What could be a more Canadian way to indulge in the national preoccupation with perceptions - honest, hilarious, huffy or high-minded - of this country and its inhabitants?

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right.

What is needed is the development in men of that particular type of skill which will enable them to make social use of knowledge already in their possession; enable them to apply simple, sometimes self-evident, truths to the guidance of their common life.

Every nation sincerely desires peace; and all nations pursue courses which if persisted in, must make peace impossible.

The capitalist can only make a whole people go to war . . . by capturing the popular will. The only prophylactic against that situation is to make the public aware of the way in which it is being misled.

The evil was not in either ideal; the evil was in the attempt to impose that ideal by force upon others.

It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion.