ation. We were not disillusioned
by any conflict with harder-pressed nations, desiring what we had or
having what we desired. We believed vaguely in an inevitable
beneficent internationalism, which would bring all nations into harmony
and banish war from the world.

Actually our pacifists and internationalists have accomplished little,
if anything, towards a realisation of this ideal. What has hampered
them, apart from the overwhelming difficulty of the problem, has been
the fact that they did not realise how distant was the goal towards
which they were marching. Their approach to the problem was not
realistic. They conceived of the World as a group of nations in all
fundamentals like America and of peace as a process by which these
other nations would approximate to the United States. The great
solvents of war were democracy, education and industrialism. Democracy
would take from the ruling classes the right to declare wars; education
would destroy in the people the last vestiges of bellicosity and
international prejudice, while industrialism would in the end overcome
militarism, and turn battleships and howitzers into steam-ploughs and
electric cranes. The triumphant progress throughout the world of
democracy, education and industrialism would speedily bring about peace
and a firm internationalism.

Unfortunately the problem of imperialism and war is far more intricate
than this popular theory assumes. All these forces tend perhaps in the
general direction of peace but they do not bring about peace
automatically and in many cases actually intensify and augment the
impulse towards war. Our present age of advancing democracy, education
and industrialism has been, above all other periods, the age of
imperialism, of exaggerated nationalism {14} and of colonial wars.
Democratic peoples have not been cured of nationalistic ambition, and
education, in many countries at least, has aided in the creation of an
imperialistic and militaristic spirit. Even our unguided industrialism
has not ended wars or brought their end perceptibly nearer. There is
no easy road to internationalism and peace, and those who strive for
these ends without understanding the genesis and deep lying causes of
war are striving in vain.

If in America therefore, we are to contribute to the promotion of
internationalism and peace, we must recognise that war is not a mere
accident or vagary but a living thing growing out of the deepest roots