Excerpt from The Choice Before Us
It is so difficult in war-time, for any one who does not deal with immediate exigencies, to gain a fair hearing, that I think it necessary to say in a preface some things which otherwise I might safely have left to the reader's own perception. I am not, in this book, discussing the origin or justification of the present war, nor the participation in it of this country. As a matter of fact, I agree with the general view that, after the invasion of Belgium, it would have been neither right nor wise for us to abstain. But the arguments of this book should be equally cogent to readers who take the most different views on these matters. For, whatever may be thought of the immediate origin of the war, it cannot be dissociated from all the deeper causes which have led to wars in the past and may lead to them in the future; and it is these with which I deal. I argue that war proceeds from wrong ideas and wrong policies; that in these ideas and policies all nations have been implicated; and that this war will have been fought in vain unless it leads to a change of attitude in all governments and all peoples. This change, I agree, is most required in Germany, and may be most difficult to effect there. But there are, in all countries, traditions, interest, prejudices and illusions making for war, and it is these that I endeavour to expose.
In the first part of the book I set forth the system of ideas and facts which I call Militarism.
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