Essays in Rebellion Part 16

What other reasons Mr. Clarkson might have found were lost in the yelling of newsboys tearing down the Strand. Too excited to speak, the crowd engulfed them. The papers were torn from their hands. Short cries, short sentences followed. Here and there Mr. Clarkson caught an intelligible word: "Revolvers taken at gate"; "Expected Johnson would be shot if victorious"; "Opening spar almost academic in its calmness"; "Old wound on Jeffries's right eye opened"; "Both cheeks gashed to the bone"; "Jack handed out some wicked lefts"; "Terrible gruelling"; "Both shutters out of working order"; "Defeat certain after eighth round"; "Johnson hooked his left"; "The Circa.s.sian remained on his knees"; "Counting went on"; "Fatal ten was reached."

The crowd gasped. Then it shouted, it swore, it broke up swearing.

"Negroes had best crawl underground to-night," said the American; "it ain't good for negroes when their heads grow through their hair."

"Another proof," sighed Mr. Clarkson, "another proof that, on Roosevelt's principle, the United States are unfit for self-government."

When he reached his rooms it was nearly one, but a door opened softly on the top floor, and the landlady's little boy looked over the banisters and asked: "Please, sir, did Jim win, sir?"

"Let me see," said Mr. Clarkson, "which was Jim?"

XXIII

PEACE AND WAR IN THE BALANCE[7]

When your Committee invited me to deliver the Moncure Conway address this year, I was even more surprised at their choice of subject than at their choice of person. For the chosen subject was Peace, and my chief study, interest, and means of livelihood for some twenty years past has been War. It seemed to me like inviting a butcher to lecture on vegetarianism. So I wrote, with regret, to refuse. But your Committee very generously repeated the invitation, giving me free permission to take my own line upon the subject; and then I perceived that you did not ask for the mere celebration of an established doctrine, but were still prepared to join in pursuit, following the track of reason wherever it might lead, as became the traditions of this cla.s.sic building, which I sometimes think of as reason's last lair. I perceived that what you demanded was not panegyric, or immutable commonplace, but, above all things, sincerity. And sincerity is a dog with nose to the ground, uncertain of the trail, often losing the scent, often harking back, but possessed by an honest determination to hunt down the truth, if by any means it can be caught.

It is one of my many regrets for wasted opportunity that I never heard Moncure Conway; but, with a view to this address, I have lately read a good deal of his writings. Especially I have read the _Autobiography_, an attractive record and commentary on the intellectual history of rapidly-changing years, most of which I remember. On the question of peace Moncure Conway was uncompromising--very nearly uncompromising.

Many Americans feel taller when they think of Lexington and the shot that echoed round the world. Moncure Conway only saw lynchers in the champions of freedom who flung the tea-chests into the sea; and in the War of Independence he saw nothing but St. George Was.h.i.+ngton spearing a George the Third dragon.[8] He quotes with approval the saying of Quaker Mifflin to Was.h.i.+ngton: "General, the worst peace is better than the best war."[9] Many Americans regard the Civil War between North and South with admiration as a stupendous contest either for freedom and unity, or for self-government and good manners. Moncure Conway was strongly and consistently opposed to it. The question of slavery did not affect his opposition. He thought few men had wrought so much evil as John Brown of Harper's Ferry, whose soul marched with the Northern Armies.[10] "I hated violence more than slavery," he wrote, "and much as I disliked President Buchanan, I thought him right in declining to coerce the seceding States."[11] Just before the war began, he wrote in a famous pamphlet: "War is always wrong; it is because the victories of Peace require so much more courage than those of war that they are rarely won."[12] "I see in the Union War," he wrote, "a great catastrophe."

"Alas! the promises of the sword are always broken--always." And in the concluding pages of his _Autobiography_, as though uttering his final message to the world, he wrote:

"There can arise no important literature, nor art, nor real freedom and happiness, among any people until they feel their uniform a livery, and see in every battlefield an inglorious arena of human degradation.... The only cause that can uplift the genius of a people as the anti-slavery cause did in America is the war against war."

