Our sphere of influence includes Persia, Thibet,
Arabia, Palestine, Egypt--a vast part of the Mohammedan world. Yet if
any part of our possessions were to break into revolt or raise a "holy
war" against us, we should be hard pressed for men to uphold our power
and prestige, and our treasury would be called upon in vain for gold.
After the war which was to crush militarism the air force alone
proposed an annual expenditure of more than twice as much money as the
whole cost of the army before the war. While the armaments of the
German people, whom we defeated in the war against militarism, are
restricted to a few warships and a navy of 100,000 men at a cost
reckoned as ?10,000,000 a year, we are threatened with a naval and
military program costing ?300,000,000 a year. Was it for this our men
fought? Was it to establish a new imperialism upheld by the power of
guns that 900,000 boys of ours died in the war of liberation? I know
it was otherwise. There are people at the street-corners who know; and
in the tram-cars and factories and little houses in mean streets where
there are empty chairs and the portraits of dead boys.
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