or the express purpose of blowing human bodies to bits
and strewing battlefields with human remains, and the human spirit
itself can hardly hold up against such a process of mechanical
slaughter, the term has ceased to be applicable. The affections and the
conscience of mankind are too violently outraged by the spectacle; and a
great mass of feeling is forming which one may fairly hope will ere long
make this form of strife impossible among the more modern peoples.

Still, even now, as Mr. Jerome himself contends, the term is partly
justified by a certain fine feeling of which it is descriptive and which
is indeed very noticeable in all ranks. Whether in the Army or Navy,
among bluejackets or private soldiers or officers, the feeling is
certainly very much that of a big game--with its own rules of honour and
decency which must be adhered to, and carried on with extraordinary
fortitude, patience, and good-humour. Whether it arises from the
mechanical nature of the slaughter, or from any other cause, the fact
remains that among our fighting people to-day--at any rate in the
West--there is very little feeling of _hatred_ towards the "enemy." It
is difficult, indeed, to hate a foe whom you do not even see. Chivalry
is not dead, and at the least cessation of the stress of conflict the
tendency to honour opponents, to fraternize with them, to succour the
wounded, and so forth, asserts itself again. And chivalry demands that
what feelings of this kind we credit to ourselves we should also credit
to the other parties in the game. We do cordially credit them to our
French and Belgian allies, and if we do not credit them quite so
cordially to the Germans, that is _partly_ at least because every lapse
from chivalrous conduct on the part of our opponents is immediately
fastened upon and made the most of by our Press. Chivalry is by no means
dead in the Teutonic breast, though the sentiment has certainly been
obscured by some modern German teachings.

While these present war-producing conditions last, we have to face them
candidly and with as much good sense as we can command (which is for the
most part only little!). We have to face them and make the best of
them--though by no means to encourage them. Perhaps after all even a war
like the present one--monstrous as it is--does not denote so great a
deviation of the old Earth from its appointed orbit as we are at first
inclined to think. Under normal conditions the deaths on our plan