the disputes between
national communities of individuals can by no means suppress conflict;
but unless it suppresses fighting, and unless it ensures that if
fighting occurs the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression, it
will have effected nothing.

It cannot be said that the progress of civilization has so far had any
tendency to render unnecessary the point of view adopted by Penn and
Jules de Gaultier. The acts of states to-day are apt to be just as
wantonly aggressive as they ever were, as reckless of reason and of
justice. There is no country, however high it may stand in the comity of
nations, which is not sometimes carried away by the blind fever of war.
France, the land of reason, echoed, only forty years ago, with the mad
cry, "A Berlin!" England, the friend of the small nationalities,
jubilantly, with even an air of heroism, crushed under foot the little
South African Republics, and hounded down every Englishman who withstood
the madness of the crowd. The great, free intelligent people of the
United States went to war against Spain with a childlike faith in the
preposterous legend of the blowing up of the _Maine_. There is no
country which has not some such shameful page in its history, the record
of some moment when its moral and intellectual prestige was besmirched
in the eyes of the whole world. It pays for its momentary madness, it
may valiantly strive to atone for its injustice, but the damaging record
remains. The supersession of war is needed not merely in the interests
of the victims of aggression; it is needed fully as much in the
interests of the aggressors, driven by their own momentary passions, or
by the ambitious follies of their rulers, towards crimes for which a
terrible penalty is exacted. There has never been any country at every
moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be
saved from itself. For every country has sometimes gone mad, while
every other country has looked on its madness with the mocking calm of
clear-sighted intelligence, and perhaps with a pharisaical air of
virtuous indignation.

During the single year of 1911 the process was unrolled in its most
complete form. The first bad move--though it was a relatively small and
inoffensive move--was made by France. The Powers, after much
deliberation, had come to certain conclusions concerning Morocco, and
while giving France a predominant influence in that country, had
carefully limited her power of acti