In Literature United

The “fundamental conflict of our times is not the clash between two civilisations, but doctrines-religious and ethnic fundamentalism on the one hand, secular consumerist capitalism on the other.”

“It is true of terrorism as it is of modern civil conflicts that men of war prey on the ignorance of the populace to instill fear and arouse hatred”; “murderous, even genocidal ideologies took root in the absence of truthful information and honest education.”

“If only half the effort had gone into teaching those people what unites them, and not what divides them, unspeakable crimes could have been prevented”.

“Literature can bring down violence in today’s world as reading and writing broadens minds. … Two contradictory forces shape the world of letters today …  the first is globalisation of human imagination and the second is anxiety of audience.”

From: newindianexpress.com

The Racket

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. ... I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. ... In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Smedley Butler, Major General, U.S. Marine Corps.

Smedley Butler inspired my novel The Black Vault:

In the 1930s a group of wealthy industrialists plotted to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt and replace him with a puppet dictator. The coup failed because of moral reservations of a single man: Smedley Butler.

MORE ABOUT THE BLACK VAULT

Tampering with Nature as weapon

"That iconic atomic bomb mushroom cloud image could have been a towering tsunami wave. According to archival military records uncovered by author and filmmaker Ray Waru, a 1944 top-secret operation, code-named Project Seal, planned to hijack nature's wrath by creating 33-foot tsunami waves capable of destroying coastal cities. How? Simply detonate 2 million tons of explosives as a series of 10 blasts about five miles from shore. "If the atomic bomb had not worked as well as it did, we might have been tsunami-ing people," says Waru. But while a tsunami bomb was deemed totally feasible after about 3,700 bombs were exploded off New Caledonia and near Auckland, plans for a pseudo-natural doomsday device were abandoned in 1945."

More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/9774217/Tsunami-bomb-tested-off-New-Zealand-coast.html

http://m.now.msn.com/tsunami-weapon-tests-carried-out-in-wwii



SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com

Too fat to fight

"At the intersection of fat-shaming and war-mongering comes a bizarre public health campaign: an effort by retired generals and admirals to ban sugary sodas and snacks from public schools. The kids today, say the former brass, are too fat to fight for their country.
Welcome to the sum of all libertarian fears: a Nanny State that packs an M4 rifle.

Those officers, part of a group called “Mission: Readiness,” argue in a new report called “Still Too Fat to Fight” that unhealthy snacks, particularly in schools, endanger national security. “No other major country’s military forces face the challenges of weight gain confronting America’s armed forces ,” they fret.

“It’s clear to us that our military readiness could be put in jeopardy given the fact that nearly 75 percent of young Americans are unable to serve in uniform,” write two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff..."

More: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/too-fat-for-war/



The Election. The Coup. The Black Vault. www.SPYWRITER.com

Espionage Monopoly

"In WWII, agents of the British secret service unit MI9 oversaw the development and distribution of special-edition versions of the board game Monopoly to British POWS held in German camps. These boxes were secretly packed with maps, compasses and other tools that would be helpful to a solider who wanted to escape. The games were one of the items that were permitted by the Germans from humanitarian groups like the Red Cross. Each of the special-edition games concealed silk maps of the areas around known German POW camps, compasses, and real bank notes mixed in with the game money. British pilots were told to look for the games in the event of their capture, and some estimate that the games' secret tools were used by thousands of POWs over the course of the war. Sadly, all the special edition sets known to exist were destroyed after the war."

More: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/gadgets-electronics/stories/4-unbelievable-spy-gadgets

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THE BLACK VAULT by Jack King:
It's the year of election The Coup

Concentration Camps

On this day in 1945 the Nazis began to evacuate the Auschwitz concentration camp, ten days later liberated by the advancing Soviet troops. Let's remember the horrors instituted by blind militarization, homophobia, and nationalism, not least because of my grandfather who was imprisoned for 5 years in Auschwitz and Mauthausen.

