The maintenance of peace is lauded as the only goal at which statesmanship should aim.

This unqualified desire for peace has obtained in our days a quite peculiar power over men's spirits.

This aspiration finds its public expression in peace leagues and peace congresses; the Press of every country and of every party opens its columns to it.

The current in this direction is, indeed, so strong that the majority of Governments profess--outwardly, at any rate--that the necessity of maintaining peace is the real aim of their policy; while when a war breaks out the aggressor is universally stigmatized, and all Governments exert themselves, partly in reality, partly in pretence, to extinguish the conflagration.
Pacific ideals, to be sure, are seldom the real motive of their action.
They usually employ the need of peace as a cloak under which to promote their own political aims.

This was the real position of affairs at the Hague Congresses, and this is also the meaning of the action of the United States of America, who in recent times have earnestly tried to conclude treaties for the establishment of Arbitration Courts, first and foremost with England, but also with Japan, France, and Germany.