These persons disapprove of disarmament:  and from the point of view here advocated, a general disarmament would be the last thing to be desired.  The possible member of a posse must bear arms to be effective.  Armaments may have to be limited and controlled by international decree, but to disarm a nation would be as criminal and foolish as it would be to take away all weapons from the law-abiding citizens of a mining town as a preliminary to calling upon them to assist in the arrest of a notorious band of outlaws.

Again:  a common objection to the peace propaganda is that without war we shall have none of the heroic virtues that war calls into being.  This objection fails utterly when we consider that what we shall get under a proper international agreement is not the abolition of war, but simply an assurance that when there is a war it will be one in which every good citizen can take at once the part of international law and order—­a contest between the law and the law-breaker, and not one in which both contestants are equally lawless.  Thus the profession of arms will still be an honorable one—­it will, in fact, be much more honorable than it is to-day, when it may at any moment be prostituted to the service of greed or commercialism.

THE ART OF RE-READING

“I have nothing to read,” said a man to me once.  “But your house seems to be filled with books.”  “O, yes; but I’ve read them already.”  What should we think of a man who should complain that he had no friends, when his house was thronged daily with guests, simply because he had seen and talked with them all once before?  Such a man has either chosen badly, or he is himself at fault.  “Hold fast that which is good” says the Scripture.  Do not taste it once and throw it away.  To get at the root of this matter we must go farther back than literature and inquire what it has in common with all other forms of art to compel our love and admiration.  Now, a work of art differs from any other result of human endeavor in this—­that its effect depends chiefly on the way in which it is made and only secondarily upon what it is or what it represents.  Were this not true, all statues of Apollo or Venus would have the same art-value; and you or I, if we could find a tree and a hill that Corot had painted, would be able to produce a picture as charming to the beholder as his.

The way in which a thing is done is, of course, always important, but its importance outside of the sphere of art differs from that within.  The way in which a machine is constructed makes it good or bad, but the thing that is aimed at here is the useful working of the machine, toward which all the skill of the maker is directed.  What the artist aims at is not so much to produce a likeness of a god or a picture of a tree, as to produce certain effects in the person who looks at his complete work; and this he does by the way in which he performs it.  The fact that a painting represents certain trees and hills is here only secondary; the primary fact is what the artist has succeeded in making the on-looker feel.