ia, and the added strain in the Balkans because of the vital
interests of all the Great Powers there, and many other conflicts and
causes of conflicts. These conflicts we see repeated in kind in the
relations of Japan, China and Russia and the other powers interested
in the geography of Asia, and in the waters of the Pacific, and once
more in the growing strains between the East and the West (99).

Taking our world as we find it, and viewing the nature of nations in
the light of their history and of their persistent antagonisms, one
might readily believe that the causes of war and war itself will
continue into a far future. No war, the pessimist might well argue,
will destroy national vitality or neutralize the many points of
strain. There may be great coalitions and even Leagues of Nations, but
these may only make wars more terrible when they come. The friendship
of nations will still be insecure and shifting. The great strategic
points of the world will remain. Small countries will continue to be
ambitious and jealous of one another. Island countries will still be
faced by coasts that contain possibilities of danger. The
Constantinoples and the Gibraltars will remain; Suez and Panama will
be left, and Verdun will still be something more than a historic
memory (99).

That these objectives might all be brought into a permanent state of
equilibrium, by some ideal world politics, that nations _ought_ to
abandon their ideas of empire or at least see how crude these ideas
are, how out of relation to our modern ideas of value, and how out of
place in a practical world--all this we can readily understand, but
who will expect nations to become very different from what they are
now, and who shall say how many imperial eggs there are in the world
yet to be hatched? There are many ways of justifying these
ambitions--Germany justifies hers by reason, and the researches of her
great historians--the Treitschkes and the Mommsens; Russia bases her
claims upon her religion and her ethos; Japan brings her divinity and
her traditions, her vitality and her intelligence; England offers her
justice and above all her proved genius for government as a
justification of empire. But after all, these desires for empire lie
deeper than proof and reason can go. Poetic, dramatic and religious
elements enter into them. There are geniuses among nations. The
creative force in a nation is its life force, its essence and its
reality. In some sense the