Hudson Maxim

“ Could we fly out through space, and with a speed sufficiently great, we should overtake the rays of reflected light that left our earth thousands and millions of years ago; and had we infinite eyes we could, as we went, look back and behold the history of our earth unravel, see the return of man to the ape-like thing, see him and all animate forms finally converge upon the moneron plunged in the azoic sea. ”

“ Therefore, just as the tramp had mounted above the line of vision into the chimney, the genius, entering the room, threw the gunpowder into the fire, which instantly exploded with a great flash and smoke, blowing cinders and embers all over the room and filling it with dense, black, sulphurous smoke, burning the face and hands of the genius considerably, and frightening the elderly people out of their wits. ”

“ If Washington held it a mistake to rely on untrained, undisciplined men in time of war, who can differ with him today, when not only bravery and discipline are required, but also a knowledge of the complicated enginery of warfare?
It is obvious to any one that ten men armed with the modern magazine shoulder-rifle, with a range of more than two miles, would easily be able to defeat a thousand men—a hundred times their number—armed with slings and bows and arrows, short-swords and spears, as was the army of Hannibal. ”

“ Actually, those who today are recruiting for the war against war are asking you to enlist in a campaign to shackle the hands of the oppressed in future years, and tie them down with ball and chain to prevent them from striking for liberty. They are to be denied the right of war for freedom, which was our right in the Revolution.
Every man exerts a positive influence either for good or for evil. If the advocates of disarmament and non-resistance are exerting a good influence, then I am exerting a bad influence, and every advocate of armed defense is a worker of evil. ”

“ If those who, through their ignorance, false belief, or hypocrisy and desire for publicity, are planning to sacrifice the unimaginable thousands of our best young men in the bloody shambles of war, as an offering to false faith, vanity, or hypocrisy, could only foresee in imagination the long lines of manhood swept and annihilated by the withering fire of an enemy, without guns to return that fire, then possibly they might submerge personal limelight-lust for considerations of mercy. ”

“ But, this time, the torpedo glanced from the sand-butt, and went after that train. We stood [116] paralyzed with dread as we saw it pass over the train, close to the roof of a car, and strike in the swamp just beyond it, perhaps a couple of hundred feet behind the track. An inverted cone of black earth shot up, followed by a dull sound.
In imagination we had witnessed a frightful catastrophe, the wreck of a passenger train, with fearful loss of life, and all the horror of our own resultant predicament. Now that the danger was past, the even tenor of our way did take on a new relish. ”

“ The young man whom you were to marry on his return from the war was standing on the verge of the crater when the explosion came, and he is now lying there, with both eyes blown out by the awful blast and hanging on his cheeks. There are visions of you in the blasted eyes, and there are thoughts of you in the dazed brain, and his dying breath is a whisper of your name. ”

“ We had disqualified ourselves by our economies to such an extent before the outbreak of the great Civil War that this conflict became one of the most deadly and most expensive in the history of the world. What we saved by our economies, compared to what we lost by them on that occasion is like a drop of water to a river of water. But we failed to profit by the experience, and, when the Spanish War broke out, we spent money with all the lavishness of prodigal inefficiency. ”

“ Nothing that can be said and done by all the friends of national defense will make this country take adequate measures for its defense. Nothing but a disastrous war will supply the necessary stimulus. In all the history of the world, this truth has been made manifest—that no nation can be made adequately to prepare against war, no matter what the menace may be, without either suffering actual defeat, or being so embroiled in war as to realize the necessity for preparedness. ”

“ There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is based on battle. When I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It was very strange for me to discover this, and very dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together I found to be utterly untenable. Peace and the vices of civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning, of peace and plenty, of peace and civilization ”

“ War, at best, is a horrible business. It is a reversion to the brute force of primitive savagery, and is never justifiable except in the extremity of last resort. But we must appreciate and acknowledge the fact that the horrors of war, the sacrifice of treasure, the sacrifice of life, are no arguments whatever against war when inalienable human rights are at stake that must be fought for, and that are worth the sacrifice. ”

“ The struggle for existence has always been a business proposition with man, and business today is a struggle for existence as intense and merciless as the struggle in war.
In olden times, piracy and war for plunder were the principal business of mankind. Today, business is a warfare, and though it may be law-abiding, still the weak go down under it and suffer and die under it as surely as they did in old-time wars. The relation of strength to weakness remains unchanged, and the reward for strength and the penalty for weakness are as great as they ever were. ”

“ Human nature is the same today as it was in the ante-rebellion days of human slavery. It is the same as it was when Napoleon, with the will-o'-the-wisp of personal and national glory held before the eyes of emotional and impressionable Frenchmen, led them to wreck for him the monarchies of Europe. Human nature is the same today as it was in Cæsar's time, when he massacred two hundred and fifty thousand Germans—men, women, and children—in a day, in cold blood, while negotiations for peace were pending, and entered in his diary the simple statement, "Cæsar's legions killed them all." ”

