ons which shall yield adequate guarantees of peace. For the first
time in history great reading and thinking communities will give their
chief attention to international politics. They will recognize the
urgency of the work of building the society of nations upon a basis of
genuinely representative government. Behind this reasonable process of
constructive thinking, carried on in every country by politically
convinced individuals and groups, will be the powerful support of the
unthinking, suffering masses, motived by no clear conception of causes
or remedies, but by that collective instinct of self-preservation which
impels the herd to avoid destruction and to follow leaders who point the
way to safety.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

_The International Crisis in its Ethical and Psychological Aspects_.
Humphrey Milford.

G. Lowes Dickinson, _After the War_. Fifield.

C.E. Hooper, _The Wider Outlook beyond the World-War_. Watts & Co.

F.N. Keen, _The World in Alliance_. Southwood.

Norman Angell, _Prussianism and its Destruction_. Heinemann.

Allison Phillips, _The Confederation of Europe_. Longmans.

_The New Statesman_. Special Supplement. Suggestions for the Prevention
of War.

J.A. Hobson, _Towards International Government_. Allen & Unwin.

XIII

RELIGION AS A UNIFYING INFLUENCE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION

The argument of these essays has been to prove that even now, in the
greatest armed conflict of the world, the term 'Christendom' is not
inapplicable to Europe. There is a real unity in Western civilization--a
unity due in large measure to the influence of religious faith and
organization. The mediaeval Church gave the Teutonic peoples of Northern
Europe, and the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, their first
momentous introduction into the great inheritance formed by the uneasy
blending of Christian faith and literature with Greco-Roman
civilization. The spiritual achievements of Greek and Roman, Jew and
Christian have remained the common possessions of the West, the
foundation of what is still Christendom. In so far as it exists
Christendom witnesses to the formative power of a religious faith: in so
far as it remains a dream, we may suspect it demands the renewed impulse
of a faith enlightened and chastened by all the experience of the past.

If, however, we ask, Is there any likelihood that a common religious
faith and life will contribute to raise Western civilization to a yet
higher unity?