support of the powerful instrumentalities that are necessary to its triumph. It is the strength of these instrumentalities alone that determines the issue of a specific conflict, and in this respect the quasimechanical interpretation of social strife is useful. Its inadequacy is found only in its inability to see, in that strife, anything but a collision of blind, brute forces, anything but a coarse trial of strength which tends toward no ideal goal, anything but a weary struggle for the "survival of the fittest" which, conceived in mechanical terms, can only obscure the profounder meaning of that warfare for higher civilization which is constantly being waged between nations and between the various strata of society.

How Ethos Force is Distributed within a Community. Let us imagine the case of a number of separate groups existing, not as parts of a community, but as isolated elements. Each would then exercise its own appropriate force, and if the groups were contiguous, the forces could not fail to operate partly at least upon the same objects. The forces would thus be in physical contact, collision would be inevitable, and in the end resistance would be so overcome as to bring about a harmony between the contiguous forces. The various ethea would thus unite to form a new ethos, that of the community, and this ethos would distribute the forces, or rather the collective force, in such a manner as to establish order and regularity. This may serve as a description of the process by means of which the ethos of a society or nation is consolidated, and how, its unity having been achieved, that unity maintains itself.

Yet it should not be assumed that the consolidation will always be complete. If the stronger forces unite, little attention will be paid to the weaker forces, which though denied efficacity of action will nevertheless maintain a certain momentum of their own.

But the union of the

stronger forces, even though they are in physical contact, may encounter obstacles. In the absence of any physical barrier between them, there may be a psychical barrier. The ethea may be kept apart by a difference of language, for example, which obstructs the normal communication between ethea and prevents them from interacting in the mental sphere. Other barriers may exist, such as that of a difference of race or of the stage of cultural development. Thus where physical union might appear possible spiritual union would be impracticable. In such a case conflict

will be inevitable; a greater or less degree of hostility will arise between the opposed ethea, and the centripetal tendency of nationality to which reference has been made will be offset by a centrifugal tendency; the final outcome may then be disintegration of the community instead of consolidation.

But persistent hostility can arise only between ethea of different grades. Where the ethea are of the same grade, a community of interest is established which no mental barrier whatsoever can divide. The interests of the contiguous ethea may not be identical, it is sufficient that they be similar, for then they cannot fail to be identical at least in part. It is characteristic of the higher ethos, that in contradistinction to the lower, it aims at a broader activity of the general will. Civilization is diffusive in its main tendency, rather than exclusive. As it advances it dispenses its treasures more widely. We see this in the modern diffusion of popular education, for instance. Consequently even where there is actual strife between a higher and a lower ethos the higher tends to absorb the lower, and the advantage is with the centripetal rather than with the centrifugal forces of modern society.

It is for this reason that as civilization advances strife diminishes, civil war grows less frequent, and the minority submits more peacefully to the rule of the majority. The key to such controversies as do break out in the modern class struggle is to be found in the higher ethos rather than in a Machiavellian conciliation of the lower ethos, for the former is dominant. When a higher and a lower morality, a higher and a lower sense of right, come into collision as they so frequently do in the modern State, the solution is not to be found in demagoguery but in the higher part of the positive morality of the community.

The Distribution of Force in the Family of Nations. While the ultimate goal of the consolidation of the life of nations is world empire, there may be a close approach to consolidation in situations falling far short of world empire, such as relations of close association between equal States or between States acknowledging the suzerainty or dependency of each other. Solidarities of this kind are distributions of ethos force in accordance with those principles of physical contact and spiritual intercommunication which we have been discussing. The chief things that keep nations apart are the operation of their physical or quasi-mechanical

forces in non-contiguous fields, and the barriers of language, race, and culture.

Association between States is closest when such close physical contact exists that collision of interests is an ever present possibility, barriers to intercommunication are insignificant, and the ethea of the two States are approximately of the same grade. This is the case, for example, in the relation between Great Britain and the United States. A partnership needs no formal declaration in order to exist in reality. War between these two States is almost an impossibility because they have gone far toward the formation of a jointly constituted community in which force is distributed, a certain harmony of interests and of aspirations is established, and their respective wills and standards of right have largely been merged in a common will and a common standard. What keeps Great Britain and the United States from war is not the fact that their respective forces are so great and so formidable that they could not hope to subjugate each other, but a common criterion for the settlement of questions which may arise between them; for this reason if either were reduced to one-quarter its present strength and could be physically crushed by the other the possibility of war would be equally remote.

