When the Persian sought to force the dominion of his ideals upon the Greek, the states of Hellas made head against him from the love and honour in which they held their own. When the successors of the Prophet, zealous for their faith, confident in the protection of the One God, drove the soldiers of the Cross before them from the passes of the Pyrenees to the vineyards of Touraine, neither side would have listened with any patience to a dissertation upon the inconveniences resulting from a state of war and upon the economic advantages of peace. It was there one faith against another, one attitude towards life against another, one system of manners, customs, and laws against another. When a collision occurs in this region of human affairs there is seldom room for compromise or adjustment. Things unmerchantable cannot be purchased with the finest of fine gold. In these instances, seen by us from far off, the truth of this is easily recognised. But what some of our recent moralists have overlooked, is the fact that forces of precisely the same order exist in the world of to-day, and are at work, not only among the fierce Balkan peoples, in the resurgent empire of Japan, and in the great military nations--the French, the {10} Germans, and the Russians--but also in America and England. The last two pride themselves upon a higher civilisation, and in return are despised by the prophets of militarism as worshippers of material gain. The unfavourable and the flattering estimate agree, however, upon a single point--in assuming that our own people and those of the United States are unlikely to yield themselves to unsophisticated impulse. This assumption is wholly false. [Sidenote: VIRTUES OF THE WAR SPIRIT]