168 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



of a people through nationality has almost invari- 

 ably taken the form of idealization in contrast to, 

 or in opposition to, some other people or nation. 

 Western history displays an ascending curve of 

 slaughter as it rises to the Armageddon of 1914 

 which furnishes an example of the instinct of 

 combativeness expressing itself through nationality 

 that would be absolutely incredible if we were not 

 familiarized with it and if we had received it as the 

 record of some savage order of the world. 



Even within national frontiers the influence of 

 this heredity of the fight pervades all forms of the 

 national consciousness of the Western races. When 

 we see a leader like Mazzini dreaming of the high 

 ideals of the Italian nation in its relations to the 

 wider fellowship of humanity, we behold him driven 

 by necessity inherent in his environment still 

 thinking and reasoning in terms of combativeness 

 and force. 



" What we have to do to establish the new order,'* 

 he tells his fellow-countrymen, " is to overthrow by 

 force the brute force which opposes itself to-day to 

 every attempt at improvement." 1 And what we 

 see Mazzini thinking in Italy in the first half of the 

 nineteenth century is precisely what the West- 

 minster Gazette sees the leaders of democracy thinking 



1 On the Duties of Man, I. "To the Italian Working Man." 



