hand it cannot stop fighting
until it evolves principles of settlement based on the economic
security of the vanquished. What the industrial powers will gain from
this conflict is but an insignificant part of its cost. Compared with
the billions {272} of dollars which France has spent upon this war, how
insignificant are the few tens of millions that she may have gained
from a monopolistic administration of her colonies! How little would
the open door have cost the successful colonial nations as compared
with the losses of this war! Not that colonial administration was the
only or the main cause of the conflict; other factors contributed, such
as the megalomania of the Pan-Germans. It seems probable, however,
that Pan-German fanaticism was rendered infectious only by the fear
that Germany was to be economically encircled and undermined. This
fear may well outlast the war. A German defeat, however crushing, will
not solve the peace problem, for defeat without security means
militarism and reaction in Germany, which in turn means militarism and
reaction in Europe. The special advantages which the nations,
possessing colonies, may in the future secure will be dearly bought at
the expense of new wars, as costly and decivilising as that under which
we now live.

This is the chief sanction of internationalism, the price which is
exacted from both beneficiaries and victims of a narrow nationalistic
policy. Whether a liberal internationalism would not pay better, even
on the plane of dollars and cents, is a question that admits of but one
rational answer.

At this moment[1] there is small likelihood that that rational answer
will be given. Fighting inhibits thinking, and in the allied countries
the belief is held that Germany provoked the war through mere
wantonness and not because of economic pressure, and that security can
come only by ending Prussian militarism. In Germany there is an
analogous conception of her opponents.

The theory that the war was merely wanton has the {273} merit of
simplicity, but like other simple interpretations, it does not cover
the facts. There were in Germany certain current ideas concerning
racial dominion, the natural mission of the German and the absolute
supremacy and moral self-sufficiency of the State, which intensified
the war spirit. The Pan-Germans harangued in press and on platform to
a people intoxicated by former military and economic triumphs and
rendered susceptible