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This book consists of four chapters; the first three were read before various League of Nations Societies (one at Geneva itself).
The best of the four chapters is in my opinion the first one, which gives its title to the book. We have here an admirably clear and impressive statement of the whole problem of the psychological motivations of war, together with an interesting study of the psychology of pacifism. Among other things Dr. Glover discusses the connection between pacifist motives and the instinct of self-preservation, making the dry comment on the supposed efficiency of the latter that in no country in the world has sixpence ever been spent on studying the psychological problems obviously bound up with the causation of war; this is almost unbelievable, but it appears to be really true. The second chapter, 'A Postscript on Masochism', deals with a problem often underestimated or even overlooked, but a necessary counterpart to the study of the sadistic motivation of war. The third, the problem of prevention, makes it abundantly plain that we are still in the dark about the forces concerned, and that only an ignorant optimism imagines we know already enough about them to be able to prescribe the necessary steps to guide them into less disadvantageous directions than war. About the fourth chapter, an outline of research, I am less enthusiastic. It is an exceedingly detailed scheme for a vast systematic study of all the factors. The problem is how to impress those responsible with the need for further research. Dr. Glover has not shrunk from making a maximum claim in this respect, but one might fear that the very mass of detail and such plans as those covering a thousand years of investigation of certain points might produce a very opposite effect from that intended, by reinforcing the natural tendency to relegate such ideas to the realm of the fantastic or impossible. The gist of this chapter might perhaps have been incorporated in the previous one.