Dr. Woods
passingly realises the importance of this test and even enumerates what
he considers to be the causes of war, without, however, following up
his clue. As he reckons them, they are four in number: racial,
economic, religious, and personal. There is frequently a considerable
amount of doubt concerning the cause of a particular war, and no doubt
the causes are usually mixed and slowly accumulative, just as in
disease a number of factors may have gradually combined to bring on the
sudden overthrow of health. There can be no doubt that the four causes
enumerated have been very influential in producing war. There can,
however, be equally little doubt that nearly all of them are
diminishing in their war-producing power. Religion, which after the
Reformation seemed to foment so many wars, is now practically almost
extinct as a cause of war in Europe. Economic causes which were once
regarded as good and sound motives for war have been discredited,
though they cannot be said to be abolished; in the Middle Ages fighting
was undoubtedly a most profitable business, not only by the booty which
might thus be obtained, but by the high ransoms which even down to the
seventeenth century might be legitimately demanded for prisoners. So
that war with France was regarded as an English gentleman's best method
of growing rich. Later it was believed that a country could capture the
"wealth" of another country by destroying that country's commerce, and
in the eighteenth century that doctrine was openly asserted even by
responsible statesmen; later, the growth of political economy made
clear that every nation flourishes by the prosperity of other nations,
and that by impoverishing the nation with which it traded a nation
impoverishes itself, for a tradesman cannot grow rich by killing his
customers.
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