IV THE CHANGING MIND OF A NATION AT WAR

By L. P. Jacks

I owe you a word of explanation for the seeming audacity displayed in the title of my lecture. What right have I, what right has any one, to speak for the mind of the nation? Surely the most that one can do is to describe the changes of his own mind. The mind of the nation is beyond him.

I do not believe this. There is one mind in all of us at the present moment—and it is the mind of the nation. The mind of the nation has become, to a greater degree than ever before, the mind of the individual citizen. That is the greatest of all the changes which have taken place since the war began. The national mind is no longer a mere theme for speculation. It has entered, in some measure, into every one of us. It has become an active principle of our consciousness. It has brought great thoughts and great resolutions to multitudes. It has both amplified and simplified our lives. It has wakened powers that slumbered; it has revived great memories that were half forgotten; it has linked us together and made us one.

Under these circumstances there is no audacity in speaking of the mind of the nation. The 79distinction between our own thoughts and the nation’s thoughts is being obliterated. Ask the first honest man you meet to tell you what he is thinking, and if he answers faithfully, he will tell you something of what the nation is thinking.

I

Never, in my memory, has intercourse with thoughtful men been as suggestive and stimulating as it has been since the war broke out. It is hardly possible, to-day, to enter into conversation with an educated person without noting the emergence of some new point of view. Under the strain and pressure of the time mens’ minds are yielding ideas and making discoveries. There is in consequence a certain vividness in the intellectual life of the country which relieves, to some extent, the moral distress. In the presence of danger our intelligence, our imagination, our will, are unusually wide awake. We begin to perceive the limits of accepted forms of thought, the inadequacy of the standards by which we have been accustomed to pass judgement on life and on history, and the partial nature of truths we had regarded as final and complete. A great disturbance, like that of an earthquake, is passing beneath our life, and the elements of that life are rearranging themselves in new perspectives. We are virtually living in another world compared with that in which we were alive eight months ago.

The world before the war was comparatively safe; the world of to-day is threatened. Eight 80months ago we looked out into a future which seemed assured. We were laying out plans, buying, selling, building, marrying and giving in marriage, like the men of old before the Lord rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. Our sons were growing up and we were arranging their peaceful careers. To-day our sons are in arms, and under orders for the front, and as they gather round us for the parting feast, we thank God that we cannot raise the veil of the future. Our most intimate ties are threatened with possibilities of which we dare not think. Thus at the very centre of our life the earthquake begins, and it runs outward until every idea, every habit of mind, every interest, every conviction, has received some share of the shock. But the shock, far from paralysing the nation’s mind, serves rather to liberate its reserves of intellectual vitality. The new world in which we find ourselves is not terrible only; it is full of challenge to our thinking faculties. It provides a daily stimulus to spiritual curiosity. Thus the intercourse of thoughtful men grows more vivid, and it becomes easy to understand how, from conditions like these, new births of the soul have come to nations; times of danger and calamity being often followed by times of creativeness in all the arts of life.

Ladies and gentlemen, are we not all thinking more than we did before the war began—thinking more deeply, more earnestly, more constantly? There is a new thoughtfulness in the air which is raising the level of intelligence in all classes of the 81community. The matters we are thinking about are big and terrible and splendid, all at the same time. We are asking questions which it is an education to ask, even though for the time being we cannot answer them. Because the questions are great questions they are giving us a juster sense of proportion. We are thinking a little more about our duties and a little less about our rights. ‘Business’ still goes on; but not quite as usual, for something more important than business is in our minds. We are measuring ourselves by higher standards. The heroism of the forces, the daily spectacle of our young men going to the war, reminds us of ethical truths we had half forgotten. Great questions about society and civilization are challenging our minds and compelling us to look at them from new angles of vision. It is good for us to be ‘brought up sharp’ by these things. Still better, that we should be forced to think of them not as mere academic questions, but as questions of life and death. And best of all, when the whole people is forced to think about them at the same time. We are coming together into the presence of these problems. That makes an enormous difference. One reason why the great concerns of life are not better cared for is that in normal times the interest taken in them is piecemeal. You think of them to-day and I think of them to-morrow, with the result that I am hot while you are cold, and I am critical while you are enthusiastic. But the new thoughtfulness is not of that broken, 82interrupted kind. It is simultaneous and widespread. We are all in it at once. You remember what Emerson says about the strange things that may happen when God lets loose a thinker on this planet. But this time a thinking community has been let loose. Momentous results are bound to follow.

