dangerous indulgence. A reversion to and an encouragement of this older practise would seem to be in furtherance of personal security and tend to quicken the impulse to national defense, whenever a common enemy presents itself.

After all is said and done, the human element-strong, healthy, intelligent, and liberty-loving men and women—is the most essential element and vital factor in the science and art of government during peace or war, just as strong, healthy, intelligent and liberty-loving men and women are the dominating factors in the sciences underlying all other relations of mankind, whether as individuals or as group. There must be a citizenship physically fit, ready and able to serve in the nation's defense. Physical training with knowledge and the ability to bear and use arms will not only result in preparing the people of the United States for a time of emergency, but will also have a wholesome effect upon the health and strength of the people during time of peace. Physical training fits the citizen for industry, for service in the work of nations, as well as for service in the defense of the nation. Training of this kind should be given through voluntary institutions, democratically organized and democratically controlled.

Our existing industrial and commercial life does not at present permit a full mental and physical development of manhood and womanhood. The majority of our citizens no longer live in the open. A restricted and confined life in the office, shop, factory or mine has had a most disastrous effect upon the physical development of the workers of this nation. No nation can possess endurance whose citizens bear the inevitable consequences of sweat-shop labor, long working hours, low wages, and insanitary conditions. The workers constitute the great rank and file of the citizenship of a nation. If they are underfed, partly clothed, physically stunted, they are a menace to the nation in time of peace and in time of war. That nation whose industries exploit human workers during time of peace will find its existence threatened during time of war, because of inability to produce supplies, and because of dearth of fit soldiers. Policies and institutions which conserve human life and which afford opportuni

ties for the development of every citizen are the greatest safeguard of a nation,

Individual initiative and resourcefulness are of incalculable value to a nation. In war time every nation expects loyal support of its wage-earners. Organized co-operation on the battle-field and in the making of munitions is essential to a proper safeguarding of our national interests. Organized cooperation is likewise necessary during time of peace. A nation which fails to stimulate and to develop qualities which work for voluntary associated effort among the workers for the common welfare assumes a responsibility for national peril. It foregoes its right to a full and free patriotic sacrifice from its citizens. The workers-the citizens-must be protected in their condition of life and work and such protection must come from their own educated initiative. The nation should consist of men and women conscious of their own dignity, aware of their own powers, and intelligently prompted in following a course of action best intended to promote their interests. The wageearners are entitled to take part in determining those matters which so vitally concern them and the nation.

Opportunities for physical training are not freely and readily available to all. Some definite national policy should be devised for physical training and physical preparedness of all citizens. Physical training for the youth is properly a part of educational work and could readily be given through our public school system and other auxiliary agencies. Training of this kind, however, should be of broad and humane ideals and general usefulness and not be narrowly specialized or dominated by the purpose of militarism. The school should do all possible to develop keen, ready minds and healthy bodies. The co-operative instinct which would result in willing obedience for the best interest of all proceeding from knowledge which is best, is the ideal which should inspire the training. The body of every child should be so trained in our schools as to develop him into full manhood. The mind. of every child should be so trained as to know best how to protect and advance its individual and collective interest, to

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determine right from wrong and should be instilled with a spirit to resent wrong and fight for every right.

To make sacrifices for America, we must be sure that our state in the country justifies it. To attain the requisite national spirit, it is necessary above all things to create a confidence in the equality and impartiality and fitness of the laws and their administration. This cannot be done, with reasonable men, unless they have some voice in settling those laws and moulding them to the necessities of the time. Much of the history of nations consists of a series of mistakes, made by legislators of all ages, as to things they have tried to compel people to do. The last hundred years seems to have been occupied in the discovery of the mistakes made and the successive efforts to retreat from false positions. Modern legislators now acquiesce in the conclusion that most of the old tasks were impossible which sought to compel absolute uniformity of thought and action and of social life. Most of the governments of the world, after centuries of experience, have learned that laws are made for the benefit of those governed as well as for those governing—and obviously rather more for the benefit of the governed. When laws are the fruit of choice and deliberation and a joint labor of the governed and those governing, and approach most nearly to self-made laws on both sides, this partnership of feeling and of self-interest engages all the prejudices of human nature in its service and thereby draws after it not only a willing obedience but a ready and immediate response to their protection, whenever threatened, no matter by whom. A government in which compulsion is least employed, is that which is most conformable to its true nature and most completely fulfils its duties to all of its citizens.

In concluding, it is fitting that I quote Mr. Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, in his interpretation of organized labor's attitude as expressed in an address at the 16th Annual Meeting of the National Civic Federation, on January 18th of this year:

There are no citizens of our country who are more truly patriotic

than the organized wage-earners-or all the wage-earners and we have done our share in the civic life of the nation as well as in the nation's wars. We have done our share to protect the nation against insidious attacks from within, that were directed at the very heart of our national life and would have inevitably involved us in foreign complications. The wage-earners stood unfalteringly for ideals of honor, freedom and loyality. Their wisdom and their patriotism. served our country in a time of great need. No one can question that the wage-earners. of the United States are patriotic in the truest sense, no one can question their willingness to fight for the cause of liberty, freedom and justice. No one can question the value of the ideals that direct the labor movement.

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UNIVERSAL TRAINING AND THE DEMOCRATIC

IDEAL 1

GEORGE CREEL

A

LTRA-MILITARISTS and ultra-pacifists, blind to everything but their prejudices and preconceptions, are alike guilty of blasphemy against facts. world war does not carry the conclusion that the United States will be attacked either today or tomorrow, but it does declare the truth that civilization has not yet reached that stage of spiritual development where peace may be trusted to moral suasion. War is not something that will come, but something that may come; and insistence that plans for national defense shall be based upon the imminence of war is no greater folly than insistence that national defense shall be disregarded wholly.

What the majority of Americans are seeking today is some sound program of preparedness which will treat war as a contingency, not as a dread certainty, permitting full adherence to the democratic ideal without surrender of prudence. The one answer is the adoption of a system of universal training that will give finer expression to the aspirations of democracy even while providing for its defensive needs.

The volunteer system has been attended at every step by waste and failure, draining the national treasury of two billion dollars in ten years and contributing to farce and tragedy in equal degree. It is history that fifty per cent of all volunteers are rejected because of their unfitness, while of those accepted, fully one-half die, before the firing line is reached, by reason of their utter lack of stamina. Even today, when only the supposedly fit are offering themselves for enlistment, just one out of every six applicants for the army and the navy it is found possible to accept. In the Civil War and in

1 Read by title at meeting of Academy of Political Science on May 18, 1919.