5

The more one looks into these fallacies about fighting—and their number is legion—one is compelled to believe that the spirit which chiefly underlies the tendencies to war, apart from the direct incentive of commercial greed, is one of Fear. Hatred is more obvious, but it is fear which is at the bottom of the hatred. This alone can account for the extraordinary shortsightedness with which all freedom, both of speech and of action, is trampled on, when a war is once commenced. In such circumstances, society at once reverts, in its panic alarm for its own safety, to what may be called the Ethics of the Pack.