that it has its compensations, even
if it is not something to be desired. Such should particularly appear to
be the presumption in case one is at all inclined to make much of the
cultural gains to be brought in under the new regime. And more
particularly should a policy of non-resistant submission to the
projected new order seem expedient in view of the exceedingly high, not
to say prohibitive, cost of resistance, or even of materially retarding
its fulfillment.

CHAPTER V

PEACE AND NEUTRALITY

Considered simply on the face of the tangible material interests
involved, the choice of the common man in these premises should seem
very much of a foregone conclusion, if he could persuade himself to a
sane and perspicuous consideration of these statistically apparent
merits of the case alone. It is at least safely to be presumed that he
has nothing to lose, in a material way, and there is reason to look for
some slight gain in creature comforts and in security of life and limb,
consequent upon the elimination, or at least the partial
disestablishment, of pecuniary necessity as the sole bond and criterion
of use and wont in economic concerns.

But man lives not by bread alone. In point of fact, and particularly as
touches the springs of action among that common run that do not
habitually formulate their aspirations and convictions in extended and
grammatically defensible documentary form, and the drift of whose
impulses therefore is not masked or deflected by the illusive
consistencies of set speech,--as touches the common run, particularly,
it will hold true with quite an unacknowledged generality that the
material means of life are, after all, means only; and that when the
question of what things are worth while is brought to the final test, it
is not these means, nor the life conditioned on these means, that are
seen to serve as the decisive criterion; but always it is some
ulterior, immaterial end, in the pursuit of which these material means
find their ulterior ground of valuation. Neither the overt testimony nor
the circumstantial evidence to this effect is unequivocal; but seen in
due perspective, and regard being had chiefly to the springs of
concerted action as shown in any massive movement of this common run of
mankind, there is, after all, little room to question that the things
which commend themselves as indefeasibly worth while are the things of
the human spirit.

These ideals, aspirations, aims, e