Page:Justice in war time by Russell, Bertrand.djvu/40

14 of democracy, but they do not wish their words to be heard in Petrograd or Calcutta. And, oddly enough, those who most bitterly hate democracy at home are the most ferocious in defending it against Germany.

This war is not being fought for any rational end: it is being fought because, at first, the nations wished to fight, and now they are angry and determined to win victory. Everything else is idle talk, artificial rationalising of instinctive actions and passions. When two dogs fight in the street, no one supposes that anything but instinct prompts them, or that they are inspired by high and noble ends. But if they were capable of what is called thought, if they had been taught that Dog is a rational animal, we may be sure that a superstructure of belief would grow up in them during the combat. They fight really because something angers them in each other's smell. But if their fighting were accompanied by intellectual activity, the one would say he was fighting to promote the right kind of smell (Kultur), and the other to uphold the inherent canine right of running on the pavement (democracy). Yet this would not prevent the bystanders from seeing that their action was foolish, and that they ought to be parted as soon as possible. And what is true of dogs in the street is equally true of nations in the present war.

The original impulse towards war, though by now it has spent its force, was very strong in the first days. Fighting and killing are among the natural activities of males, both of human beings and of the higher animals. The spectacle of males killing each other in sexual combat is pleasant, presumably, to animal females, and certainly to many of those of the species