The difference between the attitudes of individuals and those of groups has been frequently alluded to, the thesis being that group relations can never be as ethical as those which characterise individual relations. In dealing with the problem of social justice, it may be found that the relation of economic classes within a state is more important than international relations. But from the standpoint of analysing the ethics of group behavior, it is feasible to study the ethical attitudes of nations first; because the modern nation is the human group of strongest social cohesion, of most undisputed central authority and of most clearly defined membership. The church may have challenged its pre-eminence in the Middle Ages, and the economic class may compete with it for the loyalty of men in our own day; yet it remains, as it has been since the seventeenth century, the most absolute of all human associations.

Nations are territorial societies, the cohesive power of which is supplied by the sentiment of nationality and the authority of the state. The fact that state and nation are not synonymous and that states frequently incorporate several nationalities, indicates that the authority of government is the ultimate force of national cohesion. The fact that state and nation are roughly synonymous proves that, without the sentiment of nationality with its common language and traditions, the authority of government is usually unable to maintain national unity. The unity of Scotland and England within a single British state and the failure to maintain the same unity between England and Ireland, suggest both the possibilities and the limitations of transcending nationality in the formation of states. For our purposes we may think of state and nation as interchangeable terms, since our interest is in the moral attitudes of nations which have the apparatus of a state at their disposal, and through it are able to consolidate their social power and define their political attitudes and policies.

The selfishness of nations is proverbial. It was a dictum of George Washington that nations were not to be trusted beyond their own interest. "No state," declares a German author, "has ever entered a treaty for any other reason than self interest," and adds: "A statesman who has any other motive would deserve to be hung.''(Johannes Haller, The Aera Buelow) "In every part of the world," said Professor Edward Dicey, "where British interests are at stake, I am in favor of advancing these interests even at the cost of war. The only qualification I admit is that the country we desire to annex or take under our protection should be calculated to confer a tangible advantage upon the British Empire." (Quoted by Kirby Page, National Defense, p. 67.) National ambitions are not always avowed as honestly as this, as we shall see later, but that is a fair statement of the actual facts, which need hardly to be elaborated for any student of history.

What is the basis and reason for the selfishness of nations? If we begin with what is least important or least distinctive of national attitudes, it must be noted that nations do not have direct contact with other national communities, with which they must form some kind of international community. They know the problems of other peoples only indirectly and at second hand. Since both sympathy and justice depend to a large degree upon the perception of need, which makes sympathy flow, and upon the understanding of competing interests, which must be resolved, it is obvious that human communities have greater difficulty than individuals in achieving ethical relationships. While rapid means of communication have increased the breadth of knowledge about world affairs among citizens of various nations, and the general advance of education has ostensibly promoted the capacity to think rationally and justly upon the inevitable conflicts of interest between nations, there is nevertheless little hope of arriving at a perceptible increase of international morality through the growth of intelligence and the perfection of means of communication. The development of international commerce, the increased economic interdependence among the nations, and the whole apparatus of a technological civilisation, increase the problems and issues between nations much more rapidly than the intelligence to solve them can be created. The silk trade between America and Japan did not give American citizens an appreciation of the real feelings of the Japanese toward the American Exclusion Act. Co-operation between America and the Allies during the war did not help American citizens to recognise, and deal sympathetically with, the issues of inter-allied debts and reparations; nor were the Allies able to do justice to either themselves or their fallen foe in settling the problem of reparations. Such is the social ignorance of peoples, that, far from doing justice to a foe or neighbor, they are as yet unable to conserve their own interests wisely. Since their ultimate interests are always protected best, by at least a measure of fairness toward their neighbors, the desire to gain an immediate selfish advantage always imperils their ultimate interests.( Sometimes even the most realistic statesmen overestimate the nation's ability, wisely to prefer ultimate to immediate interests. Thus, Dr. Carl Melchior, German diplomat, thought it advisable in 1921 to accept an impossible reparations burden because "We can get through the first two or three years with the aid of foreign loans. By the end of that time foreign nations will have realised that these large payments can only be made by huge German exports and these exports will ruin the trade in England and America so that creditors themselves will come to us to request modification." Quoted by Lord D'Abernon, An Ambassador of Peace, Vol. 1, p. 194. It required eleven years rather than two or three for the nations to realise what Dr. Melchior predicted, and even then, they did not act voluntarily.) If they recognise this fact, they usually recognise it too late. Thus France, after years of intransigence, has finally accepted a sensible reparations settlement. Significantly and tragically, the settlement is almost synchronous with the victory of an extreme nationalism in Germany, which her unrelenting policies begot. America pursued a selfish and foolhardy tariff policy until it, together with other imbecilities in international life, contributed to the ruin of prosperity in the whole world. Britain, though her people are politically more intelligent than those of any modern nation, did not yield in Ireland in time to prevent the formation of a virus which is still poisoning Anglo-Irish relations. And while the American Civil War taught her a lesson, which she applied in preserving her colonial empire, there is as yet no proof that she will be wise enough to admit India into partnership, before the vehemence of Indian reaction to British imperialism will make partnership upon even a minimum basis impossible. So runs the sad story of the social ignorance of nations.

