d too far-reaching to bring instant consolation. Apart
from that, too, it cannot decide whether any war, however great, can
ever abolish the natural and primitive fighting instinct in man.

The source from which we must draw the justification for our optimism
lies much nearer to hand. We must regard the effect that warring life
has already produced upon each individual member of the nations who
are and who are not engaged in it.

At the very heart of it is the effect on the man who is actually
fighting. Take the case of him who before the war was either working
in a factory, who was a clerk in a business house, or who was nothing
at all beyond the veriest loafer and bar-lounger. To begin with, he
was perhaps purely selfish. The foundation of his normal life was
self-protection. Whether worthless or worthy, whether hating or
respecting his superiors, the private gain and comfort for himself and
his was the object of his existence. He becomes a soldier, and that
act alone is a conversion. His wife and children are cared for, it is
true; but he himself, for a shilling a day, sells to his country his
life, his health, his pleasures, and his hopes for the future. To make
good measure he throws in cheerfulness, devotion, philosophy, humour,
and an unfailing kindness. One man, for instance, sells up three
grocery businesses in the heart of Lancashire, an ambition which it
has taken him ten years to accomplish. Without a trace of bitterness
he divorces himself from the routine of a lifetime, and goes out to
France to begin life again at the very bottom of a new ladder. He who
for years had many men under him is now under all, and receives,
unquestioningly, orders which in a different sphere he had been
accustomed to give. Apart from the mere letter of obedience and
discipline he gains a spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice, which
turns the bare military instrument into a divine virtue. He may, for
instance, take up the duties of an officer's servant. Immediately he
throws himself whole-heartedly into a new form of selfless generosity,
which leads him to a thousand ways of care and forethought, that even
the tenderest woman could hardly conceive. The man who receives this
unwavering devotion can only accept it with the knowledge that no one
can deserve it, and that it is greater gain to him who gives than to
him who takes.

What life of peace is there that produces this god-like fibre in the
plainest of men? Why, indeed, is