gue Conference, is quoted as follows:
"It must be stated emphatically that in its ultimate aims the peace
movement is not only ... Utopian, but ... dangerous...." These
quotations are given as typical of the attitude manifested by the two
extremes, the injudiciously optimistic and the ultraconservative,
toward every social reform. All true progress pursues a course
intermediate to these two.

The idea entertained by so many enthusiastic peace advocates, that the
world is ready for peace if we but had institutional facilities
adequate to carry out the will of the people, is erroneous. In all
democratic states political institutions are but a concrete expression
of the social mind, the media created by the people, through which
society executes its will. "With a given phase of human character ...
there must go an adapted class of institutions."[1] Therefore, I
submit that if the people were ready for peace they could easily
provide the means necessary for its accomplishment.

[1] Herbert Spencer, "The Study of Sociology."

The first gentleman quoted above drew his conclusion from the
indications that of the two million inhabitants of his state, one
million nine hundred thousand would favor arbitration as shown by the
enthusiasm manifested at a meeting of the state peace society a few
weeks before. Similar conditions in other parts of the country, he
thought, would corroborate the application of his assertion to the
entire country. Such a conclusion is fallacious in that it fails to
consider three essential facts about the people of the United States
which largely determine the attitude of any people toward war. First,
they have no grievance. Second, no appeal is being made to their
patriotic bias. Third, their emotions and passions are quiescent.

The first of these needs only brief mention. No people in this
enlightened age wishes to fight as a matter of course, regardless of
any reasonable pretext. If nations never had any personal interests
involved, there would, of course, be no more war. In this respect the
people of the United States are not ahead of the other parts of the
civilized world. Disinterested parties have been in favor of peace for
two thousand years.

The other two facts deserve more extended consideration.

The disposition in individuals to pluck motes out of their neighbors'
eyes and leave beams in their own, in the nation becomes what Herbert
Spencer calls the bias of patriotism. According