Yet hardly four years previously Admiral Mahan had himself outlined the elements of international politics as follows: It is as true now as when Washington penned the words, and will always be true, that it is vain to expect nations to act consistently from any motive other than that of interest. This under the name of Realism is the frankly avowed motive of German statecraft. It follows from this directly that the study of interests--international interest--is the one basis of sound, of provident, policy for statesmen.... The old predatory instinct, that he should take who has the power, survives ... and moral force is not sufficient to determine issues unless supported by physical. Governments are corporations, and corporations have no souls ... they must put first the rival interests of their own wards ... their own people. Commercial and industrial predominance forces a nation to seek markets, and, where possible, to control them to its own advantage by preponderating force, the ultimate expression of which is possession ... an inevitable link in a chain of logical sequences: industry, markets, control, navy bases.[49] Admiral Mahan, it is true, anticipates this criticism by pleading the complex character of human nature (which no one denies). He says: "Bronze is copper, and bronze is tin." But he entirely overlooks the fact that if one withholds copper or one withholds tin it is no longer bronze. The present author has never taken the ground that all international action can be explained in the terms of one narrow motive, but he does take the ground that if you can profoundly modify the bearing of a constituent, as important as the one to which Admiral Mahan has himself, in his own work, attributed such weight, you will profoundly modify the whole texture and character of international relations. Thus, even though it were true that the thesis here elaborated were as narrowly economic as the criticism I have quoted would imply, it would, nevertheless, have, on Admiral Mahan's own showing, a very profound bearing on the problems of international statecraft. Not only do the principles elaborated here postulate no such narrow conception of human motive, but it is essential to realize that you cannot separate a problem of interest from a problem of right or morality in the absolute fashion that Admiral Mahan would imply, because right and morality connote the protection and promotion of the general interest.