Now to state the issue in that way creates a gross confusion, and the assumption just indicated is quite unjustifiable. The militarist quite as much as the anti-militarist, the nationalist quite as much as the internationalist, has to depend upon a moral factor, 'a contract,' the force of tradition, and of morality. Force cannot operate at all in human affairs without a decision of the human mind and will. Guns do not get pointed and go off without a mind behind them, and as already insisted, the direction in which the gun shoots is determined by the mind which must be reached by a form of moral suasion, discipline, or tradition; the mind behind the gun will be influenced by patriotism in one case, or by a will to rebellion and mutiny, prompted by another tradition or persuasion, in another. And obviously the moral decision, in the circumstances with which we are dealing, goes much deeper and further back. The building of battleships, or the forming of armies, the long preparation which is really behind the material factor, implies a great deal of 'faith.' These armies and navies could never have been brought into existence and be manoeuvred without vast stores of faith and tradition. Whether the army serves the nation, as in Britain or France, or dominates it as in a Spanish-American Republic (or in a somewhat different sense in Prussia), depends on a moral factor: the nature of the tradition which inspires the people from whom the army is drawn. Whether the army obeys its officers or shoots them is determined by moral not material factors, for the officers have not a preponderance of physical force over the men. You cannot form a pirate crew without a moral factor: the agreement not to use force against one another, but to act in consort and combine it against the prey. Whether the military material we and France supplied Russia, and the armies France helped to train, are employed against us or the Germans, depends upon certain moral and political factors inside Russia, certain ideas formed in the minds of certain men. It is not a situation of Ideas against Guns, but of ideas using guns. The confusion involves a curious distortion in our reading of the history of the struggle against privilege and tyranny.