oblivious to the hard necessities of men in a hard world of struggle, and disposed to ask too much of human nature in the way of altruistic self-sacrifice on behalf of an idealistic dogma. We were given to understand that while peace might represent a great moral ideal, man's evil passions and cupidity would always stand in the way of its achievement. The citations I have given in Chapter II. of the first part of this book prove sufficiently, I think, that this was, until quite recently, overwhelmingly the point of view of those who defended war as an unavoidable part of human struggle.
During the last few years, however, the defence of war has been made for the most part on very different grounds. Peace, we are told by those who oppose the pacifist movement, may embody the material