When you have preponderant
strength, impose your view; force the other man to your will; not
because it is right, but because you are able to do so." It is the
"excellent policy" which Lord Roberts attributes to Germany and
approves.

We anti-Bellicists take an exactly contrary view. We say: "To fight it
out settles nothing, since it is not a question of who is stronger, but
of whose view is best, and as that is not always easy to establish, it
is of the utmost importance in the interest of all parties, in the long
run, to keep force out of it."

The former is the policy of the Turks. They have been obsessed with the
idea that if only they had enough of physical force, ruthlessly
exercised, they could solve the whole question of government, of
existence for that matter, without troubling about social adjustment,
understanding, equity, law, commerce; "blood and iron" were all that was
needed. The success of that policy can now be judged.

And whether good or evil comes of the present war will depend upon
whether the Balkan States are on the whole guided by the Bellicist
principle or the opposed one. If having now momentarily eliminated force
as between themselves, they re-introduce it, if the strongest,
presumably Bulgaria, adopts Lord Roberts' "excellent policy" of striking
because she has the preponderant force, enters upon a career of conquest
of other members of the Balkan League, and the populations of the
conquered territories, using them for exploitation by military
force--why then there will be no settlement and this war will have
accomplished nothing save futile waste and slaughter. For they will have
taken under a new flag, the pathway of the Turk to savagery,
degeneration, death.

But if on the other hand they are guided more by the Pacifist principle,
if they believe that co-operation between States is better than conflict
between them, if they believe that the common interest of all in good
Government is greater than the special interest of any one in conquest,
that the understanding of human relationships, the capacity for the
organisation of society are the means by which men progress, and not the
imposition of force by one man or group upon another, why, they will
have taken the pathway to better civilisation. But then they will have
disregarded Lord Roberts' advice.

And this distinction between the two systems, far from being a matter of
abstract theory of metaphysics or logic chopping, is just t