For the very last words of his _Autobiography_ he wrote:

"And now, at the end of my work, I offer yet a new plan for ending war--namely, that the friends of peace and justice shall insist on a demand that every declaration of war shall be regarded as a sentence of death by one people on another; and shall be made only after a full and formal judicial inquiry and trial, at which the accused people shall be fairly represented.... The meanest prisoner cannot be executed without a trial. A declaration of war is the most terrible of sentences: it sentences a people to be slain and mutilated, their women to be widowed, their children orphaned, their cities burned, their commerce destroyed. The real motives of every declaration of war are unavowed and unavowable. Let them be dragged into the light! No war would ever occur after a fair judicial trial by a tribunal in any country open to its citizens.

"Implore peace, O my reader, from whom I now part. Implore peace, not of deified thunderclouds, but of every man, woman, or child thou shalt meet. Do not merely offer the prayer, 'Give peace in our time,' but do thy part to answer it!

Then, at least, though the world be at strife, there shall be peace in thee."[13]

That sounds uncompromising. We cannot doubt that one of the main motives of Conway's life was "War against War." He suffered for peace; he lost friends and influence for peace; we may almost say he was exiled for peace. Those are the marks of sincerity. He, if anyone, we might suppose, was a "Peace-at-any-price man." But let us remember one pa.s.sage in an address delivered only a few months before his death. In that address, on William Penn, given in April 1907 (he died in the following November), speaking of Mr. Carnegie's proposal for a compulsory Court of International Arbitration, he said:

"In order to prevent swift attacks of one nation on another without notice, or outrages on weak and helpless tribes, there shall be selected from the armaments of the world a combination armament to act as the international police.... Even if in the last resort there were needed such united force of mankind to prevent any one nation from breaking the peace in which the interests of all nations are involved, that would not be an act of war, but civilisation's self-defence. Self-defence is not war, although the phrase is often used to disguise aggression."[14]

Speaking with all respect for a distinguished man's memory, I disagree with every word of those sentences. An international police, directed by the combined Powers, would almost certainly develop into a tremendous engine of injustice and oppression. The Holy Alliance after Napoleon's overthrow aimed at an international police, and we want no more Holy Alliances. I would not trust a single government in the world to enter into such a combination. I would rather trust Satan to combine with sin.

Think of the fate of Egypt from Arabi's time up to the present, or of Turkey controlled by the Powers, or of Persia and Morocco to-day! But the point to notice is that you cannot alter things by altering names.

The united force of civilisation brought to bear upon any nation, however guilty, would be an act of war, however much you called it international police. Civilisation's self-defence would be war. Every form of self-defence by violence, whether it disguises aggression or not, is war. For many generations every war has been excused as self-defence of one kind or another. I can hardly imagine a modern war that would not be excused by both sides as defensive. By making these admissions--by maintaining that self-defence is not war--Moncure Conway gives away the whole case of the "peace-at-any-price man," He comes down from the ideal positions of the early Quakers, the modern Tolstoyans, and the Salvation Army. They preach non-resistance to evil consistently. Like all extremists who have no reservations, but will trust to their principle though it slay them, they have gained a certain glow, a fervour of life, which shrivels up our ordinary compromises and political considerations. But by advocating civilisation's self-defence in the form of a combined international armament, Moncure Conway abandoned that vantage ground. He became sensible, arguable, uncertain, submitting himself to the balances of reason and expediency like the rest of us.

A certain glow, a fervour of life--those are signs that always distinguish extremists--men and women who are willing literally to die for their cause. I did not find those signs at the Hague Peace Conference, when I was sent there in 1907 as being a war correspondent.

Such an a.s.sembly ought to have marked an immense advance in human history. It was the sort of thing that last-century poets dreamed of as the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. It surpa.s.sed Prince Albert's vision of an eternity of International Exhibitions. One would have expected such an occasion to be heralded by Schiller's _Ode to Joy_ sounding through the triumph of the Choral Symphony. Long and dubious has been the music's struggle with pain, but at last, in great simplicity, the voices of the men give out the immortal theme, and the whole universe joins in harmony with a thunder of exultation:

"Seid umschlungen, Millionen, Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt!"

