point, trifling in the economic sense, is all important from the point of view of right; and though there is no real division of interests between nations, though those interests are in reality interdependent, minor differences provoking a sudden and uncontrolled flash of temper suffice to provoke war. War is the outcome of the "hot fits" of men, "of the devil that is in them."
Although militarist literature on this, as on most similar points, shows flagrant contradictions, even that literature is against the view that war is the outcome of the sheer sudden temper of nations. Most of the popular, and all of the scientific, militarist writers take the contrary view. Mr. Blatchford and his school normally represent a typical militarist policy, like that of Germany, as actuated by a cold, deep, Machiavellian, unsentimental, calculated opportunism, as diverse from