Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/163

Rh the desire for political expansion and the occasion for war is at hand. The gospel of striving inevitably leads to the gospel of strife. While to a superficial observer the whole tendency of modern thought is in the direction of universal peace, to the more careful observer it is all in the direction of war. It was not even necessary that the voice of Nietzsche with his gospel of the will to power should be reechoed through every land, nor that the new philosophy of Pragmatism should come forward to teach us that nothing succeeds like success. But perhaps the war in Europe is itself the best witness to the fatal political obstacles which stand in the way of these dreams of peace, for it presents the astonishing spectacle of the greatest war in the world's history proceeding from the least apparent causes and in the face of the most powerful forces working for peace. That such a colossal war should occur under circumstances so adverse to war would seem to indicate that it was made necessary by some tremendous issues, either moral, religious, economic or commercial.

But strangely enough no such issues are apparent. There were no great moral issues involved, as in the American Civil War, no great religious questions as in the crusades and the wars of the Reformation, no great monetary crises, as in some of the Italian and Roman wars. Starvation has sometimes led tribes or nations to war, but starvation threatened none of the present warring countries. On the contrary they were all in a highly prosperous economic condition. Wealth, prosperity, comfort and luxuries abounded. "Never since the world began," says Albert Bushnell Hart, "was trade so broad and profitable as in the year 1913." The total value of international commerce was in that year $42,000,000,000. The total value of German exports and imports combined was $5,000,000,000; and of English, $6,900,000,000. Germany's actual and proportional trade was increasing from year to year. England was exporting goods to Germany valued at $292,000,000, and importing goods from Germany valued at $394,000,000 yearly. The entrance of Italy upon the war revealed only too clearly that war has its roots in psychological causes more than in great political or economic issues or in heroic defence of the fatherland.

Does this strange situation admit of any explanation? Or must we say that there are forces at work in social evolution which we do not understand—that it is dangerous for man to meddle too much with his own destiny, and that out of these terrible wars some great good may come in ways unknown? This question may not be answered, but at any rate some light is thrown upon the situation by the psychologist. In all the many books and articles that have recently appeared on the causes of war in general, and the European war in particular, there is a noticeable failure to take due account of the psychological factors in the situation.