ne
another; the vast cost of modern war; the gigantic commercial disasters
it inevitably entails; the extreme uncertainty of its issue; the utter
ruin that may follow defeat--these are the real influences that restrain
the tiger passions and the avaricious cravings of mankind. It is also
one of the advantages that accompany the many evils of universal
service, that great citizen armies who in time of war are drawn from
their homes, their families, and their peaceful occupations have not the
same thirst for battle that grows up among purely professional soldiers,
voluntarily enlisted and making a military life their whole career. Yet,
in spite of all this, what trust could be placed in the forbearance of
Christian nations if the path of aggression was at once easy, lucrative
and safe? The judgments of nations in dealing with the aggressions of
their neighbours are, it is true, very different from those which they
form of aggressions by their own statesmen or for their own benefit. But
no great nation is blameless, and there is probably no nation that could
not speedily catch the infection of the warlike spirit if a conqueror
and a few splendid victories obscured, as they nearly always do, the
moral issues of the contest.

War, it is true, is not always or wholly evil. Sometimes it is
justifiable and necessary. Sometimes it is professedly and in part
really due to some strong wave of philanthropic feeling produced by
great acts of wrong, though of all forms of philanthropy it is that
which most naturally defeats itself. Even when unjustifiable, it calls
into action splendid qualities of courage, self-sacrifice, and
endurance which cast a dazzling and deceptive glamour over its horrors
and its criminality. It appeals too, beyond all other things, to that
craving for excitement, adventure, and danger which is an essential and
imperious element in human nature, and which, while it is in itself
neither a virtue nor a vice, blends powerfully with some of the best as
well as with some of the worst actions of mankind. It is indeed a
strange thing to observe how many men in every age have been ready to
risk or sacrifice their lives for causes which they have never clearly
understood and which they would find it difficult in plain words to
describe.

But the amount of pure and almost spontaneous malevolence in the world
is probably far greater than we at first imagine. In public life the
workings of this side of human nature are