According to Jesuit sources (Malachi Martin, The Keys of His Blood) the Nazis "established some 8,500 concentration camps on occupied Polish soil, and organized them into a brutal industry divided into 13 administrative districts. Of the some 18 million Europeans who were imprisoned in concentration camps, some 11 million were killed - of those 3.5 million were Poles, and 7.5 million other nationals". Why such a high number of Poles? It was a part of the plan that was hatched on January 25, 1940, in "a secret circular" drafted by Hermann Göring. According to Hans Frank (the Governor-general of the General Government of occupied Poland) the circular was a handbook for "making certain that not one Polish man, woman, or child, was left alive to soil the territories now and forever part of the Third Reich".

Concentration camps were set up for political enemies, prisoners of war, foreigners, criminals, etc. My grandfather spent over five years in Auschwitz and Mauthausen (survived a death march) simply because he was born Polish.

What were concentration camps?

"After 1945 the term concentration camp was almost completely associated with the German dictatorship; the dictionary definition of 'concentration camp' in English describes them as German and locates them firmly in the brief twelve years of the Third Reich. This focus on the concentration camp as a German phenomenon entirely distorts the historical reality, not only because it ignores the long history of concentration camps in other geographical locations.

[...] the concentration camp is essentially a product of the First World War and its immediate aftermath. This was the period in which what might be described as a 'camp culture' developed, encouraged by the growth of a large camp structure for prisoners-of-war and refugees, but more specifically the camps set up for enemy aliens. These camps concentrated the targeted group, created the physical pattern of future camps, and bred a crude popular culture of exclusion." Source

What was Auschwitz?

"Auschwitz? That was a real Tower of Babel. But, what does it mean to be Polish? What does it mean to be a Slav? The French wore the same numbers on their forearms, and were beaten all the same, and the Gypsies were beaten even more. We [concentration camp survivors] know something that you cannot, because you could've been killed by bombs or soldiers, whereas we were beaten and beaten by wardens and could not be killed, because as long as you have respect for yourself you cannot be killed, only murdered. And if you survive, and continue to have respect for yourself, you will respect others, whether Poles, or French, or some other. We learned in Auschwitz that there is only one difference - a human, and an inhuman." Maria Kuncewiczowa, in The Phantoms (my translation).

What was it like to be imprisoned inside a concentration camp? Look up Smoke over Birkenau, a first-hand witness account by Seweryna Szmaglewska.

As Spartacus Before Us

Gone are the days of writers such as Romain Rolland, the lonely voices of reason, who stood against wars, lies, and slavery of thought. This is the age of novelists (who shall remain nameless here) who cheer degenerate policies of our "leaders", of aggression in all forms, and of mass blinding of populations by doublespeak. It was why this chance encounter with the now obscure, but once revered writer was such a refreshing read: The Yellow Cross, by Andrzej Strug is as enjoyable a suspense, as it is thought-provoking in its strong antiwar message. The novel can be summarized in this short snippet:

"As Spartacus did in the ancient time, when he organized the slaves to rise against Rome, so shall we, the soldiers, rise up today against our generals."

I'm not sure whether the novel is available in the English language - it should be, as it is well worth a read.

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America, the House of Mirrors

"In this house of mirrors where endless war has made guilt and innocence or even facts irrelevant, the U.S. has left the realm of science and empiricism and entered a realm more mystical than real. It is a realm where ideology dictates plans and programs and not logic and empirical evidence.  It is a realm where ideology dictates who dies and who lives and is populated by men and women who can neither be understood nor reasoned with outside the confines of their own internal and hermetically sealed logic. 

From its inception during World War II, America’s military/intelligence apparatus has acted more as a subculture of America’s ruling elite than a bureaucracy dedicated to the nation’s security. It was said of America’s first spy agency the OSS that its initials stood for Oh-So-Social because of its abundant staffing with New York’s high society blue bloods. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks even titled their 1974 book on their life in the CIA and Foreign Service as The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. 