Surely at the Hague Conference, in the fulfilment of time, peace had come on earth and goodwill among men. Here once more would sound the song that the morning stars sang together, when all the sons of G.o.d shouted for joy.

As loaders in that celestial chorus, I found about 400 frock-coated, top-hatted gentlemen from various parts of the world--elderly diplomatists, amba.s.sadors inured to the stifling atmosphere of courts, Foreign Ministers who had served their time of intrigue, professors who wors.h.i.+pped law, worthy officials primed with a stock of phrases about "the n.o.ble sentiments of justice and humanity," but reared in the deadening circle of uniforms, decorations, and insincere courtesy, having no more knowledge of the people's desires than of the people's bacon, and instructed to maintain the cause of peace chiefly by safeguarding their country's military interests. An atmosphere of suspicion and secrecy surrounded them, more dense than the fog of war.

For their president they elected an amba.s.sador who had grown old in the service of three Tsars, and now represented a tyrant who refused the first principles of peace to his own people, and repressed the struggle for freedom by methods of barbarism such as no general could use against a belligerent in the stress of war without incurring the execration of mankind.

With commendable industry, those delegates at this Second Peace Conference devoted themselves to careful preparations for the next war, especially for the next naval war. They appeared to me like two farmers making arrangements to abstain from burning each other's hay-ricks.

"Look here," says one, "this rick-burning's a dangerous and expensive job. Let us give up wax vestas, and stick to safety matches." "Done!"

says the other. "Now mind! Only safety matches in future!" and they part with mutual satisfaction, conscious of thrift and Christian forbearance.

Or, again, I thought the situation might be expressed in the form of a fable, how the Fox of the Conference said to the Rabbit of Peace, "With what sauce, Brer Rabbit, would you like to be eaten?" "Please, Mr. Fox, I don't want to be eaten at all," said the Rabbit "Now," answered the Fox, "you are gettin' away from the pint."

Something, no doubt, has been gained. Even the jealous diplomatists and cautious lawyers at The Hague have secured something. Mankind had gradually learnt that certain forms of horror were too horrible for average civilisation, and The Hague confirmed man's veto, in some particulars. Laying mines at sea and the destruction of private property at sea were not forbidden, nor were the rights of belligerents extended to subject races or rebels. Men and women are still exposed to every kind of torture and brutality, provided the brutalities are practised by their own superior government. But it is something, certainly, to have gained a permanent Court of Arbitration for the trial of disputed points between nations. The points are at present minor, it is true. Questions affecting honour, vital interests, and independence are expressly excluded. But the habit of referring any question at all to arbitration is a gain, if only we could trust the members of the Court. So long as those members are appointed by the present governments of Europe, there is danger of the Court becoming merely another engine in the hands of despotism, as was proved by the conduct of the Savarkar case at The Hague in February 1911. But the field of reference will grow imperceptibly, and we have had President Taft protesting that he desires an Arbitration Treaty with England from which even questions of honour, vital interests, and independence shall not be excluded.[15] Out of the eater cometh forth meat. Even a blood-stained Tsar's proposals for peace have not been entirely without effect. But in the midst of the warring diplomatists at The Hague one could discover none of that glow, that fervour of devotion to peace, which distinguished the early Quakers and is still felt among a few fine enthusiasts. The first duty imposed upon every representative at The Hague was to get everyone to do as much as possible for peace, except himself. It is not so that the world is moved.

Neither in the representatives nor in their governments can we find any principle or pa.s.sionate desire for peace. The emperors, kings, and men of wealth, birth, and leisure who impudently claim the right of deciding questions of peace and war in all nations, display no objection to war, provided it looks profitable. Provided it looks profitable--what a vista of devilry those words call up! What a theme for satire! But also, to some extent, and in the present day, what ground for hope!

