Deprived, then, of this source of enlightenment, the ordinary man falls back upon the press. But the press is either an agent of the very governments it should exist to criticize (it is so notoriously and admittedly on the Continent, and, to an extent which we cannot measure, also in England), or else it is (with a few honorable exceptions) an instrument to make money for certain individuals or syndicates. But the easiest way for the press to make money is to appeal to the most facile emotions and the most superficial ideas of the reader; and these can easily be made to respond to the suggestion that this or that foreign State is our natural and inevitable enemy. The strong instincts of pugnacity and self-approbation, the nobler sentiment of patriotism, a vague and unanalyzed impression of the course of history, these and other factors combine to produce this result. And the irony is that they may be directed indifferently against any State. In England, for instance, a hundred years ago, it was France against whom they were marshaled; sixty years ago it was Russia; thirty years ago it was France again; now it is Germany; presently, if governments have their way, it will be Russia again. The foreign offices and the press do with nations what they like. And they will continue to do so until ordinary people acquire right ideas and a machinery to make them effective.... [Sidenote: We must realize that States are unreal abstractions.] The governmental theory holds that States are the great realities, and that they are natural enemies. My reply is that States are unreal abstractions; that the reality is the men and women and children who are the members of the States; and that as soon as you substitute real people for the abstract idea that symbolizes them you find that they have no cause of quarrel, no interests or desires of a kind to justify or necessitate aggressive war. And, if there were no aggressive war, there could, of course, be no cause for defensive war.... _G. Lowes Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,” Atlantic Monthly, January, 1915._ THE WAY OUT OF WAR [Sidenote: No aggrandizement!] We will to perpetuate European peace. How are we to accomplish it? By keeping in view and putting into effect certain clear principles.