which with all the problems of high prices, labor wars, unsolved social difficulties, is none too easy as it is, will be made harder still.

The needs, therefore, that can have provoked a conflict of these dimensions must be “primordial” indeed.  In fact, one authority assures us that what we have seen going on is “the struggle for life among men”—­that struggle which has its parallel in the whole of sentient existence.