The Great Illusion by Norman Angell

The shifting ground of pro-war arguments -- The narrowing gulf between the material and moral ideals -- The non-rational causes of war -- False biological analogies -- The real law of man's struggle: struggle with Nature, not with other men -- Outline sketch of man's advance and main operating factor therein -- The progress towards elimination of physical force -- Cooperation across frontiers and its psychological result -- Impossible to fix limits of community -- Such limits irresistibly expanding -- Break up of State homogeneity -- State limits no longer coinciding with real conflicts between men.

Those who have followed at all closely the peace advocacy of the last few years will have observed a curious shifting of ground on the part of its opponents. Until quite recently, most peace advocacy being based on moral, not material grounds, pacifists were generally criticized as unduly idealistic, sentimental, oblivious to the hard necessities of men in a hard world of struggle, and disposed to ask too much of human nature in the way of altruistic self-sacrifice on behalf of an idealistic dogma. We were given to understand that while peace might represent a great moral ideal, man's evil passions and cupidity would always stand in the way of its achievement. The citations I have given in Chapter II of the first part of this book prove sufficiently, I think, that this was, until quite recently, overwhelmingly the point of view of those who defended war as an unavoidable part of human struggle.