"War" will be "Peace"?

The German Republic has no war office but instead a "Ministry of Defense." Therefore French pacifists find it intolerable that France still has a "Ministry of War." Last week the situation was finally deemed so grave that War Minister Paul Painleve sped out to Bourg and there proposed amid pacifist plaudits that his war office shall be re-named the "Ministry of Peace."

Furthermore, continued good M. Painleve, the word war ought to be expunged from written or spoken utterance, during peace times, so that in a crisis the very mention of "WAR!!" would shock and arouse public opinion to combat the scourge.

Should the title of U.S. Secretary of War Dwight Filley Davis be changed, in the near future, he would probably become not "Secretary of Peace" but "Secretary of the Science of National Defense." This observers deduced from the fact that President Calvin Coolidge said last week, at Wausau, Wis. (See National Affairs): "We cherish no sentiment of aggression. . . . But . . . for the Government [of the U.S.] to disregard the science of national defense would expose it to the contempt of its citizens at home and of the world abroad. It would be an attempt to evade bearing our share of the burdens of civilization."

Militarists look forward to a day when the nations will no longer fight "wars," but will instead send out battalions of "scientists" to share the burdens of civilization by exterminating each other under the guidance of "Ministries of Peace."