They bring us suddenly face to face with a little book which will leave its mark, not only on the mind, but, perhaps, on the actual and external history of man. In my opinion, the next n.o.bel prize should be shared equally between Mr. J.A. Hobson and Mr. Lane, the younger writer who calls himself Norman Angell. Between them they have completely a.n.a.lysed the motives, the pretexts, the hypocrisies, the deceptions, the corruptions, and the fallacies of modern war.[16] When we say that the men who impudently claim the control of foreign politics among the nations display no objection to war, provided it looks profitable, we enter at once the sphere of that "Great Illusion" which is the distinguis.h.i.+ng theme of Norman Angell's pamphlet.

His main contention is that in modern times, owing to the interdependence of nations, especially in trade, the readiness of communication, the conduct of commerce and finance almost entirely by the exchange of bills and cheques, the complicated banking relations, and the solidarity of credit in all great capitals, so that if London credit is shaken the finance of Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, and New York feels the shock almost equally--for all these reasons modern war cannot be profitable even to the victorious Power.

To advocates of peace, here comes a gleam of hope at last--perhaps the strongest gleam that has reached us yet. Upon the kings of the earth, sitting, as Milton said, with awful eye; upon diplomatists, amba.s.sadors, Foreign Office officials, courtiers, clergy, and the governing cla.s.s in general, appeals to pity, mercy, humanity, religion, or reason have had no effect whatever. If you think I speak too strongly, look around you.

Name within the last century any ruler or minister who has been guided by humanity or religion in the question of peace or war. Name any ruler who has abstained from war because force is no argument. With the possible exception of Mr. Gladstone in the cases of the _Alabama_ and Majuba Hill, I can think of none. Against that one possible exception place all the wars of a century past, including three that were among the most terrible in human history--the Napoleonic war, the Franco-German, and the Russo-j.a.panese. And as to the sweet influences of Christianity, remember the Russian Archbishops, how they blessed the sacred Icons that were to lead the Russian peasants to the slaughter of j.a.panese peasants. Remember our Archbishop of Canterbury in February 1911 deeply regretting that a previous engagement prevented him from pa.s.sing on the blessing of the Apostles to the battles.h.i.+p _Thunderer_.

Remember how he sent his wife as a subst.i.tute to occupy the Apostolic position in the hope that the hand which rocks the cradle might prove equally efficacious.

Against the pugnacity and courage which urge our rulers to send other people to die for them, the claims of humanity, reason, and religion have no effect. The new hope is that self-interest may succeed where the motives that act upon most decent people almost invariably fail. Norman Angell's appeal goes straight to the pocket, and his choice of that objective inspires hope. If rulers can no longer plead that by war they are advancing the material interests of their State, if it is recognised that even a victorious war involves as great disaster as defeat, or even greater (and it is remarkable that, in one of his latest speeches, Moltke maintained that, next to defeat, the greatest disaster which could befall any State was victory)--if it can be shown that, in a war between great nations, trade does not follow the flag, but moves rapidly in the other direction, then one of the pretexts of our rulers will be removed, one veil of hypocrisy will be stripped off. To that extent the hope of peace will have grown brighter, and that extent is large.

