inevitable. We should probably regard it as a matter of national honour, concerning which there must be no argument. Another mood, and it would be impossible to get the faintest ripple of interest in the subject.

It was not British passion for Serbian nationality which brought Britain to the side of Russia in 1914. It was the fear of German power and what might be done with it, a fear wrought to frenzy pitch by a long indoctrination concerning German wickedness and aggression. Passion for the subjugation of Germany persisted long after there was any ground of fear of what German power might accomplish. If America fights Japan, it will not be over cables on Yap; it will be from fear of Japanese power, the previous stimulation of latent hatreds for the strange and foreign. And if the United States goes to war over Panama Canal tolls, it will not be because the millions who will get excited over that question have examined the matter, or possess ships or shares in ships that will profit by the exemption; it will be because all America has read of Irish atrocities which recall school-day histories of British atrocities in the American Colonies; because the “person,” Britain, has become a hateful and hostile person, and must be punished and coerced.

War either with Japan or Britain or both is, of course, quite within the region of possibility. It is merely an evasion of the trouble which facing reality always involves, to say that war between Britain and America is “unthinkable.” If any war, as we have known it these last ten years, is thinkable, war between nations that have already fought two wars is obviously not unthinkable. And those who can recall at all vividly the forces which marked the growth of the conflict between Britain and Germany will see just those forces beginning to colour the relations of Britain and America. Among those forces none is more notable than this: a disturbing tendency to stop short at the ultimate questions, a failure to face the basic causes of divergence. Among people of good will there is a tendency to say: “Don’t let’s talk about it. Be discreet. Let us assume we are good friends and we shall be. Let us exchange visits.” In just such a way, even within a few weeks of war, did people of good will in England and Germany decide not to talk of their differences, to be discreet, to exchange visits. But the men of ill will talked—talked of the wrong things—and sowed their deadly poison.

These pages suggest why neither side in the Anglo-German conflict came down to realities before the War. To have come to fundamentals would have revealed the fact to both parties that any real settlement would have asked things which neither would grant. Really to have secured Germany’s future economic security would have meant putting her access to the resources of India and Africa upon a basis of Treaty, of contract. That was for Britain the end of Empire, as Imperialists understood it. To have secured in exchange the end of “marching and drilling” would have been the end of military glory for Prussia. For both it would have meant the surrender of certain dominations, a recasting of patriotic ideals, a revolution of ideas.

Whether Britain and America are to fight may very well depend upon this: whether the blinder and more unconscious motives rooted in traditional patriotisms, and the impulse to the assertion of power, will work their evil before the development of ideas has brought home to us a clearer vision of the abyss into which we fall; before we have modified, in other words, our tradition of patriotism, our political moralities, our standard of values. Without that more fundamental change no scheme of settlement of specific differences, no platforms, Covenants, Constitution can avail, or have any chance of acceptance or success.

As a contribution to that change of ideas and of values these pages are offered.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

THE central conclusion suggested by the following analysis of the events of the past few years is that, underlying the disruptive processes so evidently at work—especially in the international field—is the deep-rooted instinct to the assertion of domination, preponderant power. This impulse sanctioned and strengthened by prevailing traditions of ‘mystic’ patriotism, has been unguided and unchecked by any adequate realisation either of its anti-social quality, the destructiveness inseparable from its operation, or its ineffectiveness to ends indispensable to civilisation.

The psychological roots of the impulse are so deep that we shall continue to yield to it until we realise more fully its danger and inadequacy to certain vital ends like sustenance for our people, and come to see that if civilisation is to be carried on we must turn to other motives. We may then develop a new political tradition, which will ‘discipline’ instinct, as the tradition of toleration disciplined religious fanaticism when that passion threatened to shatter European society.

Herein lies the importance of demonstrating the economic futility of military power. While it may be true that conscious economic motives enter very little into the struggle of nations, and are a very small part of the passions of patriotism and nationalism, it is by a realisation of the economic truth regarding the indispensable condition of adequate life, that those passions will be checked, or redirected and civilised.

This does not mean that economic considerations should dominate life, but rather the contrary—that those considerations will dominate it if the economic truth is neglected. A people that starves is a people thinking only of material things—food. The way to dispose of economic pre-occupations is to solve the economic problem.

The bearing of this argument is that developed by the present writer in a previous book, The Great Illusion, and the extent to which it has been vindicated by events, is shown in the Addendum.

CONTENTS