ABSTRACT
It is one of the healthiest symptoms of the world’s gradual recovery from war-madness that the search for some road leading to permanent peace is both insistent and persistent. Practically everybody wants world peace; people differ only as to the means by which it can best be attained. The psychological causes of war come into play, and public opinion becomes angry, suspicious and pugnacious. And these causes operate the more dangerously in modern times because they have long been under the influence of one of the most powerful of psychological stimulants: mass education. Of the psychological causes of war perhaps the most important is fear. If shrinking fear leads to war, so also do some of the more aggressive qualities of mankind, such as pugnacity and love of power. Plain, primitive pugnacity, ordinarily dormant, rises rapidly to the forefront of consciousness in time of crisis.
