Page:Political and legal remedies for war.djvu/74

 68 CAUSES OP MODERN EUROPEAN WARS. community of Western States under the general supremacy of France. As the general result of this examination, it appears that, apart from all considerations of passion, momentary self-interest, or indistinct national caprice, certain definite lines of action sometimes very far-reaching and comprehensive, sometimes only prescribing certain negative ends, and adopted by the statesmen of each country in obedience to traditional habits, more or less consciously based on well-reasoned calculations of ultimate ex- pediency are found to emerge from the mingled tissue of what might seem, at first sight, to be nothing more than merely for- tuitous and occasional freaks of policy. The carrying out of these systems naturally involves chances of War, and therefore, in estimating the causes of Schemes of pol- _.__ .. . ., icy frequently War in modern times,,a prominent place must be produce War. , given to these systems. Many of them are, no doubt, themselves contrived for the express purpose of reducing the frequency and the probability of War ; and it may turn out that it will be largely through the adoption of a truly wise, just, and expedient system of policy by each State that the State will do what it can in this direction toward the extinction of War. In the mean time it is obvious, even from the above glance at the actual systems of policy now in vogue, that these systems at pres- ent largely rest upon mutual suspiciousness and apprehensions, as well as, often enough, upon contracted and short-sighted views of national advantage. How far this state of things can be im- proved by direct political action, this is not the place to consid- er. How far it may be affected by moral agencies will be inci- dentally considered later on. How far improvements in Inter- national Law may have a beneficial influence will have to be dis- cussed at length. . Another cause of War, which includes many of the other causes, and co-operates usually with the others, though it may