it will
take more than two generations to efface. Indeed, German blood-lust will
become one of the standing legends of History.

The Village Wife knows nothing of the Germans, however, and her
reproaches strike at the heart of Mankind. So long as Mankind looks
upon aggressive war as a reasonable, if ultimate, appeal, her reproaches
will have force, and be deserved. They, or something like them (with the
sanction of inspiration upon them) will, I believe, be the means of our
redemption. As human nature still actually is, no League of Nations
conceivable to us will be able to save us from war. Rend your hearts and
not your armaments. Let us learn to look War in the face, and while the
blood is cold, so that we may know what we are meaning to do. Let us put
a moral taboo upon it, such as we have put upon parricide, or incest, or
cannibalism. For certain, in those matters, the reason has put a
sanction on the conscience. So will it in the matter of aggressive war.
Side by side with that, as we now see, we must change the governance of
nations. If those who do a nation's work are given their due share of
that nation's government, war I firmly believe, will become a dark
memory, a blotted cloud upon a past age. "Hundreds of years ago," it
will one day be said to some wondering child, "men hired men to murder
each other for the sake of their religion or their commerce. This they
had done for thousands of years until at last, in the most dreadful of
their wars, they killed or maimed a whole generation in the space of
about four years. Then it was that men saw what they had been doing, and
for a while the world was shamed, silent. That time of silence was long
enough to turn the hearts of men."

I have put into the mouth of my Village Wife thoughts which she may
never have formulated, but which, I am very sure, lie in her heart, too
deep for any utterance but that of tears. If I know anything of village
people I know this, that they shape their lives according to Nature, and
are outraged to the root of their being by the frustration of Nature's
laws and the stultification of man's function in the scheme of things.
What the function of man is, what the power, what the dignity have been
well paraphrased in these words:

"'Neither a fixed abode, nor a form in thine own likeness, nor any gift
peculiar to thyself alone, have we given thee, O Adam, in order that
what abode, what likeness, what gifts thou shalt choose may be thine t