Some Considerations Regarding a Limitation of Armaments

Abstract

CONTESTS between nations take various forms depending upon their resources and financial ability, their possessions, means of transportation and communication, their diplomatic aptitude, and their actual armed forces. Armed forces themselves may be regarded as a symptom of a nation's punitive psychology. By their size, organization and distribution, an estimate may be made as to how and in what manner the policies of the states are to be enforced. Within the last generation great changes have come about in the internal organizations of states and in their relations with each other. This condition has been brought about very largely by electrical means of communication which transmit news instantaneously all over the world, thereby distributing thoughts and ideas to a constantly increasingly literate people. Contributing factors have been the added rapidity of transportation both on land and water, the railroad and the steamship. Within the last decade, the advent of air transportation, which is not limited by either seas or continents, has added a totally new element in the relations of nations to each other. So far the domain of air power has been principally a military one, but soon its economic aspects will be even greater. Physical means are employed by nations to impress their will on an adversary only when their other means of adjusting disputes have failed. No nation today will willingly give up a reasonable organization for the defense of its territory, the maintenance of its institutions and the furtherance of its civilization either by civil means, comme cial means, or military means. On the other hand, the nations are perfectly willing to dispense or do away with antiquated means of national defe se which have become obsolete and useless, and which at the same time greatly oppress the people by i creased taxation and services in the building up of industries and classes which cannot be used for anything except war. Leaving out of consideration civil and commercial means of carrying on competitions between nations and viewing the military side alone, we must make an up-to-date appraisal of what military forces consist of and what they are worth in order to arrive at a basis for a limitation of armaments. Armies and navies have heretofore held the stage, but now air power has appeared on the scene. Air power has completely changed the relation of armies to navies and navies to armies, and both of these bear an entirely new relation to air power.