I am inclined to believe that the mind of the nation was never in a more hopeful frame. I cannot go to the length of a writer in one of the daily papers who says that England was never so happy. The tragedy is too deep for that. But I do think that England was never so promising. What will come from her awakened thoughtfulness no man can predict. But if it should turn out to be better than the best we have ever hoped for, there would be no cause for surprise.

II

And here we come to a strange and paradoxical thing. One of the first effects of this awakened intelligence is to raise a doubt as to whether the minds of nations are as intelligent as we thought them to be. For a long time past a kind of humanism has been current which took the form of an enthusiastic faith in the ‘march of mind’. Appearances seemed to warrant the belief that men, organized in modern societies, were becoming far more reasonable than their fathers. But look at this war! What comment does it suggest on the ‘march of mind’? Think not of this nation or of that, dismiss the question of whose diplomacy 83was right or wrong, and view the war as though it were, what indeed it is, a single action performed by civilization. What is our impression? Do we feel ourselves in presence of some masterpiece of wisdom? Speaking for myself, I can only say that the war, viewed as a single action, appears to be the kind of action that could only be performed by a fool. I cannot get away from the feeling that I am in the presence of some colossal stupidity. Since history began to record the deeds of men, has there ever been seen such an exhibition of limited intelligence? Who in his sane senses would do such a thing?

Just think what has happened. For generations past the general level of intelligence in Western Europe has been rising. The individual is better educated. Millions of these better educated individuals are combined into societies more or less democratic. But what has become of this vast aggregate of intelligence? Has it all gone into the common stock? Is it all employed for the common good? Does the intelligence of every citizen reinforce the intelligence of every other citizen, so that States become endowed with the sum total of all the wisdom in all of their members? Apparently not. Most of this intelligence seems to be wasted away in mutual criticism, in the war of minds, before the State can get possession of what remains. Does it not seem as though there were some process of inner opposition at work by which a multitude of minds will often neutralize each other’s intelligence; so 84that States, instead of being wiser than individuals, often perpetrate follies of which the least intelligent of their members would be heartily ashamed?

I am inclined to think, therefore, that we shall emerge from the war with a chastened confidence in the mere ‘march of mind’. We shall think more, we are already thinking more, of those other qualities, such as the plain sense of right and wrong, with which the march of mind needs to be blended before it can do its work. Many disillusions of this kind are on the way. There is a feeling abroad which is not quite articulate as yet, that the war has somehow brought us into contact with Reality, and that our ideas must be modified accordingly. ‘We are up against the real thing’ is a phrase you must often have heard. It is frequently used in soldiers’ letters written from the front; I have encountered it in sermons, political speeches, and newspaper articles, in conversations with working men; and in the comments of distinguished philosophers.

Now I will not attempt to define what the ‘real thing’ is. I am not quite sure that I know. But I think I can point out one of its characteristics. The ‘real thing’ as we are now feeling its presence is not a mere subject for study: it is something we have to obey. It is a command, a summons, a trumpet note. In ordinary times Reality shows us its interesting side. Just now it is showing its imperative side. In ordinary times we talk about it. Just now it is talking to us. I can almost imagine that Reality is paying off 85an old score it had against us. We had been writing philosophical essays about it, treating it as ‘our subject’, as though we had it in the hollow of our hand; and perhaps Reality was getting a little tired of hearing itself defined and discussed. Anyhow the real thing is no longer passive. It has become intensely active. It has given us a shock, it has roused us to our duty and put a constraint upon our wills. The consequence is that a good deal of nonsense is being knocked out of us. Let us hope it will not return! We were much too comfortable, much too complacent, much too selfish, before the war. And we were hardly prepared for so sudden a change of behaviour on the part of the real thing.

III

One effect of this shock has been to change our attitude towards the State, and to make us think differently of the rights and duties of the State.

For many years past, there had been a tendency among us to look to the State as an omnipotent power whose function and duty were to gratify our desires and do our bidding. Whatever we wanted, better trade, higher wages, easier conditions of life, schoolrooms, playgrounds, libraries, art galleries, food for our children, provision for our old age—and so on through an endless list—whatever it was, we exploited the State. And the State, like an indulgent mother, gave in to us all round. Now this one had his turn, and now that; and there was a good deal of quarrelling among us 86as to whose turn came next. There seemed no limit to what the State could do for us, and no limit either to what we had the right to demand. It was a demoralizing business—demoralizing to us who got our way, demoralizing to the State which gave us our way. But it went on merrily and the wildest expectations were abroad of vast favours yet to come. A few more teasings, a few more pistols held at the head of the State, and a ‘scheme’ would be forthcoming which would render us all happy and good in spite of ourselves.

