exist. It is probably true, as William James says, that 'militarist
writers without exception regard war as a biological or sociological
necessity'; lawyers might say the same about litigation. But laws of
nature 'are not efficient causes, and it is open to any one to prove
that they are not laws, if he can break them with impunity. It would be
the height of pessimistic fatalism to hold that men must always go on
doing that which they hate, and which brings them to misery and ruin.
Man is not bound for ever by habits contracted during his racial nonage;
his moral, rational, and spiritual instincts are as natural as his
physical appetites; and against them, as St. Paul says, 'there is no
law,' Huxley's Romanes Lecture gave an unfortunate support to the
mischievous notion that the 'cosmic process' is the enemy of morality.
The truth seems to be that Nature presents to us not a categorical
imperative, but a choice. Do we prefer to pay our way in the world, or
to be parasites? War, with very few exceptions, is a mode of parasitism.
Its object is to exploit the labour of other nations, to make them pay
tribute, or to plunder them openly, as the Germans have plundered the
cities of Belgium. War is a parasitic industry; and Christianity forbids
parasitism. Nature has her own penalties for the lower animals which
make this choice, and they strike with equal severity 'the peoples that
delight in war,' The bellicose nations have nearly all perished.

There remains, however, a class of wars which escapes this
condemnation; and about them difficult moral problems may be raised. We
can hardly deny to a growing and civilised nation the right to expand at
the expense of barbarous hunters and nomads. No one would suggest that
the Americans ought to give back their country to the Indians, or that
Australia should be abandoned to the aborigines. But were the
Anglo-Saxons justified in expropriating the Britons, and the Spaniards
the Aztecs? There is room for differences of opinion in these cases; and
a very serious problem may arise in the future, as to whether the
European races are morally justified in using armed force to restrict
Asiatic competition. As a general principle, we must condemn the
expropriation of any nation which is in effective occupation of the
soil. The popular estimate of superior and inferior races is thoroughly
unchristian and unscientific, as is the prejudice against a dark skin.
The opinion that a nation which i