The author implies that intellectual arguments for peace are insufficient without addressing underlying economic conditions. Can you construct an argument *against* this assertion, positing how moral consensus or the "profoundest intellects" might still be primary drivers for social change, even without immediate alignment with class economic interests?

From the book

of opinion among the wise and instructed against war, the mass of men eventually will profit by that exemplary teaching. To this day the jurist and the legislator are as remote from reality as Grotius, unless guided in their studies and their application by the normal economic interests of classes which constitute the most powerful factors in the growth of social institutions. Not the least memorable king of his age, Henry of Navarre, specu ​ lated upon a possible leadership of a family of nations, the cause of conflict removed from their midst by the universal freedom of public worship. For…

ry survey of the projects from time to time advanced to promote arbitration between states, or a League to comprise all. The history of anti-militarism indicates, however, as with every movement making for human progress, that whilst the thought and idealism of some few noble men and women in every age outpaced the collective mind, their dreams and aspirations await fulfilment until the mode of producing wealth and its distribution—until the economic forms of society can give material shape to the ideas they held so long before the times. As we were reminded, with cynical reiteration, during…

as the religious disputations of a bygone age, laid on the shelves of libraries provoking the derision of practical men. Not for lack of reminding are we likely to forget that William Penn, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant spun scintillating theories of international peace and wove exact constitutions for courts of arbitration: The powerful forces in the modern State which profit by the manufacture of arms, and the Press they control, never fail to point to the nonfulfilment of the hope, surviving through ten generations, that at last mankind would permit reason to function and keep the hands…

rce to guile. It is suggested that by building houses instead of ships and cannon the capitalist order can be preserved. It is more than probable that were the Governments progressively to reduce armaments and to devote the expenditure saved to meeting the cost of universal improvement in the condition of labour, satisfaction, for a time, would prevail among the workers. The improbability of such an agreement is demonstrated by the meagre efforts of Governments in international Labour legislation, by the perfunctory proceedings of the Labour Commission attached to the Paris Peace Conference,…

conomic freedom of all nations is achieved. ​ One other decision of the second Hague Conference is not without interest. The contracting parties agreed not to use force for the recovery of money due from a debtor nation, but the compact seemed to have small effect on investors when the Russian Republic repudiated se a debt it had not contracted. III. LABOUR'S ANTI-MILITARISM. We have seen that Governments and statesmen philandered with the popular demand for international arbitration as readily as they fanned the flames of racial passion and patriotic hate. The making of war, the settlements…