Note 32 — Chapter III

See, for instance, my article "A Footnote to the Balkan War," published in the Asiatic Review for July 1, 1914. This opinion is there expressed in the following words which I still think substantially true, though one or two phrases are rhetorically exaggerated.

"England and the rest of Western Europe have outgrown by about three hundred years the time in the development of nations when fighting is natural and even necessary. England, of course, continues to contemplate war, and to be bluffed by the threat of war in the circumlocutions of diplomacy. But her national welfare no longer requires war; and, if she ever undertakes it, it will be at the bidding of merchants and usurers, who do not represent even the baser instincts of the specifically national spirit, but are wholly foreign and parasitic. On that occasion the Daily Mail and the Foreign Office will no doubt assure the British people that the war in question involves the whole honour and welfare of the State; and the people will believe it. But it will not be true. For England is happily not, or not yet, a nation of shopkeepers; and it will be only the shopkeepers whose welfare is concerned."