t
responsibility, is to those who give so much in their service, that
recognition will of itself do more than can be done by any conclave of
statesmen to discourage war. It was the monk Telemachus, according to
the old story, who stopped the gladiatorial games at Rome, and was
stoned by the people. If war, in process of time, shall be abolished,
or, failing that, shall be governed by the codes of humanity and
chivalry, like a decent tournament; then the one sacrificial figure
which will everywhere be honoured for the change will be the figure not
of a priest or a politician, but of a hospital nurse.

THE WAR AND THE PRESS

_A paper read to the Essay Society, Eton College, March 14, 1918._

When you asked me to read or speak to you, I promised to speak about the
War. What I have to say is wholly orthodox, but it is none the worse for
that. Indeed, when I think how entirely the War possesses our thoughts
and how entirely we are agreed concerning it, I seem to see a new
meaning in the creeds of the religions. These creeds grew up by general
consent, and no one who believed them grudged repeating them. In the
face of an indifferent or hostile world the faithful found themselves
obliged to define their belief, and to strengthen themselves by an
unwearying and united profession of faith. It is the enemy who gives
meaning to a religious creed: without our creed we cannot win. So I am
willing to remind you of what you know, rather than to try to introduce
you to novelties.

The strength of the enemy lies in his creed; not in the lands that he
has ravished from his neighbours. If his creed does not prevail, his
lands will not help him. Germany has taken lands from Belgium, Serbia,
Roumania, Russia, and the rest, but unless her digestion is as strong as
her appetite, she will fail to keep them. If she is to hold them in
peace, the peoples who inhabit these lands must be either exterminated
or converted to the German creed. Lands can be annexed by a successful
campaign; they can be permanently conquered only by the operations of
peace. The people who survive will be a weakness to the German Empire
unless they accept what they are offered, a share in the German creed.

That creed has not many natural attractions for the peoples on whom it
is imposed by force. It is an intensely patriotic creed; it insists on
racial supremacy, and on unity to be achieved by violence. Pleading and
persuasion have little part in it except