On the whole, it is the brightest hope that has lately risen--or the brightest but one which we will speak of later on. I would only hint at two considerations which may obscure it. Granted that in modern times war-power or victory does not give prosperity; that the invader cannot destroy or capture the enemy's trade; that his own finance is equally disturbed; and that the most enormous indemnity can add nothing to the victorious nation's actual wealth--granted all this, nevertheless, the warlike, though vicarious, heroism of our rulers might not on this account be restrained. In many, if not most, recent wars the object has not been national aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, or even national commerce, but private gain. We have but to think of the South African War, so cleverly engineered in the gold-mining interest, or of the Russo-j.a.panese war, where so many thousands died for the Russian aristocracy's timber concessions on the Yalu. Or, as permanent incitements to warfare, we may think of all the manufacturers of armaments, the enormous companies that fatten on blood and iron, the contractors, purveyors, horse-breeders, tailors, advertisers, army-coaches, landowners, and well-to-do families whose wealth, livelihood, or position depends mainly upon the continuance of warlike preparations, and whose personal interests are enormously increased by actual war. When a nation is pouring out its wealth at the rate of 2,000,000 or even 10,000,000 a week, as in the future it may well do, much of it will run away to waste, but most of it will stick to one finger or another; and the dirtier the finger the more will stick. It seems silly, it seems almost incredible, that, only a few generations ago, the peoples of Europe were engaged in killing each other as fast as possible over a question of dynasty--whether this or that poor forked radish of a mortal should be called King of Spain or King of France. But in our own days men kill each other for dynasties of cash--for wealthy firms and intermarried families. Nations fight that private companies may show a higher percentage on dividends. It is silly; it is almost incredible. But to shareholders and speculators instigated by these motives Norman Angell's appeal is futile. Even a victorious war may spell disaster to the nation; but even defeat spells cash for them.

Holland was in February 1911 compelled to buy twenty-four inferior big guns from Krupp, without contract or compet.i.tion, for the defence of her Javanese possessions, which no one thinks of attacking. Do you suppose that Krupp's Company regards war as disadvantageous, or circulates Norman Angell's book for a new gospel? "What plunder!" cried Blucher, looking over London from St. Paul's. Nowadays he would not wait to plunder a foreign nation; he would invest in a Dreadnought company, and plunder his own. Our naval expenditure in 1911-12 amounted to 46,000,000; our army expenditure to nearly 28,000,000--a total of 73,650,000 for what is called defence! Ten years ago we were in the midst of a most expensive war. Nevertheless, in ten years the annual expenditure upon armaments has increased by 14,000,000--far more than enough to double our Old Age Pensions. Within thirty years the naval estimates have more than quadrupled. Are we to suppose that no one grows fat on the people's money? _Quidquid delirant reges_. The kings of the earth stood up and violently raged together; their subjects died. But now the kings of the earth are raging financiers with a shrewd eye to business, and their subjects starve to pay them. We used to be told that the man who paid the piper called the tune. Do the people call the tune of peace or war? Not at all. The ruling cla.s.ses both call the tune and pocket the pay.

There is one other point that may obscure the hope arising from Norman Angell's book. His main contention concerns wars between great Powers, nearly equally matched--Powers of high civilisation, with elaborate systems of credit and complicated interdependence of trade. But most recent wars have been attacks--defensive attacks, of course--upon small, powerless, and semi-civilised nations by the great Powers. Under the pretext of extending law and order, justice, peace, good government, and the blessings of the Christian faith, a great Power attacks a small and half-organised people with the object of taking up the White Man's Burden, capturing markets, contracting for railways, and extending territory. To wars of this kind, I think, Norman Angell's comforting theory does not apply--the great illusion does not come in. A strong Power may conquer Morocco, or Persia, or seize Bosnia, or enslave Finland, or penetrate Tibet, or maintain its hold on India, or occupy Egypt, or even destroy the Dutch Republics of South Africa, without disorganising its own commerce or raising a panic on its own credit.

Most actual fighting has lately been of this character. It aims at the suppression of freedom in small or unarmed nationalities, the absorption of independent countries into great empires. It is the modern counterpart of the slave-trade. It is supported by similar arguments, and may be quite lucrative, as the slave-trade was.

Actual warfare generally takes this form now, but behind it one may always feel the latent or diplomatic warfare that consists in the calculation of armaments. A great Power says: "How much of Persia, Turkey, China, or Morocco do I dare to swallow? Germany, Russia, France, j.a.pan, England, or Spain (as the case may be) will not like it if I swallow much. But what force could she bring against me, if it came to extremities, and what force could I set against hers?" Then the Powers set to counting up army corps and Dreadnoughts. In Dreadnoughts they seldom get their addition-sums right, but they do their poor best, strike a balance, and declare that a satisfactory agreement has been come to. This latent war is expensive, but cheaper than real war--and it is not b.l.o.o.d.y; it does not shock credit, though it weakens it; it does not ruin commerce, though it hampers it. The drain upon the nations is exhausting, but it does not kill men so horribly, and our rulers do not feel it; for the people pay, and the concession-hunters, the contractors, the company directors, and suchlike people with whom our rulers chiefly a.s.sociate, grow very fat.

