d wretched, bent old men and women. It seemed too bad to be
true; even when they brushed past us in the rain we could not
believe that their sodden figures were real. They were
dematerialized by misery in some odd way.

Some of them slept in skating rinks, trucks, some in the
Amiral Ganteaume. (One's senses could not realize that to the
horrors of exile these people had added those of shipwreck
next day.) Some certainly stood in the Booking Hall outside
our hotel all night through. This sort of thing went on all
the week, and was going on when we left.

Nevertheless, I was stirred agreeably by the imagination of the shells
smashing the Emden and the men inside the Emden, and when I read the
other day that the naval guns had destroyed over 4,000 men in the German
trenches about Middlekirche I remarked that we were "doing well." It is
only on the whole that we who want to end war hate and condemn war; we
are constantly lapsing into fierceness, and if we forget this lurking
bellicosity and admiration for hard blows in our own nature then we
shall set about the task of making an end to it under hopelessly
disabling misconceptions. We shall underrate and misunderstand
altogether the very powerful forces that are against pacifist effort.

Let us consider first, then, the forces that are directly opposed to the
pacification of the world, the forces that will work openly and
definitely for the preservation of war as a human condition. And it has
to be remembered that the forces that are for a thing are almost always
more unified, more concentrated and effective than the forces that are
against it. We who are against war and want to stop it are against it
for a great multitude of reasons. There are other things in life that
we prefer, and war stops these other things. Some of us want to pursue
art, some want to live industrious lives in town or country, some would
pursue scientific developments, some want pleasures of this sort or
that, some would live lives of religion and kindliness, or religion and
austerity.

But we all agree in fixing our minds upon something else than war. And
since we fix our minds on other things, war becomes possible and
probable through our general inattention. We do not observe it, and
meanwhile the people who really care for war and soldiering fix their
minds upon it. They scheme how it shall be done, they scheme to bring it
about. Then we discover sud