There is one other point that may obscure the hope arising from Norman Angell’s book.  His main contention concerns wars between great Powers, nearly equally matched—­Powers of high civilisation, with elaborate systems of credit and complicated interdependence of trade.  But most recent wars have been attacks—­defensive attacks, of course—­upon small, powerless, and semi-civilised nations by the great Powers.  Under the pretext of extending law and order, justice, peace, good government, and the blessings of the Christian faith, a great Power attacks a small and half-organised people with the object of taking up the White Man’s Burden, capturing markets, contracting for railways, and extending territory.  To wars of this kind, I think, Norman Angell’s comforting theory does not apply—­the great illusion does not come in.  A strong Power may conquer Morocco, or Persia, or seize Bosnia, or enslave Finland, or penetrate Tibet, or maintain its hold on India, or occupy Egypt, or even destroy the Dutch Republics of South Africa, without disorganising its own commerce or raising a panic on its own credit.  Most actual fighting has lately been of this character.  It aims at the suppression of freedom in small or unarmed nationalities, the absorption of independent countries into great empires.  It is the modern counterpart of the slave-trade.  It is supported by similar arguments, and may be quite lucrative, as the slave-trade was.

Actual warfare generally takes this form now, but behind it one may always feel the latent or diplomatic warfare that consists in the calculation of armaments.  A great Power says:  “How much of Persia, Turkey, China, or Morocco do I dare to swallow?  Germany, Russia, France, Japan, England, or Spain (as the case may be) will not like it if I swallow much.  But what force could she bring against me, if it came to extremities, and what force could I set against hers?” Then the Powers set to counting up army corps and Dreadnoughts.  In Dreadnoughts they seldom get their addition-sums right, but they do their poor best, strike a balance, and declare that a satisfactory agreement has been come to.  This latent war is expensive, but cheaper than real war—­and it is not bloody; it does not shock credit, though it weakens it; it does not ruin commerce, though it hampers it.  The drain upon the nations is exhausting, but it does not kill men so horribly, and our rulers do not feel it; for the people pay, and the concession-hunters, the contractors, the company directors, and suchlike people with whom our rulers chiefly associate, grow very fat.

If, then, Norman Angell’s hopeful theory applies only partially to these common wars of Imperial aggrandisement and the perpetual diplomatic war by comparison of armaments, to what may we look for hope?  Lord Rosebery would be the last person to whom one would look for hope in general.  His hope is too like despair for prudence to smother.  Yet, in his speech at the Press banquet during the Imperial Conference