Self-assertion is an attitude which under the conflict of interests with others may be induced. And in the external affairs of nations, it may be brought to triumph over the motive of security. The means by which this is done is through the argument that only by taking an aggressive part can one defend himself, the argument in other words, that the best defense is a good offense. The result is that the distinction between defensive and offensive warfare is liable to be obliterated, a fact which adds to the perplexities of the problem of war. “The feeling that war is always defensive wrecks the peace propaganda. The word defensive is capable of being stretched indefinitely. It is not confined necessarily to preventing an invasion. A people will feel that it is fighting a defensive war if it attacks a nation which may attack it in the future.... Or the people may feel that what it regards as its legitimate expansion is being thwarted.... So by imperceptible gradations every war can be justified, and, as a matter of fact, is justified as defensive.”[23] When once a war is started, a people will support it, even if it is aggressive, and if one couples with this the fact that when a nation arms in self-defense, it acquires the means of aggression, he can understand how easily a patriotism which supports only a policy of self-preservation can be brought to support a policy of self-assertion. One way in which the will to self-assertion is likely to manifest itself is as an impulse to expansion. A stationary condition is not satisfactory to the group; it desires to reach out. This impulse shows itself in churches and orders of all kinds by the constant demand for new members. The group wants to see itself grow. But if nations grow, they are apt to think that they need more land. And when this occurs their patriotism will attach itself to the desire for expansion, and become imperialism. J. M. Robertson couples the words _Patriotism and Empire_ in the title of a book, and in that book he says, “Patriotism conventionally defined as the love of country, ... turns out rather obviously to stand for love of more country.”[24] And where there is coupled with this the impulse of acquisition, it becomes plain why the economic rivalry of nations has been so important in bringing about the situation out of which war arises. The impulse of expansion undergoes but a slight change to become the will to domination. This latter is a primitive impulse. The Indian was taught to despise manual labor, but to glory in the overcoming and plundering of other tribes. It is still dominant in the race. What men desire, at least in the Western world, is power, and they would rather exercise dominion over others than be free themselves. Goethe puts the idea in poetical form: