THE several items of this program are not sug-
gested as necessarily linked up in time. Op-
portunity must always be the omnipotent and
capricious fairy of life. What is suggested, in fact
what must be emphasized, is that success in disarma-
ment is impossible unless a new spirit is felt in world
affairs. New, though the spirit wanted has already
moved the world and assisted at the birth of the League
of Nations. Pundits, practical men, wiseacres, have
been busy since then pouring--oh, not cold water--
tepid, deadly tepid stuff over our imagination and soul.
"You must not break the back of the League," they
say, it is too young." And meanwhile they deprive
it of food and of spirit so that it may not grow. We
are not cranks. We are no "enthusiasts." We are as
cold-blooded as any political old hand and as "hard-
boiled" as any financier. We do not advocate the
League because it is a religion; we advocate it because
it is the only reasonable way to solve a definite prob-
lem, the terms of which can be put clearly to every man
and woman with senses to observe and sense to judge.
We believe that no business man would "run" his busi-
ness as the world is run to-day, letting every one of its
departments steal a march on every other one, allowing
them to work in utter lack of coöperation in a spirit

-361-