And they want a discretionary voice in the management of their joint interests, whether as a nation or in a minor civil group.

In short, they want personal, pecuniary and political liberty, free from all direction or inhibition from without.
They are also much concerned to maintain favorable economic conditions for themselves and their children.

And last, but chiefly rather than least, they commonly are hide-bound patriots inspired with an intractable felt need of national prestige.
It is an assemblage of peoples in such a frame of mind to whom the pacifists are proposing, in effect, a plan for eventual submission to an alien dynasty, under the form of a neutral peace compact to include the warlike Powers.

There is little likelihood of such a scheme being found acceptable, with popular sentiment running as it now does in the countries concerned.

And yet, if the brittle temper in which any such proposal is rejected by popular opinion in these countries today could be made to yield sufficiently to reflection and deliberate appraisal, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that its acceptance would not be the best way out of a critical situation.