Then, one fine morning last August, there came a rude awakening. We got a message from the State couched in language we had never heard before. ‘I require you,’ said the State, ‘to place your property and your lives at my service. Now and for some time to come, I give nothing but ask everything. Arm yourselves for my defence. Give me your sons and be willing that they should die for me. Repay what you owe me. My turn has come.’

That is how the Real Thing talks to men when it uses the State as its mouthpiece. Considering how strange and unaccustomed the language was, I think the response the nation made was to its credit. No sooner did the State turn its imperative side towards us than an instant peace fell upon our warring factions. We had all been waiting for that word of command to make us one—waiting but not knowing what we waited for. Our demands on the State had been for different things: the State’s demand on us was 87for the same thing—for uttermost self-sacrifice. It brought us together as nothing else could have done. This was the first result of our contact with the Real Thing.

IV

This awakening of a sense of duty to the State is leading to a more thorough understanding of the particular State to which we happen to belong—I mean of course the British Empire. This is another and a very promising change in the national mind. During the last few months a new vision has come to many of us of what the British Empire really is.

Speaking of Britons in general, I am afraid it must be confessed that our knowledge of the Empire, our grasp of its significance, have been inadequate to the immense human issues, and to the corresponding responsibilities, which the Empire involves. We have been proud of this vast heritage, we have complacently enjoyed the advantages which come to all of us from its possession, we have talked vaguely and largely about imperialism, but we have hardly taken our imperial duties to heart. Some of us may have done so, but not the nation as a whole. To the majority of the electorate the Empire has been a side issue, or a thing that might be left to look after itself. It seemed too big and too broadly based to be in danger of disturbance. Few of us gave much thought to it; few of us allowed our imaginations to play round its meaning; still 88fewer took the trouble to study its history. Had we done so we should have realized, as I am afraid not many did realize, that a day would dawn when our right to possess this Empire would be put to the proof, when we should be challenged before the world to show that our intelligence and our valour were equal to the vast imperial enterprise on which we had engaged.

But let us not forget that the British Empire, in its present extent and organization, is a comparatively recent phenomenon. In size, in wealth, in the civilization of its component parts and their close relations with one another, its characteristics are so different from what they were a century ago that we can draw no parallel with the Napoleonic era. And now, for the first time in its history, this Greater Britain is being attacked—and attacked with unexampled vehemence and resolution. It is a new experience, and like all new experiences it is compelling a readjustment of thought.

This is a war of the Empire, by the Empire, for the Empire—and by the Empire I mean all for which the Empire stands, its ideals as well as its actualities. The Colonies and India are fighting for us and we are fighting for them. Our fellow subjects in India are represented by a great army of fine warriors, who have helped to check the would-be invaders of our shores. Gurkhas, Sikhs, and Pathans have shed their blood that London might be safe. Mohammedan, Hindu, and Christian have fallen side by side in defence of the 89liberties of our race. This, I say, is a new thing in our history. We feel a deepened intimacy with these widely sundered races; the dominions over the seas seem no further off than the next county. The Germans predicted that the outbreak of war would split the Empire into fragments. It has given the Empire a splendid solidarity such as it never before possessed. It has made us a greater nation, not in the sense that it has added to our dominions, but in the deeper sense that it has caused our political consciousness to dilate to the imperial scale. The political organization of the Empire is acquiring a corporate mind, just as the mother country after the defeat of the Spanish Armada awoke to a new consciousness of her national individuality and began to know herself for what she was.

The parallel is profoundly interesting. It took the English people many centuries to discover their own country. The English in the reign of Henry VIII had a vaguer notion of England than we have of Canada (very few had seen a map of England); of Scotland than we have of Ceylon; of Ireland than we have of Central Africa. But just as these vague conceptions gave place in course of time to vision and realization and patriotic love for England, so now we British are beginning to think of the Empire as something more than a confused extension of our national boundaries, or as a group of appendages to our national home. The Empire is becoming our country, an inheritance of which we have to prove 90ourselves worthy, and we are becoming its citizens in heart as well as in name. Not that the change is already complete or even very far advanced. But no close observer of present tendencies will doubt that the movement of the national mind is in the direction of which I speak. Our imperial soul is beginning to germinate. If the change continues its ethical and spiritual consequences will be very great.

