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The Need of Military Unification 477Various ideas were put forward with more or less authorityas to the necessary conditions of international peace. Thecrudest of these was the foolish notion, created by a one-sidedpropaganda, which imagined that the destruction of Germanmilitarism was the one thing needful and in itself sufficient tosecure the future peace of the world. The military power, thepolitical and commercial ambitions of Germany and her acutesense of her confined geographical position and her encirclementby an unfriendly alliance were the immediate moral cause of thisparticular war; but the real cause lay in the very nature of theinternational situation and the psychology of national life. Thechief feature of this psychology is the predominance and worshipof national egoism under the sacred name of patriotism.Every national ego, like every organic life, desires a double selffulfilment,intensive and extensive or expansive. The deepeningand enriching of its culture, political strength and economic wellbeingwithin its borders is not felt to be sufficient if there is not,without, an extension or expansion of its culture, an increase ofits political extent, dominion, power or influence and a masterfulwidening of its commercial exploitation of the world. Thisnatural and instinctive desire is not an abnormal moral depravitybut the very instinct of egoistic life; and what life at present isnot egoistic? But it can be satisfied only to a very limited degreeby peaceful and unaggressive means. And where it feels itselfhemmed in by obstacles that it thinks it can overcome, opposedby barriers, encircled, dissatisfied with a share of possession anddomination it considers disproportionate to its needs and itsstrength, or where new possibilities of expansion open out to itin which only its strength can obtain for it its desirable portion,it is at once moved to the use of some kind of force and canonly be restrained by the amount of resistance it is likely tomeet. If it has a weak opposition of unorganised or ill-organisedpeoples to overcome, it will not hesitate; if it has the oppositionof powerful rivals to fear, it will pause, seek for alliancesor watch for its moment. Germany had not the monopoly ofthis expansive instinct and egoism; but its egoism was the bestorganised and least satisfied, the youngest, crudest, hungriest,