But over the last forty years and especially since the events of 9/11, that “Cult,” and its sister organizations in the military/intelligence community have emerged from behind the curtain to become a ubiquitous and forbidding presence.

In effect, 1974’s American “Cult” of intelligence has grown to become in 2011 the dominant American “Cult-ure.” But what that culture really is and where it’s leading us remains a frightening proposition that each and every American needs to understand."

Continue: http://m.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=306786

Thrillers, Suspense, Espionage, Conspiracy: SPYWRITER.com

Politics and literature

Should literature tackle political issues? France's prestigious literary prize awarded for Alexis Jenni's book makes it a resounding - Yes.

"It’s important to exorcise the unpleasant parts of history through literature, and not through political discourse, which doesn’t help at all. Thanks to fiction, we can probe deep into these problems and touch people’s consciences and hearts."

"It’s often said that literature has no place treating politics; that writers compromise fiction’s true potential as art when they turn their attentions to the big affairs of the day. Isn’t it more likely, though, that a bad book is a bad book, whether it’s an anti-war novel, a political thriller or chick-lit? Done right, politicised fiction soars, as Jenni’s achievement shows." From: http://mhpbooks.com/42574/the-goncourt-prize-should-fiction-and-politics-mix/

Or, as Stendhal put it: “Politics in a work of literature is like a gunshot at a symphony, it adds an element of thugness and simplicity, and yet we cannot ignore it. Although for many reasons we would prefer to remain silent about some of the subjects discussed herein, unfortunately we must talk about these nasty things."

Ritzkrieg of Wartime London

"The Savoy of this period, like London's other grand hotels, was a locus of powerful resentment: a building that symbolised the tenacity of privilege during wartime. There was even a word that went with it – Ritzkrieg – the campaign through which rich Londoners protected their perks and pleasures. But it was also possible to see it as the site of a peculiarly British form of resistance – a place in which quickstepping and drinking pink gin became a patriotic activity; where socialites bibbed for England to demonstrate that Hitler was not sufficiently powerful to disrupt the rituals of cocktail hour. The grand hotels were sensible places to make such a stand. The Dorchester reminded wartime guests that it was, at the skeletal level, a mesh of thick metal cables sunk into a raft of reinforced concrete. The Ritz ballyhooed the fact that its Belle Epoch curlicues concealed steel girders worthy of an American skyscraper. (They neglected to mention that the steel was German.) And under this somewhat illusory impression of safety, the statesmen, spooks and five-star refugees checked in. The Savoy, the Dorchester, the Ritz, Claridge's: each one became a kind of Casablanca.

At the Savoy, journalists filed articles from makeshift offices carved from the carcasses of once-expensive suites. Con artists and swindlers, invigorated by the opportunities brought by war, hunted for victims among the potted palms. Illegal abortionists, profiting from the wartime increase in unwanted pregnancies, conducted their business behind locked hotel-room doors. Spies and spymasters made the grand hotels into thriving centres of espionage, using quiet suites for debriefings and interrogations and picking at the plasterwork for hidden microphones. MI5 booked a suspected Nazi double agent called Stella Lonsdale into a room at the Waldorf, and waited for her to crack. Guy Burgess installed a pair of spies at the Dorchester, one a painfully handsome 19-year-old with 10 targets on his watch list – mainly homosexual Magyars (Hungarians) who were charmed by his unfingermarked good looks. "The whole place," shuddered the head of Special Branch, "is crawling with foreigners."

More: http://m.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/oct/30/sex-politics-spying-londons-wartime-hotels?cat=travel&type=article

The day Nixon wanted to blow up the world

"For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert.  [...] Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found. 

“There are two main after-the-fact explanations: first, that nuclear brinkmanship was designed to convince the Soviets that President Nixon was prepared to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam in order to convince Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate an end to the war in Southeast Asia” along the lines that previous historians have suggested.

