suaded of the justice of their claims. A decision either way is
an intolerable iniquity in the eyes of the losing side. History teaches
that in such a quarrel the recourse has always been to force.

History teaches also, but with an inflection of doubt, that the outworn
institution in such a conjuncture faces disestablishment. At least, so
men like to believe. What the experience of history does not leave in
doubt is the grave damage, discomfort and shame incident to the
displacement of such an institutional discrepancy by such recourse to
force. What further appears to be clear in the premises, at least to the
point of a strong presumption, is that in the present case the decision,
or the choice, lies between two alternatives: either the price-system
and its attendant business enterprise will yield and pass out; or the
pacific nations will conserve their pecuniary scheme of law and order at
the cost of returning to a war footing and letting their owners preserve
the rights of ownership by force of arms.

The reflection obviously suggests itself that this prospect of
consequences to follow from the installation of peace at large might
well be taken into account beforehand by those who are aiming to work
out an enduring peace. It has appeared in the course of the argument
that the preservation of the present pecuniary law and order, with all
its incidents of ownership and investment, is incompatible with an
unwarlike state of peace and security. This current scheme of
investment, business, and sabotage, should have an appreciably better
chance of survival in the long run if the present conditions of warlike
preparation and national insecurity were maintained, or if the projected
peace were left in a somewhat problematical state, sufficiently
precarious to keep national animosities alert, and thereby to the
neglect of domestic interests, particularly of such interests as touch
the popular well-being. On the other hand, it has also appeared that the
cause of peace and its perpetuation might be materially advanced if
precautions were taken beforehand to put out of the way as much as may
be of those discrepancies of interest and sentiment between nations and
between classes which make for dissension and eventual hostilities.

So, if the projectors of this peace at large are in any degree inclined
to seek concessive terms on which the peace might hopefully be made
enduring, it should evidently be part of their endeavours fro