motives of war as they may
be considered as a practical problem. But we find no separate causes,
and we do not find a chain of causes that might be broken somewhere
and thus war be once for all eliminated. Wars are products of the
whole character of nations, so to speak, and it is national character
that must be considered in any practical study of war. It is by the
development of the character of nations in a natural process, or by
the education of national character, that war will be made to give
way to perpetual peace, if such a state ever comes, rather than by a
political readjustment or by legal enactments, however necessary as
beginnings or makeshifts these legal and political changes may be.

The second part of the book is a study of our present situation as an
educational problem, in which we have for the first time a problem of
educating national consciousness as a whole, or the individuals of a
nation with reference to a world-consciousness. The study has
reference especially to the conditions in our own country, but it also
has general significance. The war has brought many changes, and in
every phase of life we see new problems. These may seem at the moment
to be separate and detached conditions which must be dealt with, each
by itself, but this is not so; they are all aspects of fundamental
changes and new conditions, the main feature of which is the new
world-consciousness of which we speak. Whatever one's occupation, one
cannot remain unaffected by these changes, or escape entirely the
stress that the need of adjustment to new ideas and new conditions
compels. What we may think about the future--about what can be done
and what ought to be done, is in part, and perhaps largely, a matter
of temperament. At least we see men, presumably having access to the
same facts, drawing from them very different conclusions. Some are
keyed to high expectations; they look for revolutions, mutations, a
new era in politics and everywhere in the social life. For them, after
the war, the world is to be a new world. Fate will make a new deal.
Others appear to believe that after the flurry is over we shall settle
down to something very much like the old order. These are conservative
people, who neither desire nor expect great changes. Others take a
more moderate course. While improvement is their great word, they are
inclined to believe that the new order will grow step by step out of
the old, and that good will come out of t