The matters in which the interests of nations are supposed to clash are mainly three:  tariffs, which are a delusion; the exploitation of inferior races, which is a crime; pride of power and dominion, which is a schoolboy folly.

The economic argument against tariffs is familiar, and I shall not repeat it.  The only reason why it fails to carry conviction is the enmity between nations.  Nobody proposes to set up a tariff between England and Scotland, or between Lancashire and Yorkshire.  Yet the arguments by which tariffs between nations are supported might be used just as well to defend tariffs between counties.  Universal free trade would indubitably be of economic benefit to mankind, and would be adopted to-morrow if it were not for the hatred and suspicion which nations feel one toward another.  From the point of view of preserving the peace of the world, free trade between the different civilized states is not so important as the open door in their dependencies.  The desire for exclusive markets is one of the most potent causes of war.

Exploiting what are called “inferior races” has become one of the main objects of European statecraft.  It is not only, or primarily, trade that is desired, but opportunities for investment; finance is more concerned in the matter than industry.  Rival diplomatists are very often the servants, conscious or unconscious, of rival groups of financiers.  The financiers, though themselves of no particular nation, understand the art of appealing to national prejudice, and of inducing the taxpayer to incur expenditure of which they reap the benefit.  The evils which they produce at home, and the devastation that they spread among the races whom they exploit, are part of the price which the world has to pay for its acquiescence in the capitalist rŽgime.

But neither tariffs nor financiers would be able to cause serious trouble, if it were not for the sentiment of national pride.  National pride might be on the whole beneficent, if it took the direction of emulation in the things that are important to civilization.  If we prided ourselves upon our poets, our men of science, or the justice and humanity of our social system, we might find in national pride a stimulus to useful endeavors.  But such matters play a very small part.  National pride, as it exists now, is almost exclusively concerned with power and dominion, with the extent of territory that a nation owns, and with its capacity for enforcing its will against the opposition of other nations.  In this it is reinforced by group morality.  To nine citizens out of ten it seems self-evident, whenever the will of their own nation clashes with that of another, that their own nation must be in the right.  Even if it were not in the right on the particular issue, yet it stands in general for so much nobler ideals than those represented by the other nation to the dispute, that any increase in its power is bound to be for the good of mankind.  Since all nations equally believe this of themselves, all are equally ready to insist upon the victory of their own side in any dispute in which they believe that they have a good hope of victory.  While this temper persists, the hope of international cošperation must remain dim.