to "mind her own business, and not interfere with a sovereign nation."

Still another source of war which no pacifist has yet been able to argue away, lies in the fact that some nations are far inferior to others, either morally, intellectually or both. Thus nations, like individuals, cannot be relied upon to keep their promise to abide by arbitration; to refrain from evil. Angell sees this changing. He says:

With very great courtesy, one is impelled to ask those who argue that human nature in all its manifestations must remain unchanged, how they interpret history. We have seen man progress from the mere animal fighting with other animals, seizing his food by force, seizing also by force his females, eating his own kind, the sons of the family struggling with the father for the possession of the father's wives; we have seen this incoherent welter of animal struggle at least partly surviving as a more organized tribal warfare or a more ordered pillaging, like that of the Vikings and the Huns; we have seen even these pillagers abandon in part their pillaging for ordered industry, and in part for the more ceremonial conflict of feudal struggle; we have seen even the feudal conflict abandoned in favor of dynastic and religious and territorial conflict, and then dynastic and religious conflict abandoned. There remains now only the conflict of states, and that, too, at a time when the character and conception of the state are being profoundly modified.

Human nature may not change, whatever that vague phrase may mean; but human nature is a complex factor. It includes numberless motives, many of which are modified

4

in relation to the rest as circumstances change; so that the manifestations of human nature change out of all recognition. Do we mean by the phrase that "human nature does not change" that the feelings of the paleolithic man who ate the bodies of his enemies and of his own children are the same as those of a Herbert Spencer, or even of the modern New Yorker who catches his subway train to business in the morning? If human nature does not change, may we therefore expect the city clerk to brain his mother and serve her up for dinner, or suppose that Lord Roberts or Lord Kitchener is in the habit, while on campaign, of catching the babies of his enemies on spear-heads, or driving his motor-car over the bodies of young girls, like the leaders of the old Northmen in the ox-wagons.

What do these phrases mean? These, and many like them, are repeated in a knowing way with an air of great wisdom and profundity by journalists and writers of repute, and one may find them blatant any day in our newspapers and reviews; yet the most cursory examination proves them to be neither wise nor profound, but simply parrot-like catchphrases which lack common sense, and fly in the face of facts of everyday experience.*

The fallacy of all this, however, is that there are no really good men compared with the ideal man, Jesus Christ. There are no nations which can compare with the Kingdom of God. As some men, more than others, attempt to pattern their lives after that of Christ, so do some nations become better morally than others; and as no man has reached perfection,

*The Great Illusion.

and as all men at times fall from grace, so will nations from time to time do evil. Not a single power exists today free from a comparatively recent charge of oppression of a weaker state. As long as evil remains in man, and as long as there is individual conflict (for we must refute Mr. Angell's statement that "there remains now only the conflict of states "), so long will there be national conflict. We do not state that there is not some refinement in the methods of the human being. That, however, is vastly different from an actual change of nature, and it is a more difficult question to determine whether it is a change of nature or a change of methods that is taking place. May it not be merely that science and education have replaced brute force with cunning? Admitting, moreover, and hoping, that human nature is changing for the better, the fact remains that the change is so slow that no reader of this work will live to see the day when man, convinced of the righteousness of an important cause, will surrender without compulsion. Mr. Angell neglects to remind us that no inconsiderable period has elapsed between the "paleolithic man who ate the bodies of his enemies and of his own children" and his modern example "a Herbert Spencer." He neglects to state that, in spite of the passing of these ages, cannibalism is not yet entirely extinct, and that the human being still varies from the cannibal, through the less barbarous and semi-civilized tribes and nations,

through the modern New York gunmen, the rapist, the common murderer, the burglar, the sneak thief, the embezzler, the cheat, the grafting politician, the usurer, the drunkard, and the ordinary business man, until at last it reaches the best living type of "New Yorker" or "Herbert Spencer," who would admit his sinfulness and weakness, though he be at the top rung of the ladder of mankind.

Lea, in his The Valor of Ignorance, says:

Only when arbitration is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations. Thence will international arbitration come of its own accord as the natural outgrowth of national evolution through the individual. As nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the basis of individual impulse, so long will they control the acts of nations.

When, therefore, the merchant arbitrates with the customer he is about to cheat; when trusts arbitrate with the people they are about to fleece, or the murderer with his victim, and so on throughout the category of crime, then will communities be able to dispense with laws, and international thievery and deception, shearing and murder, and resort to arbitration.

As we have continually sinful men, so we have continually sinful nations. As good men occasionally sin, so will good nations. Only with the far off perfection of all mankind will these things stop.

IN

CHAPTER VI

THE COST OF WAR AND ITS HORRORS

N SPITE of the fact that we can see no probability of universal peace either now or within the time of our immediate descendants, we have no desire to hinder in any way sane efforts toward that end. There is no desire to combat the pacifist, who confines his efforts toward peace in the future, and, who, for the present, says with Angell:

I am particularly emphatic in declaring that while the present philosophy is what it is, we are bound to maintain our relative positions with other powers.

We encourage men like Angell in so far as they are merely attempting to bring about that perfect condition of man morally and intellectually which will be reflected in the perfect nations, and thereby eliminate all strife. We do, however, oppose the misstatements which appear in every pacifist book, the slandering of military men, exaggerations of the cost and horror of war, and minimization of equivalent conditions of peace. While, as we have shown in our preceding chapter, we believe that the day of peace is far off, we are eager to welcome it, and we