The second proposed explanation is “that the President ordered the alert as a signal to deter a possible Soviet nuclear strike against China during the escalating Sino-Soviet border dispute.”  Consistent with the second interpretation, the FRUS volume provides new documentation of intelligence reports indicating that Soviet leaders were considering a preemptive strike against Chinese nuclear facilities.

Astonishingly, even the most senior U.S. military leaders were kept in the dark by the White House about the nature of the alert– before, during and after the event."

More: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2011/10/1969_nuclear_alert.html

I don't want to be an emperor

"I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others' happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say "Do not despair." The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness."

Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator

Universal translator for battlefield

"It’s been almost a decade since the United States began its wars in countries that most Americans can’t find on a map, let alone understand the native language. The military’s tried nearly everything to get around its language barriers, from spending big bucks trying to ape Star Trek’s Universal Translator to hiring expensive contractors who speak Arabic, Pashto and Dari. One defense giant thinks it’s got a better idea: war-zone conference calling.

Lockheed Martin is rolling out a Dial-a-Translator system it calls LinGO Link. The gist of it is that troops needing to talk to locals in real time can call into a “bank of interpreters” that the company will maintain somewhere near the front lines. Using a specialized smartphone operating on a proprietary data network, a soldier using LinGO Link would dial himself and his local interlocutor into the call center so a native speaker can translate.

Face to face, in-person translation doesn’t come cheap. Last year, the Army gave an Ohio-based company a whopping $679 million, no-bid contract to provide it with translators in Afghanistan. But it’s not clear how Lockheed’s system will be any cheaper, especially if the government has to pony up for call centers. Those call centers would be “within the area of operations” of the troops themselves — meaning they’d be in war zones, not comfortably back in the States. That’s not gonna come cheap."

More: http://m.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/08/dial-a-translator/

Has anyone considered NOT invading other places?

How to use your Invisibility Cloak?

"British defense company BAE Systems has developed an “invisibility cloak” that can effectively hide vehicles from view in the infra-red spectrum.

The patented system — called Adaptiv — uses a matrix of hexagonal “pixels” that can change their temperature very rapidly. On-board cameras sweep the area to pick up the background scenery and display that infra-red signature on the vehicle.

This allows even moving tanks to be effectively invisible in the infra-red spectrum, or mimic other objects. “The tank skin essentially becomes a big infra red TV,” BAE Head of External Communications Mike Sweeney told Wired.co.uk. “You can display anything you want on it — including a cow — while the rest of the vehicle blends into the background.”"

From: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/invisibility-cloak-tanks-cows/

I can see using the idea, somewhat tweeked, in thrillers / suspense novels: an invisible spy, or the most obvious - a bank robber...

Q: War, what is it good for? A: Re-inventing old technology.

A suppressed century-old technology may come back to life. Tesla's wireless electricity gets a new chance, and we can thank wars for it:

"The push for wireless power is a problem born of an increasingly technology-equipped military. GIs in the field lug a lot of handheld electronic gadgetry — about five to ten pounds of just battery weight, according to Darpa. On top of that, the Defense Department keeps coming up with ideas for yet more portable electronic gear, from Android-based smart phones to universal translators. All that gear needs juice to keep going on long missions. If troops are out on patrol, they can’t just find a convenient socket to stop and plug in. Darpa’s hoping its wireless power system can prove a solution to energy needs in the field without adding a tangled mess of charger cords.

Wireless power transmission may sound like Tesla-inspired science fiction, but the technology behind it isn’t that exotic."

Source and More

Although Tesla's invention taps into unlimited free source of power (the only cost being a transmitter and receiver), you can exect to pay for it through the nose.

Sex hormone plan to feminise Hitler

"British spies looked at an even more audacious way of derailing the man behind the German war machine - by giving him female sex hormones.

Agents planned to smuggle doses of oestrogen into his food to make him less aggressive and more like his docile younger sister Paula, who worked as a secretary.

Spies working for the British were close enough to Hitler to have access to his food".

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8701024/Revealed-sex-hormone-plan-to-feminise-Hitler.html

Would Hitler's hormone therapy affect the course of the WWII? Are women less prone to waging wars? Was the opposite done to Margaret Thatcher? What about those women in the upper echelons of recent and past U.S. administrations who incite and cheer for invasions and wars (unless, of course, they're victims of insidious hormone change ops...)

Invisible ink formula

How the French cracked the secret of German invisible ink formula:

Of Emperors and Paupers

Are you tired of wars waged by wealthy plutocracy, in which only the poor are dying? So did the Russians during the First World War. They found a solution:

"The war encompasses a billion people, with fifty million men fighting on the fronts. At the moment there are two hostile collectives. They are organized and armed. Yet nothing stands in the way of them putting an end to the shooting. This will happen when a man tells this collective: You idiots, you are shooting the wrong targets. The war will end by a rebellion, a revolution, a global fire. For this to happen your bayonets must aim inside your country. Replace the emperor and plant a pauper in his place."

Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy, The Road to Calvary (my rough translation).

Universal Silence of the Leaders of Thought

 

I met my neighbor in a dog park. We got to talking about the wars, the universal silence that surrounds them, about the Nobel Peace prize recipient - turned bloodiest war criminal, and we wondered about the anti-war movement, about voices that are supposed to speak against the crimes committed in the name of the people. What ever happened to them? My neighbor pointed out to writers and actors who go on joyful tours of military camps, doing stand up comedy, spreading comic books… This brought us to recall certain similarities and differences from the times past. We recalled the likes of Rudyard Kipling, and ardent war supporter, who turned against it after the death of his son, to Jack London who did not see the future of the war for the shear escalation of its costs, and to Romain Rolland who, a lonely voice, so tirelessly crusaded against both world wars. It was Rolland whom we discussed for over an hour while our pooches frolicked in the snow, in oblivion. Rolland did not mince words, and his words remain fresh to this day. He named those complicit in waging wars and who were responsible for war crimes: the ruling elites, the media, the intellectuals, the Church leaders…

"What brings it home to us most nearly is that not one of those who constitute the moral and intellectual elite — not one really suspects the crimes of his Government; I know that many of them would weep with grief and shame; the worst and the vilest is to have concealed its crimes from its people. For by depriving them of the means of protesting against those crimes, it has involved them for ever in the responsibility; it has abused their magnificent devotion. The intellectuals, however, are also guilty. For if one admits that the brave men, who in every country tamely feed upon the news which their papers and their leaders give them for nourishment, allow themselves to be duped, one cannot pardon those whose duty it is to seek truth in the midst of error, and to know the value of interested witnesses and passionate hallucinations. Before bursting into the midst of this furious debate upon which was staked the destruction of nations and of the treasures of the spirit, their first duty (a duty of loyalty as much as of common sense) should have been to consider the problems from both sides. By blind loyalty and culpable trustfulness they have rushed head foremost into the net which their Imperialism had spread. They believed that their first duty was, with their eyes closed, to defend the honor of their State against all accusation. They did not see that the noblest means of defending it was to disavow its faults and to cleanse their country of them. […]

Is our civilization so solid that you do not fear to shake the pillars on which it rests? Can you not see that all falls in upon you if one column be shattered? Could you not have learned if not to love one another, at least to tolerate the great virtues and the great vices of each other? Was it not your duty to attempt—you have never attempted it in sincerity—to settle amicably the questions which divided you, the problem of peoples annexed against their will, the equitable division of productive labor and the riches of the world? Must the stronger forever darken the others with the shadow of his pride, and the others forever unite to dissipate it? Is there no end to this bloody and puerile sport, in which the partners change about from century to century—no end, until the whole of humanity is exhausted thereby?

