viii Introduction 



our getting clear the true principles of co- 

 operation. Therefore, don't let us study them." 

 That, quite simply and briefly, is the attitude 

 generally adopted towards discussion of the sub- 

 ject dealt with in this book. One can foretell pretty 

 well the kind of criticism which this book will pro- 

 voke. It will be along some such lines as these: 



The attempt to base society upon anything but 

 force is an idealistic effort, a counsel of perfection 

 worthy of all praise, but not having much relation to 

 practical affairs. Human nature being what it is, 

 men and nations will only yield to the argument of 

 the big battalion. The human elements which at 

 bottom render an army necessary are those which at 

 bottom render a police force necessary. When human 

 nature has been improved out of existence, men may 

 be guided by sweet reasonableness, and the element of 

 force and compulsion may disappear from human 

 affairs. But until that happy millennium arrives, the 

 ultima ratio regum will still be, both as regards the 

 king's subjects and the king's enemies, what it always 

 has been. Society is too complex a thing and human 

 nature too wayward a thing for either to be guided 

 by a simple theory, or by a formula. From generation 

 to generation, whether in Aristotelian or Platonic 

 Greece, in a Palestine looking for a new kingdom, in a 

 France of the eighteenth century which sees in demo- 

 cratic government the birth of a new heaven and a 

 new earth, in Chartist England improving on the 

 dream, men have hatched these theories, but always 

 do we find them breaking down in the crude fact of 

 the policeman and the soldier. 



