Though morally dependable action develops most readily in an atmosphere of mutual trust, it is not to be assumed that either nations or individuals always justify trust by trustworthy action. Faith does not produce conscience automatically. Much of the pacifism now cultivated by socially effective religious forces has the defect that it fails to gauge the stubborn resistance to ideal forces in the predatory nature of national groups. It is difficult to develop moral attitudes sufficiently honest not only to give the bearer of trust the prestige of sincerity but to make the object of trust worthy of its faith. Trust united with selfishness results in moral futility; and when it is based upon illusion and fails to take account of the imperfect social attitudes which it must overcome, it issues in mere sentimentality. It is significant that the idea of the outlawry of war should be espoused particularly in America and find little favor in other nations; for here extraordinary power is united with remarkable political naïvete, so that American idealists find it difficult to appreciate the unsatisfied hungers of other nations or their resentful reaction to our own satiety. If nations cannot be moved to make some sacrifices for the sake of the ideal and to qualify their expansive desires by moral purpose, all efforts to create an international society must finally prove vain. It may be that the secular ambitions of nations are so firmly established in social custom and their unethical attitudes so generally sanctioned by the popular mind that nothing will avail to give their actions even a touch of ethical character. It is difficult enough to subdue and discipline the immediate and anarchic desires which struggle for expression in the soul of the individual; but when they express themselves in the life of groups and are veiled in seeming sanctities even while they achieve new and more diabolical forms they can be subdued only by the most astute intelligence united with a high moral passion. Modern civilization lacks both this intelligence and this moral passion and is in the peril of losing what it has of the latter as it develops the former. Moral idealism which fails to gauge the measure of resistance which its ideals must meet in the confused realities of life or to fashion adequate weapons for its conflict degenerates into mere sentimentality. But a social intelligence which is overwhelmed by the discouraging realities and despairs of the attainment of any ideal sinks into a morally enervating cynicism. Moral leadership in Western society is divided to-day between sentimentalists and cynics who combine to render the prospect of an ethical regeneration of modern life well-nigh hopeless. If men are really to be redeemed from the sins of greed and mutual fears and hatreds by which they make their common life intolerable they need a faith which is not held too cheaply but which is held nevertheless in defiance of every discouragement.