If, then, Norman Angell's hopeful theory applies only partially to these common wars of Imperial aggrandis.e.m.e.nt and the perpetual diplomatic war by comparison of armaments, to what may we look for hope? Lord Rosebery would be the last person to whom one would look for hope in general. His hope is too like despair for prudence to smother. Yet, in his speech at the Press banquet during the Imperial Conference of 1909, when he spoke of our modern civilisation "rattling into barbarism," he gave a hint of the movement to which alone I am inclined to trust. "I can only foresee," he exclaimed, "the working-cla.s.ses of Europe uniting in a great federation to cry: 'We will have no more of this madness and foolery, which is grinding us to powder!'" The words may not have been entirely sincere--something had to be said for the Liberal Press tables, which cheered while the Imperialists sat glum; but there, I believe, lies the ultimate and only possible chance of hope. We must revolutionise our Governments; we must recognise the abject folly of allowing these vital questions of peace, war, and armaments to be decided according to the caprice or advantage of a single man, a clique of courtiers, a gang of adventurers, or the Cabal of a Cabinet formed from the very cla.s.ses which have most to gain and least to lose, whether from actual war or the compet.i.tion in armaments. Over this Executive, whether it is called Emperor, King, Court, or Cabinet, the people of the nation has no control--or nothing like adequate control--in foreign affairs and questions of war. In England in the year 1910 not a single hour was allowed for Foreign Office debate in the Commons. In no country of Europe have the men and women of the State a real voice in a matter which touches every man and every woman so closely as war touches them--even distant war, but far more the kind of war that devastates the larder, sweeps out the drawing-room, encamps in the back garden, and at any moment may reduce the family by half.[17] One remembers that picture in Carlyle, how thirty souls from the British village of Dumdrudge are brought face to face with thirty souls from a French Dumdrudge, after infinite effort. The word "Fire!" is given, and they blow the souls out of one another:

"Had these men any quarrel?" asks the Sartor. "Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart--were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot."

Slowly and dimly the Dumdrudges of the world--the peasants and artisans, the working people, the people who have most right to count--are beginning to recognise the absurdity of paying and dying for wars of which they know nothing, and in the quarrels of kings and ministers for whom they have neither reverence nor love. "What is the British Empire to me," I heard a Whitechapel man say, "when I have to open the window before I get room to put on my trousers?" A section of the country was opposed to the Crimean War; a far larger section was opposed to the Boer War. Both were ridiculed, persecuted, and maltreated; but nearly everyone now admits that both were right. In the next unjust or unreasonable war the peace party will be stronger still.

Something has thus been gained; but the greatest gain ever yet won for the cause of peace was the refusal of the Catalonian reservists to serve in the war against the Riff mountaineers of Morocco in July 1909. "Risk our lives and the subsistence of our little families to secure dividends for shareholders in mining concessions illegally inveigled from a semi-savage chieftain? Never! We will raise h.e.l.l rather, and die in revolution upon our native streets." So Barcelona flared to heaven, and for nearly a week the people held the vast city. I have seen many n.o.ble, as well as many terrible, events, but none more n.o.ble or of finer promise for mankind than the sudden uprising of the Catalan working people against a dastardly and inglorious war, waged for the benefit of a few speculators in Paris and Madrid. Ferrer had no direct part in that rising; his only part lay in sowing the seed of freedom by his writings.

