ne;
to the incidents, the accidents, the mis-judgments of rulers and the
slips of the diplomats? Are wars after all a product of the logic of
life, or are they mere fortuitous syntheses of events which in their
particular combination make a total that is not involved, either as
desire or as tendency, in the sum of the particulars that enter into
the whole? How completely, in a word, do the interests and purposes of
nations determine wars? May we speak of motives that always tend to
produce wars, but never seem to will them?

History seems to show us that wars are less directly willed than we
have sometimes supposed, and perhaps that there is a large element of
chance in them as regards a given war at any time and in any place.
War in general is inherent in, or is a natural effect of, the laws of
development of nations. Wars as historical events are not completely
describable in terms of these laws. It is the old contrast between the
historical and the scientific explanation of things that appears here.
Nations have deep and vague desires, we say. They want satisfaction of
their honor; they crave a dramatic life, even military prestige and
glory, but we do not often find war itself definitely willed. The
desires of nations, we repeat, tend to be too fundamental to be
specific. Their specific desires are indeed and for that reason likely
to be contradictory. They desire both war and peace at the same time,
and have interests that may be served by both. They live in indecision
like individuals. Motives conflict. They hesitate, and doubt, and
fear. They shrink from taking the plunge. It requires the sharp and
clear event, the chance event, most often, to precipitate them into
wars. It is always to-morrow that they are to wage wars. So wars do
not usually occur by the rational plans and devices of any man or any
historical sequences of men, we may believe, and it is a question
whether wars are very often intended in a real sense by any one. Wars
occur as crises in events. The strains that produce them are certainly
inherent in the relations of nations at all times, and even in the
motives of personal politics, but in general these relations as
consciously governed relations are in the direction of seeking the
greatest advantage with the least show of force. The conditions must
all be present, both the match and the powder, before war can take
place. There must be a condition of strain, having certain
psychological features