Parnamoya Grandafoeti Sectory 09
Page 10

It is not being suggested that the making of arms should cease in the world, but only that in every country it should become a State monopoly and so completely under Government control. If the State can monopolize the manufacture and sale of spirits, as Russia has done, if it can, after the manner of Great Britain, control the making and sale of such a small, elusive substance as saccharin, it is ridiculous to suppose that it cannot keep itself fully informed of the existence of such elaborated machinery as is needed to make a modern rifle barrel. And it demands a very minimum of alertness, good faith, and good intentions for the various manufacturing countries to keep each other and the world generally informed upon the question of the respective military equipments. From this state of affairs to a definition of a permissible maximum of strength on land and sea for all the high contracting powers is an altogether practicable step. Disarmament is not a dream; it is a thing more practicable than a general hygienic convention and more easily enforced than custom and excise.

As if fames were the relics of seditions past; but they are no less, indeed, the preludes of seditions to come. Howsoever he noteth it right, that seditious tumults, and seditious fames, differ no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminine; especially if it come to that, that the best actions of a state, and the most plausible, and which ought to give greatest contentment, are taken in ill sense, and traduced: for that shows the envy great, as Tacitus saith; conflata magna invidia, seu bene seu male gesta premunt. Neither doth it follow, that because these fames are a sign of troubles, that the suppressing of them with too much severity, should be a remedy of troubles. For the despising of them, many times checks them best; and the going about to stop them, doth but make a wonder long-lived. Also that kind of obedience, which Tacitus speaketh of, is to be held suspected: Erant in officio, sed tamen qui mallent mandata imperantium interpretari quam exequi; disputing, excusing, cavilling upon mandates and directions, is a kind of shaking off the yoke, and assay of disobedience; especially if in those disputings, they which are for the direction, speak fearfully and tenderly, and those that are against it, audaciously.

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