The greatest difference between the present peace movement and previous ones is that now among many of those who study the problem the offensive-defensive relationship in warfare is being not only questioned but rejected. All nations picture their side as defensive. Previous peace movements accepted this attitude. Accordingly, when a conflict arose, these opponents of war usually yielded to the pressure because they thought their nation was being attacked by an aggressor. But a careful study of history does not warrant such an idea. The effective element of the present peace movement is based chiefly on the fact that there is no nation of "sole guilt" in any war once the facts are studied carefully. The following study is an attempt to show that in our wars there has not been the "sole innocence" of the United States as opposed to the "sole guilt" of our opponents. _That its wars are defensive against an offensive enemy, is the war myth of every country_. This national bias makes it easy for the military party to predominate and to precipitate war. Yet warfare is not popular if measured in terms of voluntary support of the citizenship in time of war. It was hard for the colonies to induce as many as 250,000 men to join the Revolutionary forces out of a total population of over 3,000,000, and only a part of the 250,000 were enlisted at any one time. In the Civil War both sides were forced to use the draft, or the war would have collapsed. No major war of modern times could have been fought without the draft. This would be enough to show that warfare is not popular if judged by actual voluntary support on the field of battle. One often hears that warfare is a manifestation of human nature and will be eliminated only through a long evolutionary process. But the same thing has been said of slavery, duelling, witchcraft, and many other evils now eliminated. Warfare is not dependent upon human nature, but upon the human point of view, and this point of view can be altered by education,--education which is honest, which can sift the true from the false, which does not close its eyes to the powerful role played by economic and social forces in the wars of the nation. Whether there was another way out in these conflicts, whether the results aimed at were achieved, whether the ruin and destruction which went hand in hand with these conflicts could ever be balanced by material acquisitions,--these are questions the reader must decide for himself. This book simply lays the facts before him. CHAPTER II THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR In no sense is an attempt being made here to give a complete history of the causes of the war for the independence of the United States. This is simply a brief analysis of the ten outstanding causes and the nature of the conflict, without defending or opposing either side in the struggle.