Page:Justice in war time by Russell, Bertrand.djvu/52

26 sanest force in modern politics, and the only large body which has preserved some degrees of judgment and humanity in the present chaos.

But of all the evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict, where, if the nations could once overcome the blindness of inherited instincts and the sinister influence of anti-social interests, such as those of armaments with their subservient press, it would be seen that there is a real consonance of interest and essential identity of human nature, and every reason to replace hatred by love. Mr. Norman Angell has well shown how unreal, as applied to the conflicts of civilised States, is the whole vocabulary of international conflict, how illusory are the gains supposed to be obtained by victory, and how fallacious are the injuries which nations, in times of peace, are supposed to inflict upon each other in economic competition. The importance of this thesis lies not so much in its direct economic application as in the hope which it affords for the liberation of better spiritual impulses in the relations of different communities. To love our enemies, however desirable, is not easy, and therefore, it is well to realise that the enmity springs only from blindness, not from any inexorable physical necessity.

III. Are there any wars which achieve so much for the good of mankind as to outweigh all the evils we have been considering? I think there have been such wars in the past, but they are not wars of the sort with which our diplomatists are concerned, for which our