I think we all believe that, but, as a matter of fact, in a world
constituted as ours is, the one test of a good Government, applied by
every individual, is the material prosperity of the people who live
under it, and for that reason if the people do not at first put in power
men who can give them material prosperity they will put such failures
out and try another set of rulers, and they will go on and on that way
until necessarily the policies of statesmen must be based upon the
interest of that State whose destinies are in their hands. So that the
only hope of relations between nations similar to those that exist
between good men and good women is that the individuals of that nation,
its population, its inhabitants, should consent to exercise the
self-denying virtues; and until that point is reached there can be no
good State in the sense in which there can be a good man. We ought all
to work for it, but it is not here now, and there are no signs on the
horizon of its approach.
In a war, therefore, every statesman studies the resources of his
nation, and when the time comes that it is manifestly his duty to put an
end to warfare, it is only by the public approval that he dares do it,
by showing that it is to their advantage to give up the things for which
they went to war, in greater or less degree.
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