olutely as if not a
word had been said on one side or the other. Man's dreadful toll in
blood has not yet all been paid. The human race bears still this
burden. Declaimed against in the name of religion, in the name of
humanity, in the name of profit-and-loss, war still goes on."[3]

But the fact that war still exists does not at all prove that it is
inevitable, but merely that it has not yet been avoided. Militarists
argue that war is biologically necessary, an ingrained ineradicable
instinct, a necessary evil or an inescapable good, a gift of a stern
god. There is a curious sentimental fatalism about our war prophets,
but in the end their arguments come down to two, that we have always
had wars and that we still have them. It was said many years ago that
"the poor ye have always with you" and to-day poverty on an immense
scale still exists in every part of the planet. Yet we do not despair
of limiting or even of eradicating poverty. Tuberculosis has existed
for centuries and still exists, but to-day we understand the disease
and it is doomed. If war is inevitable it is so for reasons which have
not yet been established. Until it is proved that war accompanies life
and progress as the shadow accompanies the body, men will strive to
eliminate war, however frequent and discouraging their failures.

The cause of these failures of pacifism has been its {222} unreality,
its too confident approach to a difficult problem. Many pacifists have
tended to exhort about war instead of studying it; they have looked
upon it as a thing accursed and irrational, beyond the pale of serious
consideration. They have likened the belief that war has accomplished
good in the past to a faith in witchcraft and other superstitions.
They have tilted at war, as the Mediaeval Church tilted at usury,
without stopping to consider what relation this war-process bore to the
basic facts of social evolution. It was an error to consider war as a
thing in itself instead of an effect of precedent causes. Fortunately
the newer pacifists, who have been rendered cautious by many bitter
disappointments, are changing their approach and seeking to cure war
not directly but by removing its causes. They are striving to outflank
war.

Along this line alone can progress be made. You cannot end war without
changing the international polity which leads to war. The bloody
conflicts between nations, being a symptom of a world maladjustment and
frequen