At the most, such an inquiry can be no more gratuitous and
no more nugatory than the controversies that provoke it. The intrinsic
merits of peace at large, as against those of warlike enterprise, it
should be said, do not here come in question. That question lies in the
domain of preconceived opinion, so that for the purposes of this
inquiry it will have no significance except as a matter to be inquired
into; the main point of the inquiry being the nature, causes and
consequences of such a preconception favoring peace, and the
circumstances that make for a contrary preconception in favor of war.

By and large, any breach of the peace in modern times is an official act
and can be taken only on initiative of the governmental establishment,
the State. The national authorities may, of course, be driven to take
such a step by pressure of warlike popular sentiment. Such, e.g., is
presumed to have been the case in the United States' attack on Spain
during the McKinley administration; but the more that comes to light of
the intimate history of that episode, the more evident does it become
that the popular war sentiment to which the administration yielded had
been somewhat sedulously "mobilised" with a view to such yielding and
such a breach. So also in the case of the Boer war, the move was made
under sanction of a popular war spirit, which, again, did not come to a
head without shrewd surveillance and direction. And so again in the
current European war, in the case, e.g., of Germany, where the
initiative was taken, the State plainly had the full support of popular
sentiment, and may even be said to have precipitated the war in response
to this urgent popular aspiration; and here again it is a matter of
notoriety that the popular sentiment had long been sedulously nursed and
"mobilised" to that effect, so that the populace was assiduously kept in
spiritual readiness for such an event. The like is less evident as
regards the United Kingdom, and perhaps also as regards the other
Allies.

And such appears to have been the common run of the facts as regards all
the greater wars of the last one hundred years,--what may be called the
"public" wars of this modern era, as contrasted with the "private" or
administrative wars which have been carried on in a corner by one and
another of the Great Powers against hapless barbarians, from time to
time, in the course of administrative routine.

It is also evident from the run of the facts a