BUSINESS IN LAW AND POLITICS 297
The above inquiry into the nature and causes of the wars of nations has resulted in little else than a recital cf commonplaces; the facts and their connection are matters of common notoriety, and probably no one would hazard a question of the slight and obvious inferences drawn in the course of the recital. The excuse for this discursive review of the motives and aims of a war policy is that it gives a basis for an outlook on the present and immediate future of business enterprise.'
The experience of Continental Europe in the matter of armaments during the last half-century, and of all the greater nations during the laat two decades, argues that when warlike emulation between states of somewhat comparable force has once got under way it assumes a cumulative character ; so that a scale of expenditure for armar menta which would at the outset have seemed
interest of the otBcUU does not coincide witli that of the esliblifihmeQt. There Is an appreciable "mai^D of error" which a sagacious buslaea maD may turn to account.
The great busineas interesis are the more Inclined to look klndljr on an extension of warlike enterprise and armaments, since the pecuQiarj adTantages inore to Uiem, while the pecuniar; burden falls chiefly on the rest of the community. It is, to say the tenst, highly improbable that the business gains which accrue from a well-conducted foreign policy ever, in modem timefl, equal the cost at which they are secured ; but that consideration scarcely enters, since the costs are not paid out of business gains, but out of the industry of the rest of the people. The people, however, are animated with an uncritical persuasion that they have some