So that all peace projects that shall hope to find a hearing must make up their account with it, and must show cause why they should be judged competent to balk any attempted offensive.

In an inarticulate or inchoate fashion, perhaps, but none the less with ever-increasing certitude and increasing apprehension, this state of the case is also coming to be an article of popular "knowledge and belief," wherever much or little thought is spent on the outlook for peace.

It has already had a visible effect in diminishing the exclusiveness of nationalities and turning the attention of the pacific peoples to the question of feasible ways and means of international cooperation in case of need; but it has not hitherto visibly lessened the militant spirit among these nations, nor has it lowered the tension of their national pride, at least not yet; rather the contrary, in fact.
The effect, upon the popular temper, of this inchoate realisation of the fatality that so lies in the modern state of the industrial arts, varies from one country to another, according to the varying position in which they are placed, or in which they conceive themselves to be placed.
Among the belligerent nations it has put the spur of fear to their need of concerted action as well as to their efforts to strengthen the national defense.

But the state of opinion and sentiment abroad in the nation in time of war is no secure indication of what it will be after the return to peace.

The American people, the largest and most immediately concerned of the neutral nations, should afford more significant evidence of the changes in the popular attitude likely to follow from a growing realisation of this state of the case, that the advantage has passed definitively to any well prepared and resolute offensive, and that no precautions of diplomacy and no practicable measures of defensive armament will any longer give security,--provided always that there is anywhere a national Power actuated by designs of imperial dominion.
It is, of course, only little by little that the American people and their spokesmen have come to realise their own case under this late-modern situation, and hitherto only in an imperfect degree.