The attitude of Militarist to Pacifist has the makings of a very pretty comedy. When the Mystics (with the Friends and the Tolstoians) were evangelical enough to preach their message of peace even to the point of non-resistance, they were broadly scouted as sentimental and idealistic idiots, and reminded of a nature red in tooth and claw rampant in this most sordid of all possible worlds. Now that the Rationalists take up the case against war from another end, they are denounced as squalid souls, with a greengrocer's outlook, morbidly anxious about the price of peas and potatoes, and urged to remember that not by bread alone doth man live. In _The Foundations of International Polity_ (HEINEMANN), a series of lectures developing phases of the argument of the Great Illusion, Mr. NORMAN ANGELL incidentally deals with this greengrocery business. Nobody with knowledge of his shrewd and vigorous method will be surprised that without bluster or rhetoric he establishes a very clear verdict of acquittal. One has always the impression that the rationalist in him is deliberately repressing the mystic, lest his case be weakened by a suspicion of sentimentalism. For it must be obvious that not a cold, still less a squalid, but a generous purpose alone could inspire the fervour that flashes between the reasoned lines. When Mr. ANGELL pleads that policy is directed towards "self-interest," an easily misunderstandable pronouncement, it is no mean self-interest he has in view but a quality of high civilising and social value. He argues cogently that defence is not incompatible with, but rather a part of, rational pacifism, which is the protest against coercion; re-emphasises the difference between soldiering and policing; and illustrates the essential shallowness of that venerable tag, "Human nature doesn't change," by pointing to the decay of the duello, and the decline of the grill as a means of reasoning with heretics and witches. Were this learned Clerk a politician (which Heaven avert!), he would move for yet another increment to the Supplementary Navy Estimates--to wit, the price of a battleship to be expended in the distribution of this fighting pacifist's books to all journalists, attaches, clergymen, bazaar-openers, club oracles, professors, head-masters and other obvious people in both Germany and Britain. * * * * *