represent most complex whirlpools of political forces, in which the
merest accidents (as whether two members of a Cabinet have quarrelled,
or an Ambassador's dinner has disagreed with him) may result in a long
and fatal train of consequences--it becomes obvious that all so-called
"explanations" (though it may be right that they should be attempted)
fall infinitely short, of the reality.[1]

Feeling thus the impossibility of dealing at all adequately with the
present situation, I have preferred to take here and there just an
aspect of it for consideration, with a view especially to the
differences between Germany and England. I have thought that instead of
spending time over recriminations one might be on safer ground by
trying to get at the root-causes of this war (and other wars), thus
making one's conclusions to some degree independent of a multitude of
details and accidents, most of which must for ever remain unknown to us.

There are in general four rather well-marked species of wars--Religious
wars, Race wars, wars of Ambition and Conquest, and wars of Acquisition
and Profit--though in any particular case the four species may be more
or less mingled. The religious and the race motives often go together;
but in modern times on the whole (and happily) the religious motive is
not so very dominant. Wars of race, of ambition, and of acquisition are,
however, still common enough. Yet it is noticeable, as I frequently have
occasion to remark in the following papers, that it only very rarely
happens that any of these wars are started or set in motion by the
mass-peoples themselves. The mass-peoples, at any rate of the more
modern nations, are quiescent, peaceable, and disinclined for strife.
Why, then, do wars occur? It is because the urge to war comes, not from
the masses of a nation but from certain classes within it. In every
nation, since the dawn of history, there have been found, beside the