‘The need for defence arises from the existence of a motive for attack.... That motive is, consequently, part of the problem of defence.... Since as between the European peoples we are dealing with in this matter, one party is as able in the long run to pile up armaments as the other, we cannot get nearer to solution by armaments alone; we must get at the original provoking cause—the motive making for aggression.... If that motive results from a true judgment of the facts; if the determining factor in a nation’s well-being and progress is really its power to obtain by force advantage over others, the present situation of armament rivalry tempered by war is a natural and inevitable one.... If, however, the view is a false one, our progress towards solution will be marked by the extent to which the error becomes generally recognised in European public opinion.’—(p. 337.)
‘In this matter it seems fatally easy to secure either one of two kinds of action: that of the “practical man” who limits his energies to securing a policy which will perfect the machinery of war and disregard anything else; or that of the Pacifist, who, persuaded of the brutality or immorality of war, is apt to deprecate effort directed at self-defence. What is needed is the type of activity which will include both halves of the problem: provision for education, for a Political Reformation in this matter, as well as such means of defence as will meantime counterbalance the existing impulse to aggression. To concentrate on either half to the exclusion of the other half is to render the whole problem insoluble.’—(p. 330.)
‘Never has the contest of armament been so keen as when Europe began to indulge in Peace Conferences. Speaking roughly and generally, the era of great armament expansion dates from the first Hague Conference. The reader who has appreciated the emphasis laid in the preceding pages on working through the reform of ideas will not feel much astonishment at the failure of efforts such as these. The Hague Conferences represented an attempt, not to work through the reform of ideas, but to modify by mechanical means the political machinery of Europe, without reference to the ideas which had brought it into existence.
‘Arbitration treaties, Hague Conferences, International Federation, involve a new conception of relationship between nations. But the ideals—political, economical, and social—on which the old conceptions are based, our terminology, our political literature, our old habits of thought, diplomatic inertia, which all combine to perpetuate the old notions, have been left serenely undisturbed. And surprise is expressed that such schemes do not succeed.’—(p. 350.)
Very soon after the appearance of the book, I find I am shouting myself hoarse in the Press against this monstrous ‘impossibility of war’ foolishness. An article in the Daily Mail of September 15th, 1911, begins thus:—
’ ... One learns, with some surprise, that the very simple facts to which I have now for some years been trying to draw the attention they deserve, teach that:—
1. War is now impossible.
2. War would ruin both the victor and the vanquished.
3. War would leave the victor worse off than the vanquished.
‘May I say with every possible emphasis that nothing I have ever written justifies any one of these conclusions.