Very plausible and very dangerous people they are —
idealists too good and innocent for a hard, cruel world,
where force is the chief law. Yet there are some such
innocent people in Parliament even at present. It is to
be hoped that we shall see none of them there in future.*

* Major Stewart Murray, ** Future Peace of the Anglo-Saxons. "
London: Watts and Co.
42 The Great Illusion

Major Mtirray is right to this extent: the militarist
view, the view of those who ''believe in war," and
defend it even on moral grounds as a thing without
which men would be ** sordid," supports this philo-
sophy of force, which flourishes in the atmosphere
which the militarist regimen engenders.
But the militarist view involves a serious dilemma.
If the security of a nation's wealth can only be
assured by force, and treaty rights are mere waste
paper, how can we explain the evident security of the
wealth of States possessing relatively no force? By
the mutual jealousies of those guaranteeing their
neutrality? Then that mutual jealousy could equally
well guarantee the security of any one of the larger
States against the rest. Another Englishman, Mr.
Farrer, has put the case thus:

If that recent agreement between England, Germany,
France, Denmark, and Holland can so effectively relieve
Denmark and Holland from the fear of invasion that
Denmark can seriously consider the actual abolition of
her army and navy, it seems only one further step to go,
for all the Powers collectively, great and small, to guaran-
tee the territorial independence of each one of them
severally.
In either case, the plea of the militarist stands

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