It will be sufficient to point to the enormous burdens which armaments place on the economic, social, and intellectual resources of a nation, as well as on its budget and taxes.

The following year, after I had prepared my draft, the Conference of the Interparliamentary Union at The Hague decided to set up a special commission to study the problem seriously.

Even a total and universal disarmament does not guarantee the maintenance of peace.

Great progress was made when arbitration treaties were concluded in which the contracting powers pledge in advance to submit all conflicts to an arbitration court, treaties which not only specify the composition of the court, but also its procedure.

Some pacifists have carried the sound idea of the prime importance of security too far, to the point of declaring that any consideration of disarmament is superfluous and pointless as long as eternal peace has not been attained.

The present level of armaments could be taken as the starting point. It could be stipulated in an international treaty that these armaments should be simultaneously and uniformly reduced by a certain proportion in all countries.

Let us assume that the ideal were reached; let us imagine a state of international life in which the danger of war no longer exists. Then no one would dare to demand a penny for obviously completely superfluous armaments.