PDF-file (The same edition. Another cover. 2.2 Mb)

Some Lines of Fulfilment 397always be the great intermediate factor of Imperialism, that hugearmed and dominant Titan, that must by its very nature demandits own satisfaction at the cost of every suppressed or inconvenientnational unit and assert its own needs as prior to theneeds of the new-born international comity. That satisfaction,presumably, it must have for a time, that demand it will be forlong impossible to resist. At any rate, to ignore its claims or toimagine that they can be put aside with a spurt of the writer’spen, is to build symmetrical castles on the golden sands of animpracticable idealism.Forces take the first place in actual effectuation; moral principles,reason, justice only so far as forces can be compelled orpersuaded to admit them or, as more often happens, use themas subservient aids or inspiring battle-cries, a camouflage fortheir own interests. Ideas sometimes leap out as armed forcesand break their way through the hedge of unideal powers;sometimes they reverse the position and make interests theirsubordinate helpers, a fuel for their own blaze; sometimes theyconquer by martyrdom: but ordinarily they have to work notonly by a half-covert pressure but by accommodation to powerfulforces or must even bribe and cajole them or work throughand behind them. It cannot be otherwise until the average andthe aggregate man become more of an intellectual, moral andspiritual being and less predominantly the vital and emotionalhalf-reasoning human animal. The unrealised international ideawill have for some time at least to work by this secondarymethod and through such accommodations with the realisedforces of nationalism and imperialism.It may be questioned whether by the time that things areready for the elaboration of a firm and settled system, the ideaof a just internationalism based on respect for the principle offree nationalities may not by the efforts of the world’s thinkersand intellectuals have made so much progress as to exercise anirresistible pressure on States and Governments and bring aboutits own acceptation in large part, if not in the entirety of itsclaims. The answer is that States and Governments yield usuallyto a moral pressure only so far as it does not compel them to