There is always, in every nation, a body of citizens more intelligent than the average, who see the issues between their own and other nations more clearly than the ignorant patriot, and more disinterestedly than the dominant classes who seek special advantages in international relations. The size of this group varies in different nations. Although it may at times place a check upon the more extreme types of national self-seeking, it is usually not powerful enough to affect national attitudes in a crisis. The British liberals could not prevent the Boer War; American economists have recently inveighed against a suicidal tariff policy in vain, and German liberals were unable to check the aggressive policy of imperial Germany. Sometimes the humanitarian impulses and the sentiment of justice, developed in these groups, serve the policy of official governments and seem to affect their actions. Thus the agitation of E. D. Morel against the atrocities in the Belgian Congo was supported by the British Government as long as it desired, for other reasons, to bring political pressure upon the Belgian King. Once this purpose was satisfied the British Cabinet dropped Mr. Morel's campaign as quickly as it had espoused it.( See Wilhelm Dibelius, England, p. 106.) It is of course possible that the rational interest in international justice may become, on occasion, so widespread and influential that it will affect the diplomacy of states. But this is not usual. In other words the mind, which places a restraint upon impulses in individual life, exists only in a very inchoate form in the nation. It is, moreover, much more remote from the will of the nation than in private individuals; for the government expresses the national will, and that will is moved by the emotions of the populace and the prudential self-interest of dominant economic classes. Theoretically it is possible to have a national electorate so intelligent, that the popular impulses and the ulterior interests of special groups are brought under the control of a national mind. But practically the rational understanding of political issues remains such a minimum force that national unity of action can be achieved only upon such projects as are either initiated by the self-interest of the dominant groups, in control of the government, or supported by the popular emotions and hysterias which from time to time run through a nation. In other words the nation is a corporate unity, held together much more by force and emotion, than by mind. Since there can be no ethical action without self-criticism, and no self-criticism without the rational capacity of self-transcendence, it is natural that national attitudes can hardly approximate the ethical. Even those tendencies toward self-criticism in a nation which do express themselves are usually thwarted by the governing classes and by a certain instinct for unity in society itself. For self-criticism is a kind of inner disunity, which the feeble mind of a nation finds difficulty in distinguishing from dangerous forms of inner conflict. So nations crucify their moral rebels with their criminals upon the same Golgotha, not being able to distinguish between the moral idealism which surpasses, and the anti-social conduct which falls below that moral mediocrity, on the level of which every society unifies its life. While critical loyalty toward a community is not impossible, it is not easily achieved. It is therefore probably inevitable that every society should regard criticism as a proof of a want of loyalty. This lack of criticism, as Tyrrell the Catholic modernist observed, makes the social will more egotistic than the individual will. "So far as society has a self," he wrote, "it must be self-assertive, proud, self-complacent and egotistical."( Quoted by Harold Laski, Authority in the Modern State, p. 274)

