redoubled energy; and the whole nation thrilled secretly but irresistibly to one cherished aim, the recovery of Port Arthur.  How great is the power of chivalry and patriotism the world has now seen; but it is apt to forget that love of life and fear of death are feelings alike primal and inalienable among the Japanese as among other peoples.  The inspiring force which nerved some 40,000 men gladly to lay down their lives on the hills around Port Arthur was the feeling that they were helping to hurl back in the face of Russia the gauntlet which she had there so insolently flung down as to an inferior race.

CHAPTER XXI

THE NEW GROUPING OF THE GREAT POWERS[495]

(1900-1907)

When I penned the words at the end of Chapter XX. it seemed probable that the mad race in armaments must lead either to war or to revolution.  In these three supplementary chapters I seek to trace very briefly the causes that have led to war, in other words, to the ascendancy (perhaps temporary) of the national principle over the social, and international tendencies of the age.

[Footnote 495:  Written in May-July 1915.]

The collapse of the international and pacifist movement may be ascribed to various causes.  The Franco-German and Russo-Turkish Wars left behind rankling hatreds which rendered it very difficult for nations to disarm; and, after the decline of those resentments, there arose others as the outcome of the Greco-Turkish War and the Boer War.  Further, the conflict between Japan and Russia so far weakened the latter as to leave Germany and Austria almost supreme in Europe; and, while in France and the United Kingdom the social movement has made considerable progress, Germany and Austria have remained in what may be termed the national stage of development, which offers many advantages over the international for purposes of war.  Then again in the Central Empires parliamentary institutions have not been successful, tending on the whole to accentuate the disputes between the dominant and the subject races.  The same is partially true of Russia, and far more so of the Balkan States.  Consequently, in Central and Eastern Europe the national idea has become militant and aggressive; while Great Britain, the Netherlands, and to some extent France, have sought as far as possible to concentrate their efforts upon social legislation, arming only in self-defence.  In this contrast lay one of the dangers of the situation.

Nationality caused the movements and wars of 1848-77.  Thereafter, that principle seemed to wane.  But it revived in redoubled force among the Balkan peoples owing partly to the brutal oppressions of the Sublime Porte; and the cognate idea, aiming, however, not at liberty but conquest, became increasingly popular with the German people after the accession of Kaiser William II.  The sequel is only too well known.  Civilisation has been overwhelmed by a recrudescence of nationalism, and the wealthiest age which the world has seen is a victim to the perfection and potency of its machinery.  A recovery of the old belief in the solidarity of mankind and a conviction of the futility of all efforts for domination by any one people, are the first requisites towards the recovery of conditions that make for peace and good-will.