394 THE THEORY OF BUSINEaS ENT]
The reveraional trend given by warlike experience and warlike preoccupations, it is plain, does not set backward to the regime of natural liberty. Modern business principles and the modern scheme of civil rights and constitutional government rest on natural-rights ground. But the syetem of natural rights is a halfway house. The warUke culture takes back to a more archaic situation that preceded the scheme of natural rights, viz. the ayatem of absolute government, dynastic politics, devolution of rights and honors, ecclesiastical authority, and popular aubmissioa and squalor. It makes not for a reinstatement of the Natural Rights of Man but for a reversion to the Grace of God.
The barbarian virtues of fealty and patriotism run on national or dynastic exploit and aggrandizement, and these archaic virtues are not dead. In those modem communities whose hearts beat with the pulsations of the world-market they find expression in an enthusiasm for the commercial aggrandizement of the nation's business men. ' But when once the policy of warlike enterprise has been entered upon for business ends, these loyal affections gradually shift from the busineas interests to the warlike and dynastic interests, as witness the history of imperialism in Germany and England. The eventual outcome should be a rehabilitation of the ancient patriotic animosity and
NATURAL DECAY OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISE 395
dynastic loyalty, to the relative neglect of business interesta. This may easily be carried so far as to sacrifice the profits of the business men to the exigencies of the higher politics.'
The disciplinary effect of war and armaments and imperialist politics is complicated with a selective effect. War not only affords a salutary