"Sturgeon Bay Should Disarm" from the February 5, 1926 Door County Advocate
STURGEON BAY SHOULD DISARM
It may seem to the average citizen of this community that he has a negligible stake in the Disarmament conference soon to be held and to which the Senate has recently decided to send delegates. But when we consider that the city of Sturgeon Bay alone pays as much for the maintenance of our ships and soldiers and forts and guns as it pays for its entire educational system, public and parochial, the matter assumes a more interesting aspect. The total defense cost, counting pensions and interest on war debts, is in excess of the cost of running all departments of the city government. If any sane method can be devised by these delegates who are going to Europe to talk the matter over with other delegates to reduce this burdensome tax our City Council should give them a vote of thanks.
We must remember that this tax is paid first. Our warships are paid for whether there is money left for shoes for the children or not. Teachers may be compelled to wait for their money at times, but the dogs of war must have their meat every day. This national defense tax is an incubus of no mean proportions, like an Old Man of the Sea, whose dead, joyless weight profits so little and slows human progress down so much.
If this drain of good money from our pockets were the worst thing about armaments we might worry along with them; but there is another and heavier tax. These obtrusive ships and forts levy upon our ideals. They weaken national character. They may never shoot at an enemy, but they are always backfiring into our school rooms and churches and homes to the confusion of our holiest sentiments. They hurt as much as they defend us.
With a few small gunboats and modest forts we might get along and live normal, decent lives. But these super-post-Jutland-invincible ships corrupt us. They mock when we pray for peace; they make national politeness and justice seem unnecessary, and therefore a luxury. The great grey men-of-war lying so majestically at anchor in the Hudson river and in San Francisco Bay give moral support to the bully with the brass knucks, and to the cynic and the jingo, and to all the race bigotry and arrogance that curse our land. They tempt us to believe, as we have heard it said on these very streets in naked English, that co-operation with, and understanding of, other nations is not essential. In a measure, they are a substitute for courtesy and religion.
It would be a splendid thing if our American delegates could go to Geneva with instructions from Sturgeon Bay to do all they can to push civilization back into the Stone Age as respects weapons of war. Why not? Such a retrogression in armies and navies would mean the longest step forward toward the Golden Age of brotherhood that has ever been taken.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
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