“ The groans of the wounded and dying on the battle-field, and the lamentations in the desolated home, are music to the ears of those who supply the war-materials; for, with every shot from a rifle, fifty grains of gunpowder are burned, while bullets enough miss their mark to equal the weight of each man they kill. Consequently, there is substantial profit to the cartridge-maker and the gunpowder-manufacturer for every man killed with a rifle ball.
But it is in shrapnel and the ammunition for the big guns that the greatest profit lies. ”

“ This aristocracy of wealth was fast becoming as tyrannical and unbearable and as much a menace to the freedom of the people as the old aristocracy which it had replaced. The old aristocracy had been established by the right of the sword; the new aristocracy had been established by the purchasing power of the dollar, and the people learned that combinations of wealth were a compelling power as great as the combination of armies, and that a government dominated by the dollar might become as intolerable as any form of absolutism. ”

“ A nation is only a compound of individuals, and what is true of an individual also holds true of any aggregation of individuals.
We, the people of the United States of America, are at this moment, and have been for many years, afflicted with a dominating egoistic obsession concerning our greatness, our importance, and our power, while we correspondingly underrate the greatness, the importance, and the power of other nations and races. Our accomplishments have indeed been marvelous, and we have not neglected to award them all the marveling that is their due. ”

“ His book has the cold steel precision of truth.
He shows that all wars have economic causes, no matter how they are painted over with sentiment. And he demonstrates that one of the most urgent economic incentives to war that has ever existed will be the relative condition of Europe and the United States at the close of the Great War.
Imagine the victors of this gigantic conflict—Allies or Teutons—impoverished in money and resources, with the most colossal public debt in the world's history hanging over them, but possessing an enormous army of trained veterans and a world-beating navy. ”

“ If a nation does not exercise due and reasonable diligence to safeguard its people against war and does not provide itself with the necessary trained men and machinery to forefend war, then the obligation of the individual to the nation in the event of war is just so much lessened. The leading of an untrained and ill-armed, improvised citizen soldiery against an army of trained veterans, with all of the equipment of modern warfare, results in useless, senseless slaughter. ”

“ The beautiful, imaginative, logical language of General Homer Lea, on America's military weakness, in his "Valor of Ignorance" and "The Day of the Saxon," has caused many a gun to be made, many a battalion of troops to be enlisted, and many a warship to be built—in foreign countries.
The eloquent words of wisdom of Lord Roberts, Admiral Mahan, Homer Lea, and all real friends of peace and advocates of the only way of maintaining peace—by being prepared against war—have fallen on a deaf America. ”

“ Like the light that descended from Heaven on Saul of Tarsus, the light of the truth would descend on those ladies through the smoke of their burning homes—that armed preparedness against such a dread eventuality as war is the supreme of virtue, and its neglect the worst of crimes. ”

“ Every word you aim against necessary preparedness for war may, in the final reckoning, aim a gun at the heart of him whom you love more than all the world; and you might be able to say a word that would protect him with a gun.
That human attribute which, more than any other, distinguishes man from the brute, is imagination. Also, it is the attribute which, more than any other, differentiates the normal man from the criminal. ”

“ The American people are imbued with the idea that a large standing army is a menace to liberty. Whatever justification there may be for this attitude, it is certain that, if we are to yield to this point of view, and get along with a comparatively small effective army, it is absolutely indispensable that we should have a navy certainly as powerful as any in the world, with the single possible exception of that of England. All arguments that may be made against a large standing army become arguments in favor of a very large navy. ”

“ In time of war the civilian as much as the soldier is responsible for defeat and disaster. Battles are not lost alone on the field; they may be lost beneath the Dome of the Capitol, they may be lost in the Cabinet, or they may be lost in the private office of the Secretary of War. Wherever they may be lost, it is the people who suffer and the soldiers who die, with the knowledge and the conviction that our military policy is a crime against life, a crime against property, and a crime against liberty. ”

“ The Isaiahs of true prophecy have long warned the people of this country that there is big trouble brewing for us in the East and in the Far East, and that we need armaments and men trained to arms to safeguard us against that trouble. These Isaiahs have told us that we cannot safeguard ourselves by any sacrifices made upon the altar of international brotherhood, or forefend ourselves against the great red peril of war by a few mumblings written down in arbitration treaties; but that we must have guns and men behind the guns. ”

“ Unhappily, just as intolerance and avarice have always led conquerors to be overgrasping and tyrannical, so have intolerance and avarice made prosecutions under the Sherman Law veritable persecutions. Now that the common people have found their power, nothing under heaven can halt them, or prevent them from abusing that power, except a higher education of the common people and their leaders, compelling them to understand the great truth that the people of a nation must co-operate with a patriotism that shall emulate the spirit of the hive of bees so admirably interpreted by Maeterlinck. ”