ay then prove the first step towards a united
States of Europe?

But it is not alone to the political reconstruction of Germany or of
Europe that those who take an optimistic view of the issue of the
present European war look hopefully. The whole economic system of
modern capitalism will have received a shock from which the beginnings
of vast changes may date. Apart from this, however, the avowed aim of
the war, the destruction of Prussian militarism and, indirectly, the
weakening of military power throughout the world, should have
immediate and important consequences. The brutalities and crimes
committed in Belgium and the North of France at the instigation of the
military heads of this Prusso-German army do but indicate
exaggerations of the military spirit and attitude generally. Von
Hindenburg is not the first who has given utterance to the devilish
excuse for military crime and brutality that it is "more humane in the
end, since it shortens war." To refute this transparent fallacy is
scarcely necessary, since every historical student knows that military
excesses and inhumanity do not shorten but prolong war by raising
indignation and inflaming passions. The longest connected war known to
history--the Thirty Years' War--is generally acknowledged to have been
signalized by the greatest and most continuous inhumanity of any on
record. But whether military crime has the effect claimed for it or
not, we may fain hope that public opinion in Europe will insist upon
giving the "humane" commanders who "mercifully" endeavour to "shorten"
war by drastic methods of this sort a severe lesson. A few such
treated to the utmost penalties the ordinary criminal law prescribes
to the crimes of arson, murder, and robbery would teach them and their
like that war, if waged at all nowadays, must be waged decently and
not "shortened" by such devices as those in question.

If the present war with all its horrible carnage issues, even if only
in the beginning of those changes which some of us believe must
necessarily result from it--changes economical, political, and
moral--then indeed it will not have been waged in vain. With the great
intellectual powers of the Germanic people devoted, not to the
organization of military power and of national domination, but to
furthering the realization of a higher human society; with the
determination on the part of the best elements among every European
people to work together internationally with eac