er No. 4 I have shown how the inadequacy of our
language leads us so much astray in our notions of the real role of
force in human relationships. But there is a curious phenomenon of
thought which explains perhaps still more how misconceptions grow up on
this subject, and that is the habit of thinking of a war which, of
course, must include two parties, in terms, solely of one party at a time.
Thus one critic[3] is quite sure that because the Balkan peoples "recked
nothing of financial disaster," economic considerations have had nothing
to do with their war--a conclusion which seems to be arrived at by the
process of judgment just indicated: to find the cause of condition
produced by two parties you shall rigorously ignore one. For there is a
great deal of internal evidence for believing that the writer of the
article in question would admit very readily that the efforts of the
Turk to wring taxes out of the conquered peoples--not in return for a
civilized administration but simply as the means of livelihood, of
turning conquest into a trade--had a very great deal to do in explaining
the Turk's presence there at all and the Christian's desire to get rid
of him; while the same article specifically states that the mutual
jealousies of the great powers, based on a desire to "grab" (an economic
motive), had a great deal to do with preventing a peaceful settlement of
the difficulties. Yet "economics" have nothing to do with it!

I have attempted elsewhere to make these two points--that it is on the
one hand the false economics of the Turks, and on the other hand the
false economics of the powers of Europe, colouring the policy and
Statecraft of both, which have played an enormous, in all human
probability, a determining role in the immediate provoking cause of the
war; and, of course, a further and more remote cause of the whole
difficulty is the fact that the Balkan peoples never having been
subjected to the discipline of that complex social life which arises
from trade and commerce have never grown out of (or to a less degree)
those primitive racial and religious hostilities which at one time in
Europe as a whole provoked conflicts like that now raging in the
Balkans. The following article which appeared[4] at the outbreak of the
war may summarise some of the points with which we have been dealing.

Polite and good-natured people think it rude to say "Balkans" if a
Pacifist be present. Yet I never understood why, and I und