expansion, to say
nothing of our Monroe declaration and other pretensions, failed to give
offence in a world, {31} in which mere having is aggression and mere
growing a menace? Has our peace in the past been due to our own
meekness and unaggressiveness, or has it been the gift of a fortunate
economic condition, which may pass? Before we rely upon the
continuance of a peace of mere isolation, we shall do well to inquire
into the economic conditions which so long gave us peace.

[1] Ernest Barker. Crusades. Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh
Edition, Vol. VII, p. 526.

[2] For a sketch of the economic influences bearing upon war, see the
brilliant essay of Prof. Edward Van Dyke Robinson, "War and Economics
in History and Theory," _Political Science Quarterly_, Vol. XV, pp.
581-622. Reproduced in "Sociology and Social Progress," compiled by
Prof. Thomas Nixon Carver (1905), pp. 133-173. In the present chapter
I have borrowed extensively from Professor Robinson's essay.

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CHAPTER III

PEACE WITHOUT EFFORT

To the average American of a few years ago the maintenance of peace
seemed as natural and easy as breathing. Except for our brief and
episodical conflict with Spain we had had no war with a European Power
for a hundred years and we saw no reason why we should go to war in any
of the coming centuries. Peace was merely an abstention from war, a
not doing something, which we had no desire to do. We had no reason to
provoke war, no foreign nation had a legitimate grievance against us.
In any case we were inherently different from Europe. We were peaceful
while Europe was war-like. So long as we tended to our own
affairs---and that was our intention--peace was assured.

Believing thus in our intrinsic peacefulness, it was in no spirit of
humility that we met the outbreak of the Great War. We did not put
ourselves in the place of the fighting nations, and acknowledge that in
their circumstances we too might have been struggling in the dust.
Rather we boasted of our restraining democracy, and of our perfect
co-operative union, which protected us from the European anarchy. We,
a people unassailed, talked loudly of our superior merit, and, as we
looked over the broad oceans and saw no enemy, thanked God that He had
not made us as other nations. Our compassion for the peoples of Europe
was tinged with a bland, self-righteous arrogance.

It is not pleasant to-day to read the homilies which {33}