the piper called the tune. Do the people call the tune
of peace or war? Not at all. The ruling classes both call the tune and
pocket the pay.

There is one other point that may obscure the hope arising from Norman
Angell's book. His main contention concerns wars between great Powers,
nearly equally matched--Powers of high civilisation, with elaborate
systems of credit and complicated interdependence of trade. But most
recent wars have been attacks--defensive attacks, of course--upon small,
powerless, and semi-civilised nations by the great Powers. Under the
pretext of extending law and order, justice, peace, good government,
and the blessings of the Christian faith, a great Power attacks a small
and half-organised people with the object of taking up the White Man's
Burden, capturing markets, contracting for railways, and extending
territory. To wars of this kind, I think, Norman Angell's comforting
theory does not apply--the great illusion does not come in. A strong
Power may conquer Morocco, or Persia, or seize Bosnia, or enslave
Finland, or penetrate Tibet, or maintain its hold on India, or occupy
Egypt, or even destroy the Dutch Republics of South Africa, without
disorganising its own commerce or raising a panic on its own credit.
Most actual fighting has lately been of this character. It aims at the
suppression of freedom in small or unarmed nationalities, the absorption
of independent countries into great empires. It is the modern
counterpart of the slave-trade. It is supported by similar arguments,
and may be quite lucrative, as the slave-trade was.

Actual warfare generally takes this form now, but behind it one may
always feel the latent or diplomatic warfare that consists in the
calculation of armaments. A great Power says: "How much of Persia,
Turkey, China, or Morocco do I dare to swallow? Germany, Russia, France,
Japan, England, or Spain (as the case may be) will not like it if I
swallow much. But what force could she bring against me, if it came to
extremities, and what force could I set against hers?" Then the Powers
set to counting up army corps and Dreadnoughts. In Dreadnoughts they
seldom get their addition-sums right, but they do their poor best,
strike a balance, and declare that a satisfactory agreement has been
come to. This latent war is expensive, but cheaper than real war--and it
is not bloody; it does not shock credit, though it weakens it; it does
not ruin commerce, though it hampers it. The d