The rulers who are the criminal authors of these wars dare not accept the responsibility for them. Each one by underhand means seeks to lay the blame at the door of his adversary. The peoples who obey them submissively resign themselves with the thought that a power higher than mankind has ordered it thus. Again the venerable refrain is heard: "The fatality of war is stronger than our wills." The old refrain of the herd that makes a god of its feebleness and bows down before him. Man has invented fate, that he may make it responsible for the disorders of the universe, those disorders which it was his duty to regulate. There is no fatality! The only fatality is what we desire; and more often, too, what we do not desire enough. Let each now repeat his mea culpa. The leaders of thought, the Church, the Labor Parties did not desire war ...  That may be.... What then did they do to prevent it? What are they doing to put an end to it? They are stirring up the bonfire, each one bringing his faggot.

The most striking feature in this monstrous epic, the fact without precedent, is the unanimity for war in each of the nations engaged. An epidemic of homicidal fury, has spread like a wave and overflowed the whole world. None has resisted it; no high thought has succeeded in keeping out of the reach of this scourge. A sort of demoniacal irony broods over this conflict of the nations… it is not racial passion alone which is hurling millions of men blindly one against another, so that not even neutral countries remain free of the dangerous thrill, but all the forces of the spirit, of reason, of faith, of poetry, and of science, all have placed themselves at the disposal of the armies in every state. There is not one amongst the leaders of thought in each country who does not proclaim with conviction that the cause of his people is the cause of God, the cause of liberty and of human progress…"

Read the complete text of Above the Battle, by Romain Rolland.

Jack London's vision of future warfare

100 years ago Jack London was convinced that future wars will not be possible, for the simple fact that they will be too costly for any population to sustain...

"This leads to the economic aspect of future warfare. The maintenance of modern armies means enormous expenditure of money. The expenditure of life would correspond should they be unwise enough to even venture partial attacks in isolated portions of the field. Therefore, the question arises: How long will the working populations which are represented by these armies be able and willing to feed them, to furnish them with the munitions of war, and to replete the ranks of the soldiers from the ranks of the producers? It is inevitable, supposing the home political situation to remain unchanged, that the nation with the greater and more available resources, coupled with the tougher and more tenacious population, will be the victor. Famine, not force, will decide the issue. [...]

The civil population will decide the future war by its capacity for enduring all the privations consequent upon a state of semi-famine when the whole industrial system is thrown out of joint, and by its power and willingness to fill the mouths of the million non-producing soldiers and to furnish them with the sinews of war. At the front will be the chess-game; at home the workers feeding the players. All will depend upon the stamina of the civil population.

In the event of such a war, securities, which are now held largely by the middle classes, would go tumbling and crashing, rending it difficult for the government to float loans on a disrupted and frightened market. The disastrous effect to-day of of a war rumor on any seat of exchange, is common knowledge. If paper money were issued under such conditions, its depreciation would be instant and great. The rise of the necessaries of life will tend to do this and to set into motion the remorseless pendulum of action and reaction. The countries in which more live by trade than by agriculture—the wheat-importing countries—will feel the pinch of famine quickly and bitterly. [...] The very fear of this, on the sensitive capitalistic system, even with danger afar off, is bound to make the market panicky and to send prices skyward. And under such circumstances speculation is sure to exact its exorbitant penalty. The ravages of the commercial crisis in time of peace are too well known to make necessary further comment on what they would be in time of war.

The interruption of the operation of the productive forces, and the difficulty in satisfying the vital needs of the population, lead up to the political aspect of future warfare. Are the peoples, especially of the European countries, homogeneous enough in their political beliefs to stand in the strain? Labor troubles, bread riots, and rebellion are factors, subversive all, which must be taken into account. The mobilization of a whole working population may lead to unpleasant results, conscription to revolution. There are strong tendencies threatening the present social order which cannot be lightly passed over. Also, a strong anti-military propaganda has grown up. The small protesting voices of the past have merged into the roar of the peoples. The world has lifted itself to a higher morality. The aim of the human is to alleviate the ills of the human. Among all classes the opposition to war is keen and growing."

Is it?

Jack London, The Impossibility of War.