144 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



peace. It would of course be quite unfair to imagine 

 this as the full meaning of the case for peace, for the 

 spirit if not the form of the propaganda rose far 

 above this level in most minds. Yet the fact re- 

 mained that war was denounced essentially not as 

 war but as the policy which, to use Sir William 

 Robertson Nicoll's scathing phrase, " would post- 

 pone the blessed hour of tranquil money getting." * 



The inherent hopelessness of attempting to con- 

 vert a warring world to a policy of universal peace 

 with such a creed stood revealed to all thinking 

 minds. For the first credential of every living 

 movement in civilization is the capacity for sacrifice 

 which it is able to create, sacrifice at whatever 

 cost for the ends believed in. Even the creed of 

 war demanding as it has continuously done the 

 greatest sacrifice of which human nature is capable 

 for its cause, was immeasurably nobler and greater 

 than the creed of peace as thus declared. 



Now it is evident that no doctrine of interests 

 can ever abolish war. In civilization where the 

 first principle of life is sacrifice any utilitarian creed 

 of conduct whatsoever founded on the greatest 

 material interest of the existing individual is always 

 and essentially what Mr. Arthur Balfour once 

 luminously defined systems of opinion of this type 



1 British Weekly, 3 June 1915. 



