This Puritan ideal is not so much unchristian as narrow and unintelligent; but the money-making life has of late become more and more frankly predatory and anti-social.  The great trusts, and the arts of the company-promoter, can hardly be said to perform any social service; they exist to levy tribute on the public.  We may say therefore that, though war between the leading nations of the world had become a strange idea and a far-off memory, we had by no means risen above the principles and practices of war in our internal life.  The immunity from militarism hitherto enjoyed by Britain and the United States was a fortunate accident, not a proof of higher morality.  Our fleet protected both ourselves and the Americans from the necessity of maintaining a conscript army; but we had drifted into a condition in which civil war seemed not to be far off, and in which violence and lawlessness were increasing.  By a strange inconsistency, many who on moral or religious grounds condemned wars between nations were found to condone or justify acts of war against the State, organised by discontented factions of its citizens.  Revolutionary strikes, prepared long in advance by forced levies of money which were candidly called war-funds, had as their avowed aim the paralysis of the industries of the country and the reduction of the population to distress by withholding the necessaries of life.  These acts of civil war, and disgraceful outbreaks of criminal anarchism, were justified by persons who professed a conscientious objection to defending their homes and families against a foreign invader.  This state of mind proves how little essential connexion there is between democracy and peace.  It discloses a confusion of ideas even greater than the antithesis between industrialism and militarism in the writings of Herbert Spencer.  On this latter fallacy it is enough to quote the words of Admiral Mahan; ’As far as the advocacy of peace rests on material motives like economy and prosperity, it is the service of Mammon; and the bottom of the platform will drop out when Mammon thinks that war will pay better.’  This is notoriously what has happened in Germany.  A short war, with huge indemnities, seemed to German financiers a promising speculation.  If such were the rotten foundations upon which anti-militarism in this country was based, the Churches cannot be blamed for giving the peace-movement a rather lukewarm support.

In Germany there was no internal anarchy, such as prevailed in England; there was also no illusion about the imminence of war.  Our politicians ought to have read the signs of the times better; but they were too intent on feeling the pulse of the electorate at home to attend to disturbing and unwelcome symptoms abroad.  The causes of the war are not difficult to determine.  War has long been a national industry of Germany, and the idea of it evoked no moral repugnance.  The military virtues were extolled; the military profession enjoyed an astonishing social prestige; the learned class proclaimed the biological necessity of international conflicts.  The army believed itself to be invincible, and it had begun to control the policy of the country; where these two conditions exist, no diplomacy can avert war.  Professionalism always has a selfish and anti-social element in its code, and the professionalism of the soldier is always prone to override the rights and disdain the scruples of civilians.