bes and of cities, for the conquest, first, of the means
to live, and, second, of a preferred economic position in the world.

Such is the business of war, and it is the oldest business in the
world. It is aided by patriotism, prejudice, uncharitableness and a
whole calendar of ugly tribal virtues, {27} which enjoin us to love the
means by which we get and hate the men from whom we take. It is aided
by racial scorn, a thing as deep as life, yet subject on the whole to
that more impelling factor, economic motive. The history of war and
peace is a history of the overriding of sentimental considerations by
imperious economic needs. During the Revolutionary War, no love was
lost between the rigid, race-conscious Englishman and the despised
red-skin, yet both joined hands to scalp Americans in the lonely
settlements along our frontier. To-day German and Turk, Italian and
Russian, Frenchman and Senegambian, Briton and Japanese, love each
other at least temporarily because pursuing like interests. Not that
the influence of race and nationality upon those mutual repulsions
which lead to war can be brushed aside in a paragraph. They are
potent, modifying factors, with a certain independence of action, and
serving, with regard to economic motives, as accelerators, intensifiers
or, to change the illustrations, as containers. Yet it is no great
exaggeration to say that no racial antagonism can wholly sunder allies
joined by a vital economic bond, and no racial sympathy firmly unite
nations who want one indivisible thing. The "Anglo-Saxon cousins" now
live in concord, but not solely because they are Anglo-Saxons. As for
religious differences, which have in the past so often exacerbated the
war spirit, this influence is less than appears. Even the godly live
on bread and butter. The Protestant princes of the Reformation hated
the Scarlet Woman because of the Real Presence, but they also hated her
because of the golden stream that flowed from Germany to Rome. The
English Reformation had less to do with Mistress Anne Boleyn than with
the wealth of the monasteries. Especially among modern industrial
nations, with their increasing theological {28} apathy, are religious
differences of relatively small importance in determining wars. It is
the economic motive which tells.[2]

Considering all these facts of history, so hastily reviewed,
considering that in practically all countries and at all times economic
impulses have ten