The necessity of using force in the establishment of unity in a national community, and the inevitable selfish exploitation of the instruments of coercion by the groups who wield them, adds to the selfishness of nations. This factor in national life has been previously discussed and may need no further elaboration. It may be well to add that it ought not to be impossible to reduce this source of national selfishness. When governing groups are deprived of their special economic privileges, their interests will be more nearly in harmony with the interests of the total national society. At present the economic overlords of a nation have special interests in the profits of international trade, in the exploitation of weaker peoples and in the acquisition of raw materials and markets, all of which are only remotely relevant to the welfare of the whole people. They are relevant at all only because, under the present organisation of society, the economic life of a whole nation is bound up with the private enterprises of individuals. Furthermore the unequal distribution of wealth under the present economic system concentrates wealth which cannot be invested, and produces goods which cannot be absorbed, in the nation itself. The whole nation is therefore called upon to protect the investments and the markets which the economic overlords are forced to seek in other nations. If a socialist commonwealth should succeed in divorcing privilege from power, it would thereby materially reduce the selfishness of nations, though it is probably romantic to hope, as most socialists do, that all causes of international friction would be abolished. Wars were waged before the modern capitalistic social order existed, and they may continue after it is abolished. The greed of the capitalistic classes has sharpened, but not created, the imperialism of nations. If, as Bertrand Russell prophesies,( See Bertrand Russell, The Scientific Outlook, Chap. Xl ) some form of oligarchy, whether capitalistic or communistic, be inevitable in a technological age, because of the inability of the general public to maintain social control over the experts who are in charge of the intricate processes of economics and politics, the communistic oligarch would seem to be preferable in the long run to the capitalistic one. His power would be purely political, and no special economic interests would tempt him to pursue economic policies at variance with the national interest. He might nevertheless have private ambitions and dreams of grandeur which would tempt him to sacrifice a nation to them. Since he would control the organs of propaganda, as do the capitalistic overlords, he might very well manufacture the popular emotion, required for the support of his enterprise.

The social ignorance of the private citizen of the nation has thus far been assumed. It may be reasonable to hope that the general level of intelligence will greatly increase in the next decades and centuries and that growing social intelligence will modify national attitudes. It is doubtful whether it will ever increase sufficiently to eliminate all the moral hazards of international relations. There is an ethical paradox in patriotism which defies every but the most astute and sophisticated analysis. The paradox is that patriotism transmutes individual unselfishness into national egoism. Loyalty to the nation is a high form of altruism when compared with lesser loyalties and more parochial interests. It therefore becomes the vehicle of all the altruistic impulses and expresses itself, on occasion, with such fervor that the critical attitude of the individual toward the nation and its enterprises is almost completely destroyed. The unqualified character of this devotion is the very basis of the nation's power and of the freedom to use the power without moral restraint. Thus the un-selfishness of individuals makes for the selfishness of nations. That is why the hope of solving the larger social problems of mankind, merely by extending the social sympathies of individuals, is so vain. Altruistic passion is sluiced into the reservoirs of nationalism with great ease, and is made to flow beyond them with great difficulty. What lies beyond the nation, the community of mankind, is too vague to inspire devotion. The lesser communities within the nation, religious, economic, racial and cultural, have equal difficulty in competing with the nation for the loyalty of its citizens. The church was able to do so when it had the prestige of a universality it no longer possesses. Future developments may make the class rather than the nation the community of primary loyalty. But for the present the nation is still supreme. It not only possesses a police power, which other communities lack, but it is able to avail itself of the most potent and vivid symbols to impress its claims upon the consciousness of the individual. Since it is impossible to become conscious of a large social group without adequate symbolism this factor is extremely important. The nation possesses in its organs of government, in the panoply and ritual of the state, in the impressive display of its fighting services, and, very frequently, in the splendors of a royal house, the symbols of unity and greatness, which inspire awe and reverence in the citizen. Furthermore the love and pious attachment of a man to his countryside, to familiar scenes, sights, and experiences, around which the memories of youth have cast a halo of sanctity, all this flows into the sentiment of patriotism; for a simple imagination transmutes the universal beneficence of nature into symbols of the peculiar blessings which a benevolent nation bestows upon its citizens. Thus the sentiment of patriotism achieves a potency in the modern soul, so unqualified, that the nation is given carte blanche to use the power, compounded of the devotion of individuals, for any purpose it desires. Thus, to choose an example among hundreds, Mr. Lloyd George during the famous Agadir Crisis in 1911 in which a European war became imminent, because marauding nations would not allow a new robber to touch their spoils in Africa, could declare in his Mansion House speech: "If a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated, when her interests were vitally affected, as if she were of no account in the cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure."( Quoted by G. Lowes Dickinson International Anarchy, p. 34.) The very sensitive "honor" of nations can always be appeased by the blood of its citizens and no national ambition seems too base or petty to claim and to receive the support of a majority of its patriots.

