Can commerce impart the external force necessary to divert nations
from that path?

Since commerce bears exactly the same relation to nations now as
in times past, and since it is an agency within mankind itself, it
is difficult to see how it can act as an external force, or cause
an external force to be applied. Of course, commercial interests
are often opposed to national interests, and improvements in speed
and sureness of communication and transportation increase the size
and power of commercial organizations. But the same factors increase
the power of governments and the solidarity of nations. At no time
in the past has there been more national feeling in nations than
now. Even the loosely held provinces of China are forming a Chinese
nation. Despite the fundamental commercialism of the age, national
spirit is growing more intense, the present war being the main
intensifying cause. It is true that the interests of commerce are
in many ways antagonistic to those of war. But, on the other hand,
of all the causes that occasion war the economic causes are the
greatest. For no thing will men fight more savagely than for money;
for no thing have men fought more savagely than for money; and the
greater the rivalry, the more the man's life becomes devoted to
it, and the more fiercely he will fight to get or keep it. Surely
of all the means by which we hope to avoid war, the most hopeless
by far is commerce.

The greatest of all hopes is in Christianity, because of its inculcation
of love and kindliness, its obvious influence on the individual
in cultivating unselfishness and other peaceful virtues, and the
fact that it is an inspiration from on high, and therefore a force