e set of principles and the hollowness of the other; and
were the principles special to that case, or general to international
conflict as a whole?

To have an opinion of worth on that question we must get away from
certain confusions and misrepresentations.

It is a very common habit for the Bellicist to quote the list of wars
which have taken place since the Crimean War as proof of the error of
Bright and Cobden. But what are the facts?

Here were two men who strenuously and ruthlessly opposed a certain
policy; they urged, not only that it would inevitably lead to war, but
that the war would be futile--but not sterile, for they saw that others
would grow from it. Their counsel was disregarded and the war came, and
events have proved that they were right and the war-makers wrong, and
the very fact that the wars took place is cited as disapproving their
"theories."[8]

It is a like confusion of thought which prompts Mr. Churchill to refer
to Pacifists as people who deem the _danger_ of war an illusion.

This persistent misconception is worth a little examination.

* * * * *

The smoke from the first railway engines in England killed the cattle
and the poultry of the country gentlemen near whose property the
railroad passed--at least, that is what the country gentleman wrote to
the _Times_.

Now if in the domain of quite simple material things the dislike of
having fixed habits of thought disturbed, leads gentlemen to resent
innovations in that way, it is not astonishing that innovations of a
more intangible and elusive kind should be subject to a like unconscious
misrepresentation, especially by newspapers and public men pushed by
commercial or political necessity to say the popular thing rather than
the true thing: that contained in the speech of Mr. Churchill, which,
together with a newspaper comment thereon, I have made the "text" of
this little book, is a typical case in point.

It is possible, of course, that Mr. Churchill in talking about "persons
who profess to know that the danger of war has become an illusion," had
not the slightest intention of referring to those who share the views
embodied in "The Great Illusion," which are, _not_ that the danger of
war is an illusion, but that the benefit is. All that happened was that
his hearers and readers interpreted his words as referring thereto; and
that, of course, he could not possibly prevent.

In any case, to misrepresen