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privilege for any purpose we do so with a careful choice of words inorder to exhibit our intentions in the best light. "When we ascribethe same sentiments to some hostile alien aggressor we do it in wordsdesigned with equal care to express precisely the same ideas in theworst possible light. The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a courseof larceny, murder, rapine, and barbarism. We are always movingforward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerateour victims while incidentally capturing their markets, tocivilize savage and senile and paranoidal peoples while blunderingaccidentally into their oil wells or metal mines. The truth is that thehateful and destructive doctrine takes its root in different minds indifferent ways—for religious or racial or commercial or political oreconomic reasons or for the sake of glory. The urge that in the enddrives us forward may be compounded of all these reasons. Generallythe condition which is essential to such adventures is economic.But the economic factors are usually subordinated in the publicdiscussions to the ethical and adventurous. The practical men let thepreachers and the poets do the talking.I have called attention, in the chapters on Italy and Germany, tothe rise, in times of distress and frustration, of these dangerous ideas.In one form or another the d'Annunzios appear under widely differingmanifestations to inflame the imagination of youth and to playupon the strings of national and racial greatness. In Italy it was thephilosopher Gentile saying "faith in the necessity of the advent ofan ideal reality, a conception of life which must not enclose itselfwithin the limits of fact," or socialists like Papini taking up the cultof the "dangerous life" talking to Italy of the great anvil of fire andblood on which strong people are hammered and who could see inwar "the great reawakening of the enfeebled—as a rapid and heroicmeans to power and wealth." Here is the same mixture of glory,spirit, power, and wealth as in the Beveridge evangel. Here is thatsame spirit Josiah Royce identifies: "Trust your genius, free yournoble heart." Here come the "excellent men" for whom life has nosavor unless it has something in it—something transcendental inwhich they sweep themselves to the achievement of some great purpose,when the normal pursuits of men are sneered at and the nationis summoned off in pursuit of "greatness." All that is here.222