V

In connexion with this extension of our national consciousness one may note at the present time some curious questionings among thoughtful men as to the bearing of democratic theory on our imperial obligations. We call ourselves a democracy; but there are moments, even in the course of dealing with domestic problems, when we find it hard to reconcile the facts with the theory. And the difficulty becomes greater in proportion as we extend our thoughts to the imperial scale. According to the democratic theory the people are to be consulted as to all that concerns their interests. Well, there is nothing that concerns our interests quite so deeply as the existence of the Empire. But when has the people been consulted in the matter? Proud as the British may be of possessing an empire on which the sun never sets, it is certain that the people as a whole have never been asked whether they wished to possess such an empire or not. They have never been asked how large they wished the Empire to 91be; or whether they would or would not be content with something less or greater. In an age when all things political are supposed to be determined by voting it is a curious circumstance that this, the greatest of political questions, has never been voted on at all. Nay more. So far as I know, the British people have never said to themselves, as the Germans have recently been saying, ‘Go to, now; world-dominion shall be ours.’ It would tax the historian to fix the period when the design for a world-wide empire became a definite ambition of the British people. True, there have been statesmen like the late Lord Beaconsfield, or Lord Chatham in an earlier age, who made plans for increasing the dominions of the Crown. But the popular will did not originate these designs, much as it may have applauded them when they had been carried out—though even this has not always been the case. Moreover, the control exercised even by statesmen over the process of imperial expansion has been of a distinctly piecemeal character. As one annexation followed another none of our ministers has foreseen where the process would end. None of them has had a vision in advance of the Empire as it exists to-day—in extent, in population, and in wealth. As Seeley long ago pointed out, we have conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind. Indeed it would be extremely hard to fix responsibility for the existence of the Empire, in its present character, on any group or series of statesmen, or on any particular generation of Britons—to 92say nothing of individual men. A province here, a frontier there, an island somewhere else might be correctly set down to an assignable wave of public opinion or to the diplomacy of a particular minister. But the total growth seems to have escaped from human control altogether. Certainly nothing would be more untrue than to treat the existence of the Empire as though it corresponded to the expressed will of the living generation. We have not willed it into being. We have found it there—like so many of the financial obligations—e.g. the National Debt—which have been inherited from the past, and have to be accepted whether we like them or not, in spite of the maxim which is said to be the corner-stone of the constitution—‘No taxation without representation’.

Our new vision of the Empire is teaching us another thing. We are learning to understand more clearly the influence of the past on the present. We begin to see that we inherit from the past something more than the monuments of the mighty dead. We inherit the very form and pressure of our national life; the range, significance and general direction of our imperial duties. We inherit not our social problems only; but the courage to attack them, and much of the wisdom which guides us to their solution. These in all their essential features have been determined not by us but for us by the action of forces which did their work before we came into existence. We are therefore in no mood to respond to the 93lines of the well-known hymn which bid us ‘give the past unto the wind’. A past which has bequeathed to us our national status and the broad outline of our imperial responsibilities, a past which has given us our political idealism and our love of liberty, cannot be ‘given to the wind’ without a degree of treachery of which the fiercest anarchist in our midst is not capable. Without distinction we feel ourselves bound to ‘carry on’; and what we are ‘carrying on’ is the work of our fathers from the most distant ages to the present day. We are learning the great truth of which Burke was the prophet—the immortality of the State. The past is throbbing in our veins. The cause we are fighting for is a thousand years old. Patriots and martyrs for liberty are no longer mere names in the book of history; they are living forces in our midst. The buried generations are with us. We are members of a community which is continuous in time and has millions of members, vast clouds of witnesses from every age, whose work is waiting for our loyalty to make it complete.

VI

Ladies and gentlemen, all the changes I have described run together into one and lead our minds in the same direction. They are driving the thoughts of the nation to the roots of things. They are forcing us to question the whole basis of our civilization. With the war before our eyes we are prepared to find that there is something 94radically wrong. We are beginning to suspect that the mischief is deep-seated. It is true that these suspicions had often been roused before this war broke out. A visit to the slums will rouse them any day. But the war has made this difference: it has brought us all together into a suspicious frame of mind; so that if anybody could make clear to us what the driving forces of civilization really are, the mind of the nation would at once challenge these forces to give an account of themselves and hold them under suspicion until they could prove their innocence.

