onditions of the present day. War is one of its conditions; it is its
principal condition. It lies at the heart of every question agitating
the fears and hopes of a humanity divided against itself. The succeeding
ages have changed nothing except the watchwords of the armies. The
intellectual stage of mankind being as yet in its infancy, and States,
like most individuals, having but a feeble and imperfect consciousness of
the worth and force of the inner life, the need of making their existence
manifest to themselves is determined in the direction of physical
activity. The idea of ceasing to grow in territory, in strength, in
wealth, in influence--in anything but wisdom and self-knowledge--is
odious to them as the omen of the end. Action, in which is to be found
the illusion of a mastered destiny, can alone satisfy our uneasy vanity
and lay to rest the haunting fear of the future--a sentiment concealed,
indeed, but proving its existence by the force it has, when invoked, to
stir the passions of a nation. It will be long before we have learned
that in the great darkness before us there is nothing that we need fear.
Let us act lest we perish--is the cry. And the only form of action open
to a State can be of no other than aggressive nature.

There are many kinds of aggressions, though the sanction of them is one
and the same--the magazine rifle of the latest pattern. In preparation
for or against that form of action the States of Europe are spending now
such moments of uneasy leisure as they can snatch from the labours of
factory and counting-house.

Never before has war received so much homage at the lips of men, and
reigned with less disputed sway in their minds. It has harnessed science
to its gun-carriages, it has enriched a few respectable manufacturers,
scattered doles of food and raiment amongst a few thousand skilled
workmen, devoured the first youth of whole generations, and reaped its
harvest of countless corpses. It has perverted the intelligence of men,
women, and children, and has made the speeches of Emperors, Kings,
Presidents, and Ministers monotonous with ardent protestations of
fidelity to peace. Indeed, war has made peace altogether its own, it has
modelled it on its own image: a martial, overbearing, war-lord sort of
peace, with a mailed fist, and turned-up moustaches, ringing with the din
of grand manoeuvres, eloquent with allusions to glorious feats of arms;
it has made peace so magnificent