Actual collision is most likely to occur between States when they are in close physical contact but the element of spiritual contact which is necessary to harmonize the threatened strifes is absent. This lack of ready access to each other's will arrests the normal process of interpenetration of contiguous ethea, by preventing the assimilation of each other's motives, and by keeping up a division of force in lieu of that unity which is indispensable to harmony. When a barrier of this subjective kind exists between nations, it is difficult to say which engenders the sharpest conflict, close proximity of forces which because of their proximity develop an extensive area of friction, or the breadth of the gulf between ethea of different grades. It is difficult to say, therefore, whether Great Britain and Germany, or Great Britain and Russia, are the more likely to be plunged into bitter strife. (For purposes of illustration we assume that the two States are isolated from entanglements with other States and that the complications of alliance mixed up in the present war and really bringing it about have not existed.) On the

one hand Great Britain and Germany, though possessing similar ethea, which the barriers of language and of other institutions keep apart, exert closely contiguous forces in an extensive field of sharp economic competition for acquisition of the same prizes. On the other hand, Great Britain and Russia, though possessing interests which need not clash though contiguous, are prevented from reaching any real harmony and of averting all possibility of future friction by the gulf separating their respective ethea, a gulf the breadth of which we will not exaggerate, but which is so great as undoubtedly to deprive them of a common basis of whole-hearted moral co-operation. The question may not admit of a satisfactory answer, but even if it does we need not attempt to answer it. The important point is that whatever keeps ethea apart engenders friction, whatever the nature of the barrier, whether it be language, disparity of culture, or anything else, and until some way of overcoming such a barrier can be discovered, no security can be found in the fact that, for the time being, contiguous forces happen not to be in active competition.

It is the isolation and partition of international force, which so alters the aspect of the process of consolidation in the international field as to differentiate it sharply from the process of consolidation within a particular community. In the affairs of the nation violent struggle is avoidable, the conflict is less a physical than a psychical one, and the establishment of spiritual harmony makes the establishment of physical order a gradual progress for the most part free from any brutal ferocity. In international relations this peaceful progress can occur only in the case of States fortunately situated with respect to each other, finding ready access to each other's world-conception. Otherwise the only alternative is the brutal test of physical strife, deferred, perhaps, by an armistice founded on mutual observance of dictates of expediency, but not to be clearly averted by precarious self-accommodation to fearful exigencies. Thus of the two means by which international force is distributed, peaceful association and war, the latter is equally important with the first.

Inter-State Association as a Factor in War. Spiritual community between nations would have to be so close as to render them simply parts of one society, for it to provide an absolute unity of aim in their policies

with reference to other States. States not existing in association so close as this, it is vain to suppose that they will go to war on behalf of each other's interests in the absence of an explicit agreement. They might defend with armed force interests common to them both, but they will not take up arms in each other's defense unless they have formed a military alliance.

Military alliances ordinarily arise as alliances of convenience, rather than as truly spiritual alliances. As a matter of fact some degree, however slight, of spontaneous association is necessary to provide the foundation for an artificial association of this kind. The interests of the two States must lie fairly close together, if they are not actually identical. The arrangement is often one merely for the attainment of an immediate practical object, rather than of one conceived on both sides as a distinctly moral end. Consequently ethea utterly opposed may co-operate, as a measure simply of expediency, for protection against a common foe. But the solidarities of convenience are less enduring than the more compact solidarities of ethos. Where there is not only a specific community of interest, but a general community of sentiment, the military alliance will be less dependent for its vigor upon environmental circumstances, its horizon of interests will be broader, and it will be more resilient in resisting subtler attacks as well as heavier onslaughts.

Every State will sooner or later find itself menaced by an opposing force which it is unable to subdue through union or absorption, and will be led to seek artificial alliances of the kind described. The object of these military alliances is to conquer the hostile force that cannot be overcome by the ordinary interplay of national energies. Thus the struggle for a harmony of forces goes on not as a purely spontaneous process, but as an artificial process, directed by those nations which are confronted with the real or fancied necessity of pooling their strength for their own preservation and for the maintenance of their own ethos. The policy of isolation cannot be permanently sustained. Forced cooperation must be resorted to, if there is not enough spontaneous cooperation to insure order in the international realm.

The vitality of an alliance of convenience depends primarily upon its efficacy, for it is to exert physical force effectively that the alliance exists. Once an alliance of this kind has been formed, it tends to approach a