It is true that their relations have been mostly selfish or hostile in the past, but this is true also of persons except in so far as, by working together, they have acquired habits and sentiments of co-operation. And nations, even in their conflicts, confess their unity by seeking one another’s admiration. Each wants to distinguish itself in the eyes of the international audience, and war itself is waged largely from this motive. We wish our country to be glorious, to excel in the world-game; and the fact that the game is destructive does not destroy the social character of the impulse. If this were not present, we should not find our leaders instigating us by appeals to national honor, resentment, and pride. Perhaps there is no better proof of the personal nature of national feeling than the large part which “insults” play in arousing it. An entity that can be insulted is essentially human. If the national spirit is truly human and social it should be capable of a moral development and of participating in a moral order similar to that which prevails in personal relations. And perhaps the surest proof that international social control is possible is that nations have shown themselves capable of feeling and acting upon a sympathetic indignation at aggression upon other nations, as in the case of Belgium. Such indignation is in all societies the most active impulse making for the enforcement of justice. There is an incredible doctrine taught by some writers that the national self can feel greed and hate, but cannot rise to justice, friendship, and magnanimity. Why should its human nature be so one-sided? Is it not quite conceivable that we might come to demand an even higher standard of honor and conduct from our country than we do from ourselves, because the idea of country, like the idea of God, is the symbol of a higher kind of life? The gods have been in the mud too, and as they have risen from it to an ethical plane we may hope the same of the nations. If this view is sound, it follows that if we can change the ruling ideal so that nations come to admire one another for being righteous, magnanimous, and just, as well as strong and successful, we shall find them as eager to live up to _this_ ideal as they now are to conform to a lower one. It is all a matter of the standards of the group.