g on Von Tirpitz and the irrepressible
Reventlow. In all countries, millions of men drifted helplessly toward
a war, which they believed was due to the evil machinations of a man.

So long as the belief holds that one man can set the world on fire,
there can be no reasonable theory of war or peace. It is a conception
which makes world destiny a plaything, unmotived in any large sense,
accidental and incalculable. On the other hand, those who regard war
as merely irrational, a general human idiocy, are equally far from any
true approach to the problem. We are being deluged to-day with books
and newspaper articles describing war as a reversion of mankind to a
lower type, a betrayal of reason, a futile, revolting struggle,
creating no rights, settling no problems and serving no useful purpose
except, in Lord Salisbury's phrase, "to teach people geography." Let
us be rational and adult, cry these authors, adjuring an insane world
to return to its sanity.

No wonder that there is prejudice against this particular variety of
abstract pacifism. It is a negative {17} doctrine, anaemic and
thin-haired, with a touch of gentle intolerance and a patient disregard
of facts. It does not recognise the real motives to war, upon which
alone a theory of peace may be based. It defeats itself because
ultra-rationalistic. For if war, though irrational, has always been,
would it not follow that man himself is irrational, that the fighting
instinct is deeper than reason, and that to-morrow, as to-day, men will
fight for the joy of killing? If this were true, pacifism might as
well resign. In truth, this interpretation of war as a mere expression
of man's fighting instincts is no more adequate than is the personal
devil theory. War has outgrown the fighting instinct. It has become
deliberate, businesslike, scientific. It demands sacrifices from those
to whom fighting is an abomination. How many red-blooded warriors
could the German Emperor or the French President have enrolled, had
there been no appeal to national interest, duty, justice, indignation?
War is won to-day by peace-loving men, who abhor the arms in their
hands.

The closer we study its motives, incentives and origins, the more
deeply do we find the elements of this problem imbedded in the very
foundations of national or group life. War depends upon growth in
population, emigration, the use of natural resources, agricultural
progress, trade development, distribut