Now there are two great forces which as everybody knows have been mightily at work in European history for the last hundred years. One is militarism, the other is industrialism. The mind of the nation is thinking deeply about both of them. Militarism we have always suspected: industrialism has borne a better character, though some of us have had our doubts. But recently there have been signs—and they have been especially prominent in Germany—that these two forces are much more intimately connected than once seemed possible. What have militarism and industrialism to do with one another? How are they related? The war has thrown a new light on that question and I will try to express some of our thoughts.

On a superficial view we are tempted to describe the relation of industrialism to militarism as one of antagonism. The two principles are simply opposed the one to the other. Industrialism, we 95think, makes for peace; militarism for war. Whence follows the simple conclusion that the destruction of militarism will leave the peace-making principle in control of civilization and fighting will be at an end.

I believe that thoughtful people are becoming more and more dissatisfied with this simple account of the matter.

To begin with, there is the fact staring us in the face that an age which is saturated with industrialism has given birth to the bloodiest and most destructive war the world has ever seen. We have no need, at this point, to assert the disputable proposition that industrialism has caused the war. Let us content ourselves with the indisputable proposition that industrialism has not prevented the war.

If industrialism were essentially pacific this failure to prevent the war would be hard to understand. As the dominant interest of nations and individuals, and as making always for peace, how has it come to pass, we may well ask, that industrialism has been unable to restrain the forces which make for war, and for war on the most stupendous scale? We had flattered ourselves that commerce by multiplying and strengthening the ties between nations, would make it impossible for these to tear themselves asunder and engage in mutual destruction. The event has proved we were in error.

Reflecting more deeply on its failure to keep the peace, a suspicion gains ground that industrialism 96when unchecked by other forces may be a positive cause of war. By increasing the wealth, the ostentation, and the pride of the peoples, does it not serve to accentuate their rivalries, to deepen their jealousies, and to inflame their predatory passions? Is it not true that wherever great treasure-chests exist, there will robbers be found also; and is the treasure less provocative of covetousness when gained by commerce, than when extorted from the labour of slaves or exacted by the ransom of conquered cities? Are two nations, rich and happy in the sort of happiness that comes from riches, more likely to be friends than two poor nations each possessing nothing which tempts the cupidity of the other?

For example, is not one of the chief causes of the present hostility between Germany and Great Britain to be found in the fact that both of them, as we say, ‘have done so well in business’? Is it of no significance that war broke out at the very time when each was ‘doing better than ever’? Eliminate, from the complex of conditions out of which the war arose, the circumstance that industry had made both these nations rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and may we not say without hesitation that war between them would not have taken place?

What answer shall we give to these questions? Shall we take refuge in the argument that industrialism shows these baleful tendencies only because it is imperfectly developed, and has not yet become truly international in character? 97Shall we plead for a finer articulation of the commercial tie, and for more industrialism rather than less? Will our dream of the millennium be the conversion of the whole human race into a Universal Joint Stock Company? Are we, in a word, to content ourselves with the suppression of militarism and trust the weal of the race to the working out of the industrial principle, unhampered by the interference of its military yoke-fellow?

Such answers show, I cannot help thinking, that we are legislating for mankind without reckoning with man, as we so often fail to do. They leave untouched the tap-root of war—that primitive instinct which the old legislation sought to restrain by the command ‘Thou shalt not covet’.

Let us assume the extreme case and suppose that on the conclusion of the war the nations of Europe, convinced of their folly and wickedness, abandon every form of armament and determine for the future to spend not one farthing of the national wealth on armies or fortresses or fleets. What would follow?

The immediate result would be the liberation of an enormous amount of wealth hitherto set aside for military purposes. The greater part of this wealth would flow into industrial channels. It is fair to assume that industrialism would be the gainer annually to the extent of five hundred million sterling and of a labour force represented by twenty millions of men. This is a prospect that ought to make the mouths water of those who 98think that industrial wealth is the foundation of human good.

Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, the United States—to speak of no others—rich as they now are, would then grow enormously richer. The natural resources of the earth would be exploited to an extent of which the present economic development, vast as it is, affords no measure. The mere circumstance that each nation might pursue its gains undisturbed by the risk of aggression from the others would bring a vast accession of confidence, and therefore of efficiency, to the labour and capital employed. The total population of the earth would grow by leaps and bounds. And under any fairly equitable scheme of distribution there would be enough wealth in the world to render every member of the human race well-off.

But would there be peace?

Long before the pleasing process we have imagined could work itself out every one of the great communities would be torn to pieces by civil wars. This, I mean, is what would assuredly happen if we suppose the economic process to go on without some fundamental change in the ethos of mankind.

