Page:The League of Nations and the democratic idea.djvu/10

 be blamed, even where the result of his action is to spread fruitless misery over whole continents.

It would seem, then, clear not only that war, when it occurs, is a monstrous evil to mankind in general; but, more specifically, that the whole principle on which questions of Peace and War are decided at the present day involves, in most cases, a frightful injustice to the common people. ^One can see what the revolutionary Socialists mean when they asseverate wildly that all wars are made by a few 'capitalists and blood-suckers', and that no people, if fairly consulted, would ever make war on another.

A philosophic Socialist, especially if his experience is drawn from Russia or the Central Empires, will drive this point further home.

If we analyse roughly the obvious tendencies that make for War, he will point out, not of course that they are confined to one class in the population, but that, in part at least, they do consist in 'sinister interests', and that such interests naturally flourish more among the rich than the poor. Of course it does not in the least follow, because a man has a sinister interest, that he is necessarily guided by it. There are thousands of countervailing motives, motives of conscience, honour, public opinion, and ordinary habit, which among decent members of an average decent society swamp and obliterate the sinister motive. It is to the interest of the medical profession that there should be epidemics, to that of the under-