Unquestionably there is an alloy of projected self-interest in patriotic altruism. The man in the street, with his lust for power and prestige thwarted by his own limitations and the necessities of social life, projects his ego upon his nation and indulges his anarchic lusts vicariously. So the nation is at one and the same time a check upon, and a final vent for, the expression of individual egoism. Sometimes it is economic interest, and sometimes mere vanity, which thus expresses itself in the individual patriot. Writing of his friend, Winston Churchill, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt said: "Like most of them, it is the vanity of empire that affects him more than the supposed profits or the necessities of trade, which he repudiates."( Quoted by Kirby Page, National Defense, p. 28.) The cultural imperialism which disavows economic advantages, but gains a selfish satisfaction in the aggrandisement of a national culture through imperialistic power, may reveal itself in the most refined and generous souls. Men like Ruskin and Tennyson were not free from it, and it is not absent even from religious missionary enterprises. Paul Pfeffer reports that some Russians hope not only to bestow their form of government upon the whole world but expect that Russian will become the universal language.( Cf. Paul Pfeffer, Seven Years in Soviet Russia.) While economic advantages of national aggression usually accrue to privileged economic groups rather than to a total population, there are nevertheless possibilities of gain in imperialism for the average citizen; and he does not fail to count upon them. A modern British writer on India declares: "It has been computed that every fifth man in Great Britain is dependent, either directly or indirectly, on our Indian connection for livelihood. That being so it passes comprehension of most thinking people why so little account has been taken of the dangerous forces which are every day gathering in India to destroy our trade and commerce.''(Geoffrey Tyson, Danger in India. ) Such a frank statement admits the motive of national egoism which is usually obscured by English, as by other imperialists, with the pious insistence that nothing but concern for peace and order in India prompts Englishmen to bear their arduous burdens there.

A combination of unselfishness and vicarious selfishness in the individual thus gives a tremendous force to national egoism, which neither religious nor rational idealism can ever completely check. The idealists, whose patriotism has been qualified by more universal loyalties, must always remain a minority group. In the past they have not been strong enough to affect the actions of nations and have had to content themselves with a policy of disassociation from the nation in times of crisis, when national ambitions were in sharpest conflict with their moral ideals. Whether conscientious pacifism on the part of two per cent of a national population could actually prevent future wars, as Professor Einstein maintains, is a question which cannot be answered affirmatively with any great degree of certainty. It is much more likely that the power of modern nationalism will remain essentially unchecked, until class loyalty offers it effective competition

Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy. We have noted that self-deception and hypocrisy is an unvarying element in the moral life of all human beings. It is the tribute which morality pays to immorality; or rather the device by which the lesser self gains the consent of the larger self to indulge in impulses and ventures which the rational self can approve only when they are disguised. One can never be quite certain whether the disguise is meant only for the eye of the external observer or whether, as may be usually the case, it deceives the self. Naturally this defect in individuals becomes more apparent in the less moral life of nations. Yet it might be supposed that nations, of whom so much less is expected would not be under the necessity of making moral pretensions for their actions. There was probably a time when they were under no such necessity. Their hypocrisy is both a tribute to the growing rationality of man and a proof of the ease with which rational demands may be circumvented.

