We are told the things differ in quality.  The answer is what about the intent and the uses made.  German militarism has kept peace and has not emerged beyond its own frontier until threatened with universal attack.  Russian militarism has waged wars abroad, far beyond the confines of Russian territory; French militarism, since it was overthrown at Sedan, has carried fire and sword across all Northern Africa, has penetrated from the Atlantic to the Nile, has raided Tonquin, Siam, Madagascar, Morocco, while English navalism in the last forty years has bombarded the coast lines, battered the ports, and landed raiding parties throughout Asia and Africa, to say nothing of the well nigh continuous campaigns of annexation of the British army in India, Burma, South Africa, Egypt, Tibet, or Afghanistan, within the same period.

As to the quality of the materialism of the great Continental Powers there is nothing to prefer in the French and Russian systems to the German system.  Each involved enormous sacrifices on the people sustaining it.  We are asked, however, to believe that French militarism is maintained by a “democracy” and German militarism by an “autocracy.”  Without appealing to the captive Queen of Madagascar for an opinion on the authenticity of French democracy we may confine the question to the elected representatives of the two peoples.

In both cases the war credits are voted by the legislative bodies responsible to French and German opinion.  The elected representatives of Germany are as much the spokesman of the nation as those of France, and the German Reichstag has sanctioned every successive levy for the support of German armaments.  As to Russian militarism, it may be presumed no one will go quite so far as to assert that the Russian Duma is more truly representative of the Russian people than the Parliament of the Federated peoples of Germany at Berlin.

The machines being then approximately the same machines, we must seek the justification for them in the uses to which they have been put.

For what does France, for what does Russia maintain a great army?  Why does Germany call so many youthful Germans to the colours?  On what grounds of moral sanction does Great Britain maintain a navy, whose cost far exceeds all the burdens of German militarism?

Russia stretches across the entire area of Central Asia and comprises much of the greater part of Europe as well.  In its own territory, it is unassailable, and never has been invaded with success.  No power can plunder or weaken Russia as long as she remains within her own borders.  Of all the great powers in Europe she is the one that after England has the least need of a great army.