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STATEMENT OF THE ECONOMIC CASE FOR WAR | PAGES |
| Where can the Anglo-German rivalry of armaments end?—Why peace advocacy fails—Why it deserves to fail—The attitude of the peace advocate—The presumption that the prosperity of nations depends upon their political power, and consequent necessity of protection against aggression of other nations who would diminish our power to their advantage—These the universal axioms of international politics | 3-13 |
THE AXIOMS OF MODERN STATECRAFT | |
| Are the foregoing axioms unchallengeable?—Some typical statements of them—German dreams of conquest—Mr. Frederic Harrison on results of defeat of British arms and invasion of England—Forty millions starving | 14-27 |
THE GREAT ILLUSION | |
| These views founded on a gross and dangerous misconception—What a German victory could and could not accomplish—What an English victory could and could not accomplish—The optical illusion of conquest—There can be no transfer of wealth—The prosperity of the little States in Europe—German Three per Cents. at 82 and Belgian at 96—Russian Three and a | 28-49 |
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CONFISCATION | |
| Our present terminology of international politics an historical survival—Wherein modern conditions differ from ancient—The profound change effected by Division of Labor—The delicate interdependence of international finance—Attila and the Kaiser—What would happen if a German invader looted the Bank of England—German trade dependent upon English credit—Confiscation of an enemy's property an economic impossibility under modern conditions—Intangibility of a community's wealth | 50-67 |
FOREIGN TRADE AND MILITARY POWER | |
| Why trade cannot be destroyed or captured by a military Power—What the processes of trade really are, and how a navy affects them—Dreadnoughts and business—While Dreadnoughts protect British trade from hypothetical German warships, the real German merchant is carrying it off, or the Swiss or the Belgian—The "commercial aggression" of Switzerland—What lies at the bottom of the futility of military conquest—Government brigandage becomes as profitless as private brigandage—The real basis of commercial honesty on the part of Government | 68-87 |
THE INDEMNITY FUTILITY | |
| 88-106 | |
HOW COLONIES ARE OWNED | |
| Why twentieth-century methods must differ from eighteenth—The vagueness of our conceptions of statecraft—How Colonies are "owned"—Some little-recognized facts—Why foreigners could not fight England for her self-governing Colonies—She does not "own" them, since they are masters of their own destiny—The paradox of conquest: England in a worse position in regard to her own Colonies than in regard to foreign nations—Her experience as the oldest and most practised colonizer in history—Recent French experience—Could Germany hope to do what England cannot do | 107-130 |
THE FIGHT FOR "THE PLACE IN THE SUN" | |
| How Germany really expands—Where her real Colonies are—How she exploits without conquest—What is the difference between an army and a police force?—The policing of the world—Germany's share of it in the Near East | 131-151 |
PART II
THE HUMAN NATURE AND MORALS OF THE CASE
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE FOR WAR | |
| The non-economic motives of war—Moral and psychological—The importance of these pleas—English, German, and American exponents—The biological plea | 155-167 |
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE FOR PEACE | |
| The shifting ground of pro-war arguments—The narrowing gulf between the material and moral ideals—The non-rational causes of war—False biological analogies—The real law of man's struggles: struggle with Nature, not with other men—Outline sketch of man's advance and main operating factor therein—The progress towards elimination of physical force—Co-operation across frontiers and its psychological result—Impossible to fix limits of community—Such limits irresistibly expanding—Break-up of State homogeneity—State limits no longer coinciding with real conflicts between men | 168-197 |
UNCHANGING HUMAN NATURE | |
| The progress from cannibalism to Herbert Spencer—The disappearance of religious oppression by Government—Disappearance of the duel—The | 198-221 |
DO THE WARLIKE NATIONS INHERIT THE EARTH? | |
| The confident dogmatism of militarist writers on this subject—The facts—The lessons of Spanish America—How conquest makes for the survival of the unfit—Spanish method and English method in the New World—The virtues of military training—The Dreyfus case—The threatened Germanization of England—"The war which made Germany great and Germans small" | 222-260 |
THE DIMINISHING FACTOR OF PHYSICAL FORCE: PSYCHOLOGICAL RESULTS | |
| Diminishing factor of physical force—Though diminishing, physical force has always had an important rÔle in human affairs—What is underlying principle, determining advantageous and disadvantageous use of physical force?—Force that aids co-operation in accord with law of man's advance: force that is exercised for parasitism in conflict with such law and disadvantageous for both parties—Historical process of the abandonment of physical force—The Khan and the London tradesman—Ancient Rome and modern Britain—The sentimental defence of war as the purifier of human life—The facts—The redirection of human pugnacity | 261-295 |
THE STATE AS A PERSON: A FALSE ANALOGY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES | |
| 296-325 |
PART III
THE PRACTICAL OUTCOME
THE RELATION OF DEFENCE TO AGGRESSION | |
| Necessity for defence arises from the existence of a motive for attack—Platitudes that everyone overlooks—To attenuate the motive for aggression is to undertake a work of defence | 329-340 |
ARMAMENT, BUT NOT ALONE ARMAMENT | |
| Not the facts, but men's belief about facts, shapes their conduct—Solving a problem of two factors by ignoring one—The fatal outcome of such a method—The German Navy as a "luxury"—If both sides concentrate on armament alone | 341-352 |
IS THE POLITICAL REFORMATION POSSIBLE? | |
| Men are little disposed to listen to reason, "therefore we should not talk reason"—Are men's ideas immutable? | 353-367 |
METHODS | |
| 368-382 | |
| Appendix on Recent Events in Europe | 383-406 |
| Index | 407-416 |