The dishonesty of nations is a necessity of political policy if the nation is to gain the full benefit of its double claim upon the loyalty and devotion of the individual, as his own special and unique community and as a community which embodies universal values and ideals. The two claims, the one touching the individual's emotions and the other appealing to his mind, are incompatible with each other, and can be resolved only through dishonesty. This is particularly evident in war-time. Nations do not really arrive at full self-consciousness until they stand in vivid, usually bellicose, juxtaposition to other nations. The social reality, comprehended in the existence of a nation, is too large to make a vivid impression upon the imagination of the citizen. He vaguely identifies it with his own little community and fireside and usually accepts the mythos which attributes personality to his national group. But the impression is not so vivid as to arouse him to any particular fervor of devotion. This fervor is the unique product of the times of crisis, when his nation is in conflict with other nations. It springs from the new vividness with which the reality and the unity of his nation's discreet existence is comprehended. In other words, it is just in the moments when the nation is engaged in aggression or defense (and it is always able to interpret the former in terms of the latter) that the reality of the nation's existence becomes so sharply outlined as to arouse the citizen to the most passionate and uncritical devotion toward it. But at such a time the nation's claim to uniqueness also comes in sharpest conflict with the generally accepted impression that the nation is the incarnation of universal values. This conflict can be resolved only by deception. In the imagination of the simple patriot the nation is not a society but Society. Though its values are relative they appear, from his naïve perspective, to be absolute. The religious instinct for the absolute is no less potent in patriotic religion than in any other. The nation is always endowed with an aura of the sacred, which is one reason why religions, which claim universality, are so easily captured and tamed by national sentiment, religion and patriotism merging in the process. The spirit of the nationally established churches and the cult of "Christentum und Deutschtum" of pre-war Germany are interesting examples. The best means of harmonising the claim to universality with the unique and relative life of the nation, as revealed in moments of crisis, is to claim general and universally valid objectives for the nation. It is alleged to be fighting for civilisation and for culture; and the whole enterprise of humanity is supposedly involved in its struggles. In the life of the simple citizen this hypocrisy exists as a naïve and unstudied self-deception. The politician practices it consciously (though he may become the victim of his own arts), in order to secure the highest devotion from the citizen for his enterprises. The men of culture give themselves to it with less conscious design than the statesmen because their own inner necessities demand the deceptions, even more than do those of the simple citizens. The religious or the rational culture to which they are devoted helps them to realise that moral values must be universal, if they are to be real; and they cannot therefore give themselves to national aspirations, unless they clothe them in the attributes of universality. A few of them recognise the impossibility of such a procedure. Among most, the force of reason operates only to give the hysterias of war and the imbecilities of national politics more plausible excuses than an average man is capable of inventing. So they become the worst liars of war-time. "England," declared Professor Adolf Harnack, most eminent of German war-period theologians, "cuts the dyke which has preserved western Europe and its civilisation from the encroaching desert of Russia and Pan-Slavism. We must hold out for we must defend the work of fifteen hundred years for Europe and for England itself.''(Quoted by Kirby Page, National Defense, p. 148) The great philosopher Rudolf Eucken was even more unequivocal in identifying his nation's cause with ultimate values. "In this sense," he said, "we have a right to say that we form the soul of humanity and that the destruction of German nature would rob world history of its deepest meaning."( Ibid., p. I49.) M. Paul Sabatier could declare, "No doubt we are fighting for ourselves but we are fighting, too, for all peoples. The France of today is fighting religiously.... We all feel that our sorrows continue and fulfill those of the innocent victim of Calvary."( Ibid. p. 152. Mr. Page has gathered innumerable similar examples in Chapter IX of his book.) The literature of the war period teems with similar examples of the self-deception of intellectuals. There is always the possibility that some of it was prompted by dishonest truckling to the hysteria of the populace and the pressure of governments. But most of it was not as dishonest as that.

Hardly any war of history has been the occasion of more hypocrisy and sentimentality than the Spanish-American War. Yet as intelligent a man as Walter Hines Page could extract the following pious moral from it: "May there not come such a chance in Mexico -- to clean out the bandits, yellow fever, malaria, hookworm -- all to make the country healthful, safe for life and investment and for orderly self-government, at last ? What we did in Cuba might thus be made the beginning of a new epoch in history, conquest for the sole benefit of the conquered, worked out by a sanitary reformation. The new sanitation will reclaim all tropical lands; but the work must first be done by military power -- probably from the outside. May not the existing military power of Europe conceivably be diverted to this use? . . . And the tropics cry out for sanitation.''(Quoted by Parker Moon, Imperialism and World Politics, p. 422) Perhaps it is rather significant that the American idea of a universal value should express itself

