sent affair the actuating motives have been of class origin,
and have been worked through secret channels, the motives so put in
action have all been base and mean. That would be going too far. Some of
the motives may have been high-minded and generous, some may have been
mean, and others may have been mean and yet _unconsciously_ so. But
certainly when one looks at the conditions of public and political life,
and the arrangements and concatenations by which influence there is
exerted and secured, and sees (as one must) the pretty bad corruption
which pervades the various parties in all the modern States--the
commercial briberies, the lies of the Press, the poses and
prevarications of Diplomats and Ministers--one cannot but realize the
great probability that the private advantage of individuals or classes
has been (in the present case) a prevailing instigation. The fact that
in Britain two influential and honourable Cabinet Ministers resigned at
once on the declaration of war (a fact upon which the Press has been
curiously silent) cannot but "give one to think." One cannot but realize
that the fighting men in all these nations are the pawns and counters of
a game which is being played for the benefit--or supposed benefit--of
certain classes; that public opinion is a huge millstream which has to
be engineered; that the Press is a channel for its direction, and Money
the secret power which commands the situation.

The fact is sad, but it must be faced. And the facing of it leads
inevitably to the question, "How, then, can Healing ever come?" If (it
will be said) the origin of wars is in the diseased condition of the
nations, what prospect is there of their ever ceasing? And one sees at
once that the prospect is not immediate. One sees at once that Peace
Societies and Nobel Prizes and Hague Tribunals and reforms of the
Diplomatic Service and democratic control of Foreign Secretaries and
Quaker and Tolstoyan preachments--though all these things may be good in
their way--will never bring us swiftly to the realization of peace. The
roots of the Tree of Life lie deeper.

We have seen it a dozen times in the foregoing pages. Only when the
nations cease to be diseased in themselves will they cease fighting with
each other. And the disease of the modern nations is the disease of
disunity--not, as I have already said, the mere existence of variety of
occupation and habit, for that is perfectly natural and healthy, but the
disease