[248] Taft's political base was the conservative business community that largely supported peace movements before 1914. However, he failed to mobilize that base. The businessmen believed that economic rivalries were the cause of war, and that extensive trade led to an interdependent world that would make war a very expensive and useless anachronism.[249]
However, an opposing faction of progressives, led by Roosevelt, ridiculed arbitration as foolhardy idealism, and insisted on the realism of warfare as the only solution to serious international disputes. Roosevelt worked with his close friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to impose those amendments that ruined the goals of the treaties. Lodge's motivation was that he  complained the treaties impinged too much on senatorial prerogatives.[250] Roosevelt, however, was acting to sabotage Taft's campaign promises.[251] At a deeper level, Roosevelt truly believed that arbitration was a naïve solution and the great issues had to be decided by warfare. The Rooseveltian approach incorporated a near-mystical faith of the ennobling nature of war. It endorsed jingoistic nationalism as opposed to the businessmen's calculation of profit and national interest.