Our imperialistic policy in Latin-America and the Caribbean, which, as every historian knows, differs from the imperialism of European nations only in that it is slightly less military and more obviously commercial (though of course we are always ready to use our naval power when the occasion warrants), was given the halo of moral sanctity by Secretary Hughes in an address in 1924: "We are aiming not to exploit but to aid; not to subvert, but to help in laying the foundations for a sound, stable and independent government. Our interest does not lie in controlling foreign peoples.... Our interest is in having prosperous, peaceful and law abiding neighbors."( Ibid., p.407) Such sentiments have been repeated innumerable times by American statesmen, in spite of the fact that every impartial history clearly records the economic motives which prompt our policies in our relation to our southern neighbors. The various messages of President Coolidge in which he dealt with the difficult problems of post-war readjustment were, almost without exception, marvelous examples of sanctimonious hypocrisy. Europe was constantly assured, for instance, that our only interest in post-war debt settlements was to preserve the sanctity of covenants and to prevent European nations from falling into slovenly business habits.

Moralists who have observed and animadverted upon the hypocrisy of nations have usually assumed that a more perfect social intelligence, which could penetrate and analyse these evasions and deceptions, would make them ultimately impossible. But here again they are counting on moral and rational resources which will never be available. What was not possible in 1914-1918, when the world was submerged in dishonesties and hypocrisies (the Treaty of Versailles, with its pledge of disarmament and the self-righteous moral conviction of the vanquished by the victors, being the crowning example), will hardly become possible in a decade or in a century, or in many centuries. Nations will always find it more difficult than individuals to behold the beam that is in their own eye while they observe the mote that is in their brother's eye; and individuals find it difficult enough. A perennial weakness of the moral life in individuals is simply raised to the nth degree in national life. Let a nation be accused of hypocrisy and it shrinks back in pious horror at the charge. When President Wilson addressed a peace communication to the belligerent powers in 1916 and with delicate irony, "took the liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects which the statesmen of the belligerents on both sides have in mind in this war are virtually the same as stated to their own people and to the world," Lord Northcliffe reported that everybody in England was "mad as hell," that Lord Robert Cecil was "deeply hurt," and that the King actually broke down in pain over the suggestion.( Charles and Mary Beard, Rise of American Civilization, Bk. 11, p.629) In 1927 Senator Hiram Johnson, stung by European strictures of American hypocrisy and greed, declared "In all their long sordid international careers of blood and conquest, these nations that call America Shylock and swine, that sneer at our pretensions and deride our acts, have never done an idealistic, altruistic or unselfish international deed. Ever their cry has been for more land and new peoples and . . . where sinister diplomacy has failed blood and iron have subdued the weak and helpless.... Whatever our faults, and they are mostly internal, the United States is the only nation on earth that in its international relations has ever displayed either idealism or altruism.... The United States has written an international policy in deeds of generosity and mercy and written indelibly thus the answer to Europe's gibes and jeers."( Quoted by Kirby Page, National Defense, p. 196.) It would be interesting to add that the author of these remarks was particularly active in passing the Japanese Exclusion Act.

Perhaps the best that can be expected of nations is that they should justify their hypocrisies by a slight measure of real international achievement, and learn how to do justice to wider interests than their own, while they pursue their own. England, which has frequently been accused by continental nations of mastering the arts of national self-righteousness with particular skill, may have accomplished this, partly because there is actually a measure of genuine humanitarian interest in British policy. The Italian statesman, Count Sforza, has recently paid a witty and deserved tribute to the British art in politics. They have, he declares, "a precious gift bestowed by divine grace upon the British people: the simultaneous action in those islands, when a great British interest is at stake, of statesmen and diplomats coolly working to obtain some concrete political advantage and on the other side, and without previous base secret understanding, clergymen and writers eloquently busy showing the highest moral reasons for supporting the diplomatic action which is going on in Downing Street. Such was the case in the Belgian Congo. Belgian rule had been in force there for years; but at a certain moment gold was discovered in the Katanga, the Congolese province nearest to the British South African possessions; and the bishops and other pious persons started at once a violent press campaign to stigmatise the Belgian atrocities against the Negroes. What is astonishing and really imperial is that those bishops and other pious persons were inspired by the most perfect Christian good faith, and that nobody was pulling the wires behind them.''(Count Carlo Sforza European Dictatorship, p. 178.) Another foreign critic and observer of English life, Wilhelm Dibelius, believes that there is justification for the moral pretensions of Britain: "England," he declares, "is the solitary power with a national programme, which while egotistic through and through, at the same time promises to the world as a whole, something which the world passionately desires, order, progress and eternal peace.... None of them (the other powers) have as yet succeeded in setting up, against the British ideal, an ideal of their own, national and international at the same time, as the British."( Wilhelm Dibelius, England, p. 109) What Britain has achieved, if we are to take Doctor Dibelius' word for it, is probably the best that can be expected of any nation. It is questionable whether her achievement is great enough to make the attainment of international justice, without conflict, possible. Of that India is an example. In spite of the solid achievement of Britain in India, her imperialism there has been covered with the cant and hypocrisy which all nations affect; and it is obvious that India will gain a full partnership in the British Empire only as she is able to exert some kind of force against British imperialism.

