IT SHOULD be obvious to even a superficial observer that it is politicians that create wars, and from this observation the logic should be developed that politics has an affinity for war. War is the escape for political frustration and the steppingstone for ambition. It deflects responsibility for the evil consequences of mal-administration and averts the eyes of the people from embarrassing facts.

While war serves the purposes of politicians, it never serves any purpose of peoples except defensively. Therefore, the war-making power must be taken out of the hands of government and reside with the people. To do this, we must deny to government control over the essential implement of war, which is the money power. If the money power is reserved to the people, they hold the veto power over war, for no war expenditures can be made without their consent. With no money power under his control, the politician has no assurance that the money will be forthcoming and no means of propagating the war spirit.

It is not a matter of much import to examine the various reasons that politicians have had for plunging nations into war, and to attempt to limit this or that cause. It is, however, essential that we detect and remove the means by which it is accomplished. John T. Flynn points out in his As We Go Marching that Mussolini and Hitler controlled their nations and ultimately involved the whole world in war through the money power that automatically fell into their hands with the capture of government.

This money power is invariably the power to conduct deficit financing. No war has ever been fought on a cash basis. And when we examine the deficit power, we find it is simply the power to issue counterfeit money. Thus the people are made to pay for the war under the delusion that they are being paid for conducting it. After the war, they fall into accusative factions, blaming each other for inflation with such epithets as gougers, labor racketeers, profiteers, chiselers, robbers, black-marketers, etc. The only complaint against the politician is for his failure to crack down on this or that group at the behest of its accusers. The politician, who is the author of the whole misery, escapes blame and is beseeched to be the deliverer.

The politician who would wage war successfully must first make war successfully on his own people, and to accomplish this, he deludes them through deficit financing. Having, under this delusion, made war appear profitable, he is able to marshal his people into military action. Every soldier and every soldier's wife and mother, every war worker, every war industrialist, every war banker, every bureaucrat, is "paid" for his services to the god of war. Yet, how can any of these be actually paid when they produce nothing and, on the contrary, only destroy? Destroy this delusion, and you destroy the politician's power to marshal the people for war.

Monetary nationalism is the only nationalism that is inimical to society. Once the power to alienate other nationals monetarily and to corrupt the money supply of a people by false money issues is abolished, lesser economic interferences will dissolve or cease to irritate. But as long as our governments are vast counterfeiting machines, Mars can laugh at peace projects.