Aggression and the Great War 221 



tional morality, based on a more enlightened 

 public opinion, has a two-fold significance. In 

 the first place it probably indicates an intuitive 

 and growing popular conviction of the futility of 

 force, used aggressively. In the second place, even 

 where it has not gone so far as to remove all 

 danger of aggression in the future, it indicates that 

 the motives for aggression are becoming sufficiently 

 attenuated so as to make possible the formation 

 of a League of Peace. Such a league is the only 

 means which can satisfy the common need for 

 which the leading statesmen of all the nations 

 say they are fighting, — a sense of security against 

 the danger of aggression from any one of their 

 number. 



Since the effect of such a League of Peace would 

 be to raise the struggle between nations from the 

 purely destructive form — the physiological struggle 

 — to its higher economic, political, and intellectual 

 forms, it would thus open the way for an unprece- 

 dented advance for the whole human race. In- 

 stead of a blood-stained and brutalized Europe 

 staggering up from this conflict to begin another 

 forty-four years of insane armament competition 

 leading to a still more calamitous breakdown of 

 civilization, we may have at least the beginnings 

 of a world federation — a reconstructed world 

 society definitely turning away from the old path 

 of force which has proved so disastrous, and 

 finding instead a new path of progress, with 

 co-operation and justice as the touchstones of 



