shift their defence. Nor, of course, am I urging that the sentimental defence of war is a modern doctrine—the quotations made in the last chapter show that not to be the case—but merely that greater emphasis is now placed upon the moral case.
Thus, writing in 1912, Admiral Mahan criticizes this book as follows:
The purpose of armaments, in the minds of those maintaining them, is not primarily an economical advantage, in the sense of depriving a neighboring State of its own, or fear of such consequences to itself through the deliberate aggression of a rival having that particular end in view.... The fundamental proposition of the book is a mistake. Nations are under no illusion as to the unprofitableness of war in itself.... The entire conception of the work is itself an illusion, based upon a profound misreading of human action. To regard the world as governed by self-interest only is to live in a non-existent world, an ideal world, a world possessed by an idea much less worthy than those which mankind, to do it bare justice, persistently entertains.12
Yet hardly four years previously Admiral Mahan had himself outlined the elements of international politics as