THE FIRST AXIOM

"Tearing up the fire insurance policies and booting the weary fire department out of the country as soon as the fire is put out" says Mr. Hanford McNider '11, is exactly comparable to getting rid of armaments and abolishing military training as soon as the war is over. This analogy appears logical. Since fire is an unavoidable emergency just as war is, protection is as necessary an antidote to extinguish the one as the other. Since the fire department is hostile to fires, the more firemen in any given district, the more infrequent the fires; with no firemen in the locality at all the fire hazard is frightful.

But since the whole equals the sum of its parts, what is true in all parts of the world must be true in the world at large. Therefore, the more firemen in the world, the fewer fires the world has. With no firemen the fire hazard would be unspeakable. Carrying out the analogy logically, it seems that the more soldiers the less war, whereas if there were no soldiers in the world nor battle equipment, the war hazard would be unspeakable.

If this be false the whole cannot be equal to the sum of its parts and perhaps it is not. What applies to mathematics would seem to be very untrue in ethics but here lies the basis of most ethical tangles. Very early in Man's development, he found that what was advantageous to him individually, when practised by everybody did not seem to be good for the whole. Then as governments were developed, a more or less efficient judicial system was established so that no longer did it profit the individual to do what was unprofitable for everybody to do. Thus, the whole was made to equal the sum of its parts again. It remains for the League of Nations to establish that fundamental axiom in national ethics.