It was a pity he had no other part. He lost an opportunity such as comes in few men's lives--and he was executed just the same.[18]

The event was small and brief, but it was one of the most significant in modern times. If the working cla.s.ses refuse to fight, what will the kings, ministers, speculators, and contractors do? Will they go out to fight each other? Then, indeed, warfare would become a blessing undisguised, and we could freely join the poet in calling carnage G.o.d's daughter. When I was a child I drew up a scheme for a vast British army recruited from our lunatic asylums. With lunatic soldiers, as I explained to my mother, the heavier our losses, the greater would be our gain. It seems to me still a promising idea. But an army recruited from kings, lords, Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament, speculators, contractors, and officials--the people who are the primary originators of our wars--would have even greater advantages, and the losses in battle would be balanced by still greater compensations.

The Barcelona rising was, indeed, full of promise. It marked the gradual approach of a time when the working-people, who always supply most of the men to be killed in war, will refuse to fight for the ruling cla.s.ses, as they would now refuse to fight for dynasties. If they refuse to fight in the ordinary Government wars, either war will cease, or it will rise to the higher stage of war between cla.s.s and cla.s.s. It will become either civil war--the most terrible and difficult, but the finest kind of war, because some principle of the highest value must be at stake before civil war can arise; or it will become a combined war of the cla.s.ses in various countries between whom there is a feeling of sympathy and common interest. That would take the form of a civil war extended throughout Europe, and perhaps America and the highly-developed parts of Asia. The allied forces in the various countries would then strike where the need was greatest, the French or English army corps of working-men going to the a.s.sistance of Russian or German working-men against the forces of despotism or capital. But a social war on that scale, however desirable, is like the Spanish fleet in the _Critic_--it is not yet in sight. The growing perfection of modern arms gives too enormous an advantage to established forces. The movement is much more likely to take the Barcelona form of refusal to fight; and if the peoples of Europe could combine in that determination, the effect would be irresistible. This international movement is, in fact, very slowly, growing. The telegraph, the railway, cheap tickets, Cook's tours, the power of reading, and even the peculiar language taught as French in our schools, combine to wear away the hostility of peoples. The "beastly foreigner" is almost extinct. The man who has been for a week in Germany, or for a trip to lovely Lucerne, feels a reflected glory in saying those foreigners are not so bad. There was a fine old song with a refrain, "He's a good 'un when you know him, but you've got to know him first." Well, we are getting to know the foreigner whom we once called "beastly."

Ultimately the best, the only hope for peace lies in the determination of the peoples not to do anything so silly as to settle the quarrels of their rulers by killing each other. But then come the deeper questions: Do people love peace? Do they hate war? Would the total abolition of war be a good thing for the world? After a lengthy period of peace there usually arises a craving for battle. Nearly fifty years of peace followed the defeat of the Persians in Greece, and at the end of that time, just before the Peloponnesian War, which was to bring ruin on the country, Thucydides tells us that all Greece, being ignorant of the realities of war, stood a-tiptoe with excitement. It was the same in England just before our disastrous South African War, when readers of Kipling glutted themselves with imaginary slaughter, and Henley cried to our country that her whelps wanted blooding. In England this martial spirit was more violent than in Greece, because, when war actually came, the Greeks were themselves exposed to all its horrors and sufferings, but in England the bloodthirsty mind could enjoy the conflict in a suburban train with a half-penny paper. As in bull-fights or gladiatorial shows, the spectators watched the expensive but entertaining scene of blood and death from a safe and comfortable distance. They gave the cash and let the credit go; they thoroughly appreciated the rumble of a distant drum. "Blood! blood!" they cried.

"Give us more blood to make our own blood circulate more agreeably under our unbroken skins!" Christianity joined in the cry through the mouths of its best accredited representatives. As at the Crucifixion it is written, "On that day Herod and Pilate were friends," so on the outbreak of a singularly unjust, avaricious, and cruel war, the Christian Churches of England displayed for the first and last time some signs of unity. Canterbury and Armagh kissed each other, and the City Temple applauded the embraces of unrighteousness and war. Dean Farrar of Canterbury, concluding his glorification of the h.e.l.l which I then saw enacted in South Africa, quoted with heartfelt approval the Archbishop of Armagh's poem:--

"And, as I note how n.o.bly natures form Under the war's red rain, I deem it true That He who made the earthquake and the storm Perhaps makes battles too.