This does not imply, as some critics allege, the conclusion that an Englishman is to say: "Since I might be just as well off under the Germans, let them come"; but that the German will say: "Since I shall be no better off for the going, I will not go."
Read The Great Illusion (1910), by Norman Angell. I'll just say it was stupid hard to read; people had much stronger vocabularies and used language in a real stout way back then. But it's a great book. It's not a novel perse, but I think it belongs here.
The 'Great Illusion' was that nations gained by armed confrontation, militarism, war, or conquest. It makes a good case against the warlike mindset. In particular what I find interesting is that he makes it a point to stay away from the emotional arguments against war, which, while he does agree with them personally, thinks they are doomed in general. After all, it was with great emotional intensity that humans used to burn witches, behead heretics, kill children, etc., but honestly believed they were doing so for the greater moral good. While those arguments are important, they are not as effective as the economic and rational arguments against war. And the emotional arguments FOR war, patriotism and the like, are as ubiquitous on a moral pretense anyway.
Those who plead for war on moral grounds say: "War will go on because men will defend their ideals, moral, political, social, and religious." It should be stated thus: "War will go on because men will always attack the spiritual possessions of other men," because, of course, the necessity for defense arises from the fact that these possessions are in danger of attack.
Put in the second form, however, the case breaks down almost of itself. The least informed of us realizes that the whole trend of history is against the tendency for men to attack the ideals and the beliefs of other men. In the religious domain that tendency is plain, so much so that the imposition of religious ideals or beliefs by force has practically been abandoned in Europe, and the causes which have wrought this change of attitude in the European mind are just as operative in the field of politics.
In the end, society only advances to the extent people move away from forceful means, and toward "co-operation." Stellar work, I highly recommend it.
The patriot feels that his moral intention is every bit as sincere as that of the pacifist--that, indeed, patriotism is a finer moral ideal than pacifism. The difference between the pacifist and the advocate of realpolitik is an intellectual and not a moral one at all, and the assumption of superior morality which the former sometimes makes does the cause which he has at heart infinite harm. Until the pacifist can show that the employment of military force fails to secure material advantage, the common man will, in ordinary times, continue to believe that the militarist has a moral sanction as great as that underlying pacifism.
