ous hatreds, but in the end
he will apply to this business of war the same canons of judgment that
he applies to his own business. "Whom does it pay? What is 'in it'
for the nations or for classes or individuals within the nations?" And
if you tell him that in the present war Servian hatred was intensified
because Austria discriminated against Servian pigs, or that Germany was
embittered because of Russian tariffs and French colonial policies, if
you speak to him in these economic terms, you are immediately
intelligible. Economic motive is one of the obvious facts of life.

It is the transcendentalists who interpret war in more idealistic
terms. In every country, but especially in Germany, there is a whole
school of historical and pseudo-historical romanticists, who defend war
by elevating it high above the reach of reason. You cannot shake the
convictions of such writers by an account of war atrocities, of
slaughter, pillage, rape, mutilations and the spitting of infants upon
lances, just as you cannot deter murderers by the sight of public
executions. All these horrors are but a part of war's terrible
fascination. "In war," writes the late Professor J. A. Cramb, one of
the most eloquent of these war mystics, "man values the power which it
affords to life of rising above life, the power which the spirit of man
possesses to pursue the ideal." There is, and can be, {21} in his
view, no reason for war; war transcends reason. In spite of its
unreason, war, which has always governed the world, always ruled the
lives of men, always uplifted the strong and deposed the weak, will
remain beautifully terrible, immortally young. As in ancient days, in
India, Babylon, Persia, China, Hellas and Rome, so to-day, men will
choose "to die greatly and with a glory that will surpass the glories
of the past." Men are always greater than the earthly considerations
that seem to guide their lives. As patriotism ruled the hosts of Rome
and Carthage, as the ideal of empire drove forth the valorous
Englishmen who conquered India, so to-day, to-morrow and until the end
of time high and noble ideas, far above the comprehension of mere
rationalists, will impel men to war, "to die greatly."

It may seem importunate to reason with men upon a subject which they
include among the mysteries, beyond reason. Yet if we analyse the
instances, which Professor Cramb and others cite of wars waged for
great ideal purposes, we stumble incontinent