Note 102 — Chapter II · ‘ECONOMIC’ AND ‘MORAL’ MOTIVES IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

The validity of this assumption still holds even though we take the view that the defence of war as an inevitable struggle for bread is merely a rationalisation (using that word in the technical sense of the psychologists) of impulse or instinct, merely, that is, an attempt to find a ‘reason’ for conduct the real explanation of which is the subconscious promptings of pugnacities or hostilities, the craving of our nature for certain kinds of action. If we could not justify our behaviour in terms of self-preservation, it would stand so plainly condemned ethically and socially that discipline of instinct—as in the case of sex instinct—would obviously be called for and enforced. In either case, the road to better behaviour is by a clearer revelation of the social mischief of the predominant policy.