If it is true that the nations are too selfish and morally too obtuse and self-righteous to make the attainment of international justice without the use of force possible, the question arises whether there is a possibility of escape from the endless round of force avenging ancient wrongs and creating new ones, of victorious Germany creating a vindictive France and victorious France poisoning Germany with a sense of outraged justice. The morality of nations is such that, if there be a way out, it is not as easy as the moralists of both the pre-war and post-war period have assumed.

Obviously one method of making force morally redemptive is to place it in the hands of a community, which transcends the conflicts of interest between individual nations and has an impartial perspective upon them. That method resolves many conflicts within national communities, and the organisation of the League of Nations is ostensibly the extension of that principle to international life. But if powerful classes in national societies corrupt the impartiality of national courts, it may be taken for granted that a community of nations, in which very powerful and very weak nations are bound together, has even less hope of achieving impartiality. Furthermore the prestige of the international community is not great enough, and it does not sufficiently qualify the will-to-power of individual nations, to achieve a communal spirit sufficiently unified, to discipline recalcitrant nations. Thus Japan was able to violate her covenants in her conquest of Manchuria, because she shrewdly assumed that the seeming solidarity of the League of Nations was not real, and that it only thinly veiled without restraining the peculiar policies of various great powers, which she would be able to tempt and exploit. Her assumption proved correct, and she was able to win the quasi-support of France and to weaken the British support of League policies. Her success in breaking her covenants with impunity has thrown the weakness of our inchoate society of nations into vivid light. This weakness, also revealed in the failure of the recent Disarmament Conference and the abortive character of all efforts to resolve the anarchy of national tariffs, justifies the pessimistic conclusion that there is not yet a political force capable of bringing effective social restraint upon the self-will of nations, at least not upon the powerful nations. Even if it should be possible to maintain peace on the basis of the international status quo, there is no evidence that an unjust peace can be adjusted by pacific means. A society of nations has not really proved itself until it is able to grant justice to those who have been worsted in battle without requiring them to engage in new wars to redress their wrongs.

Since the class character of national governments is a primary, though not the only cause of their greed, present international anarchy may continue until the fear of catastrophe amends, or catastrophe itself destroys, the present social system and builds more co-operative national societies. There may not be enough intelligence in modern society to prevent catastrophe. There is certainly not enough intelligence to prompt our generation to a voluntary reorganisation of society, unless the fear of imminent catastrophe quickens the tempo of social change.

The sharpening of class antagonisms within each modern industrial nation is increasingly destroying national unity and imperiling international comity as well. It may be that the constant growth of economic inequality and social injustice in our industrial civilisation will force the nations into a final conflict, which is bound to end in their destruction. The disintegration of national loyalties through class antagonisms has proceeded so far in the more advanced nations, that they can hardly dare to permit the logic inherent in the present situation to take its course. Conditions in these nations, particularly in Germany where the forces and factors which operate in modern civilisation may be seen in clearest outline, reveal what desperate devices are necessary for the preservation of even a semblance of national unity and how these very devices seem to make for an international conflict in which the last semblance of that unity will be destroyed. If the possibilities and perils of the contemporary situation are to be fully understood it will be necessary to study the class antagonism within the nations carefully and estimate their importance for the future of civilisation