The peace of nations depends only in part on the suppression of militarism. In yet larger measure it depends on the absence of disruptive tendencies in the nations themselves.

What these disruptive tendencies can do, or at least what they can threaten, was made sufficiently 99clear in Great Britain during the few months which preceded the outbreak of war. Nor were we alone in this danger. I need not enter into particulars, for the facts are well known. France, Germany, Austria, Russia—even the United States—were seething with discontent. I recall the remark made to me by an American statesman in 1912. Speaking of the prevalent social unrest he said, ‘We are on the eve of a greater crisis than that of our Civil War.’

Internal disruption is the inevitable fate of every nation whose ethos, or ideal, rests upon a purely industrial creed. The larger the scope for pure industrialism and the fewer the checks which hold it in restraint, the more rapidly do the disruptive tendencies gather head and the more destructive do they become. It is not the poorest nations which reveal the maximum of social discontent. It is the richest. And the prime cause of this does not lie in the sense of inequality between individuals who have more and individuals who have less; that, no doubt, is a cause, but secondary. The root evil is, that a community which makes wealth its object, and pursues it on the terms laid down by the economic machine, is living under conditions which satisfy nobody and against which all men are, by the higher human nature, born rebels. From this point of view success in the economic enterprise is even worse for a nation than failure. The greater the accumulation of wealth the more dissatisfied do men become with the conditions of a merely 100economic life. Industrial communities are always more restless when trade is good than when trade is bad, as though the rottenness of the system could only be revealed by its triumph. Seldom, however, does the restless spirit penetrate to the true cause of the trouble. Unaware that the trouble comes from the original vice of the whole enterprise on which we are engaged, we throw upon our fellow victims the blame for the common lot, thinking that because these suffer less than ourselves therefore they are responsible for our sufferings—like the emigrants in the sinking ship who in the blindness of their despair fell upon the first-class passengers and tore them to pieces.

In short, the common pursuit of wealth is not a human bond. It leads to the invention of schemes and machinery of every kind—material, political, and social; but, of itself, it can never lead to the vital organization of mankind. Nay rather, in spite of all that has been said of its unifying tendency, we cannot doubt that its final working is to disintegrate the community. Seekers of buried treasure invariably quarrel among themselves, for reasons which are manifest to a child. They may arrange the most equitable scheme for the division of the spoils, and seal their mutual loyalty with fearful oaths, but before the voyage is over the captain will be at the yardarm and the deck will be slippery with the blood of half the crew. Whether they sail under the Jolly Roger, or under the red ensign of industrial civilization, makes little difference. Whether the 101spoil be buried in a pirate’s cavern or in the unexploited resources of the earth, it all comes to the same thing.

Nor must we forget that the disruptive tendencies of pure industrialism have hitherto been largely held in check by militarism itself. There can hardly be a doubt that for many years past the common fear of foreign aggression and the common need of being prepared for it have played a very considerable part, against contrary forces working from within, in maintaining the cohesion of every one of the great States now at war. And if the question were raised, in which of the great communities of the modern world have the signs of economic disruption been most abundant, should we not have to point for answer to that country which is at once the wealthiest and the least menaced by foreign war, and where all classes have the largest share of this world’s goods—the United States?

By this time we are all agreed about one thing: militarism—I mean the kind of militarism in which Germany has set the example—must go. Whether a nobler militarism may arise hereafter is a question: but of this kind we have had enough and more than enough. But let us be under no delusion as to the sequel. When militarism goes the check will be removed which has so far prevented industrialism from producing its bitterest fruits. If, therefore, the war merely yields the negative result of destroying militarism, we may lay our account with the 102certainty that there are yet greater troubles in store for the world.

But there is ground for hope in the very magnitude of the present calamity. Let me remind you of something I have already mentioned in another connexion: I mean the way in which the lessons of the war are coming simultaneously to vast multitudes of persons. Apply that to the mind of Europe as a whole. All the nations involved in the struggle are learning the same lesson at the same time. All are engaged together in the bitter but salutary process of discovering their souls. A piecemeal repentance of the nations, following a series of partial conflicts, might effect very little; a simultaneous repentance, imposed by a world-war, may effect a great deal.

Whatever new wisdom, whatever vision of the weak spot in civilization are coming to ourselves as a result of the war, we may be very sure that the same wisdom, the same vision, are coming, in the same way, to our allies and to our enemies. Realizing this, may we not believe that beneath the fierce and bloody oppositions of the hour a profound principle of unity is at work?

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