So much for myth or misrepresentation No. 1. We come to a second, namely, that _The Great Illusion_ is an appeal to avarice; that it urges men not to defend their country 'because to do so does not pay;' that it would have us place 'pocket before patriotism,' a view reflected in Benjamin Kidd's last book, pages of which are devoted to the condemnation of the 'degeneracy and futility' of resting the cause of peace on no higher ground than that it is 'a great illusion to believe that a national policy founded on war can be a profitable policy for any people in the long run.'[99] He quotes approvingly Sir William Robertson Nicoll for denouncing those who condemn war because 'it would postpone the blessed hour of tranquil money getting.'[100] As a means of obscuring truths which it is important to realise, of creating by misrepresentation a moral repulsion to a thesis, and thus depriving it of consideration, this second line of attack is even more important than the first. To say of a book that it prophesied 'the impossibility of war,' is to imply that it is mere silly rubbish, and its author a fool. Sir William Robertson Nicoll's phrase would of course imply that its doctrine was morally contemptible. The reader must judge, after considering dispassionately what follows, whether this second description is any truer than the first. CHAPTER II 'ECONOMIC' AND 'MORAL' MOTIVES IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS _The Great Illusion_ dealt--among other factors of international conflict--with the means by which the population of the world is driven to support itself; and studied the effect of those efforts to find sustenance upon the relations of States. It therefore dealt with economics. On the strength of this, certain critics (like some of those quoted in the last chapter) who cannot possibly have read the book thoroughly, seem to have argued: If this book about war deals with 'economics,' it must deal with money and profits. To bring money and profits into a discussion of war is to imply that men fight for money, and won't fight if they don't get money from it; that war does not 'pay.' This is wicked and horrible. Let us denounce the writer for a shallow Hedonist and money-grubber.... As a matter of simple fact, as we shall see presently, the book was largely an attempt to show that the economic argument usually adduced for a particularly ruthless form of national selfishness was not a sound argument; that the commonly invoked justification for a selfish immoralism in Foreign Policy was a fallacy, an illusion. Yet the critics somehow managed to turn what was in fact an argument against national egoism into an argument for selfishness. What was the political belief and the attitude towards life which _The Great Illusion_ challenged? And what was the counter principle which it advocated as a substitute therefore?