at divide and embitter mankind have
proved stronger, at the moment of strain, than those which bind them
together in fellowship and co-operation. "What we are suffering from,"
says one of the greatest of living democrats,[1] "is something far more
widespread than the German Empire. Is it not the case that what we are in
face of is nothing less than the breakdown in a certain idea and hope of
civilisation, which was associated with the liberal and industrial movement
of the last century? There was to be an inevitable and glorious progress
of humanity of which science, commerce, and education were to be the main
instruments, and which was to be crowned with a universal peace. Older
prophets like Thomas Carlyle expressed their contempt for the shallowness
of this prevailing ideal, and during this century we have been becoming
more and more doubtful of its value. But we are now witnessing its
downfall. Science, commerce, and education have done, and can do, much for
us. But they cannot expel the human spirit from human nature. What is
that? At bottom, love of self, self-interest, selfishness individual and
corporate. As a theory, the philosophy of selfishness has often been
exposed. But, to an extent that is difficult to exaggerate, it has been the
motive, acknowledged and relied upon without shame or apology in commerce,
in politics and in practical life. Our civilisation has been based on
selfishness, our commerce on competition and the unrestricted love of
wealth, our education on the motive of self-advancement. And science and
knowledge, made the instrument of selfishness and competition, have armed
man against man, class against class, and nation against nation, with
tenfold the power of destruction which belonged to a less educated and
highly organised age."

[Footnote 1: _The War and the Church_, by Charles Gore (Oxford, Mowbray,
1914).]

The civilised world has been shocked during the past months at the
spectacle of the open adoption by a great Power of this philosophy
of selfishness. Men had not realised that the methods and principles
underlying so much of our commercial and industrial life could be
transferred so completely to the field of politics or so ruthlessly pressed
home by military force. But it is well for us to remember that it is not
Prussia, even in the modern world, who invented the theory of Blood and
Iron or the philosophy of Force. The Iron Law of Wages is a generation
older than Bismarck: and "B