recent past gives
warrant that peace is deliberately desired and is likely to be
maintained, barring unforeseen contingencies.

* * * * *

In the large, the measures conducive to the perpetuation of peace, and
necessary to be taken, are simple and obvious; and they are largely of a
negative character, exploits of omission and neglect. Under modern
conditions, and barring aggression from without, the peace is kept by
avoiding the breaking of it. It does not break of itself,--in the
absence of such national establishments as are organised with the sole
ulterior view of warlike enterprise. A policy of peace is obviously a
policy of avoidance,--avoidance of offense and of occasion for
annoyance.

What is required to insure the maintenance of peace among pacific
nations is the neutralisation of all those human relations out of which
international grievances are wont to arise. And what is necessary to
assure a reasonable expectation of continued peace is the neutralisation
of so much of these relations as the patriotic self-conceit and
credulity of these peoples will permit. These two formulations are by no
means identical; indeed, the disparity between what could advantageously
be dispensed with in the way of national rights and pretensions, and
what the common run of modern patriots could be induced to relinquish,
is probably much larger than any sanguine person would like to believe.
It should be plain on slight reflection that the greater part, indeed
substantially the whole, of those material interests and demands that
now engage the policy of the nations, and that serve on occasion to set
them at variance, might be neutralised or relinquished out of hand,
without detriment to any one of the peoples concerned.

The greater part of these material interests over which the various
national establishments keep watch and hold pretensions are, in point of
historical derivation, a legacy from the princely politics of what is
called the "Mercantilist" period; and they are uniformly of the nature
of gratuitous interference or discrimination between the citizens of the
given nation and outsiders. Except (doubtfully) in the English case,
where mercantilist policies are commonly believed to have been adopted
directly for the benefit of the commercial interest, measures of this
nature are uniformly traceable to the endeavours of the crown and its
officers to strengthen the finances of the prince an