loyal song. The ten thousand religions of mankind are still ten
thousand religions, all busy at keeping men apart and hostile. I see
scarcely a measurable step made anywhere towards that world kingdom of
God, which is, I assert, the manifest solution, the only formula that
can bring peace to all mankind. Mankind as a whole seems to have learnt
nothing and forgotten nothing in thirty months of war.

And then on the other hand I am aware of much quiet talking. This
book tells of how I set out to see the war, and it is largely
conversation.... Perhaps men have always expected miracles to happen;
if one had always lived in the night and only heard tell of the day, I
suppose one would have expected dawn to come as a vivid flash of light.
I suppose one would still think it was night long after the things about
one had crept out of the darkness into visibility. In comparison with
all previous wars there has been much more thinking and much more
discussion. If most of the talk seems to be futile, if it seems as if
everyone were talking and nobody doing, it does not follow that things
are not quietly slipping and sliding out of their old adjustments
amidst the babble and because of the babble. Multitudes of men must be
struggling with new ideas. It is reasonable to argue that there must
be reconsideration, there must be time, before these millions of mental
efforts can develop into a new collective purpose and really _show_--in
consequences.

But that they will do so is my hope always and, on the whole, except in
moods of depression and impatience, my belief. When one has travelled
to a conviction so great as mine it is difficult to doubt that other men
faced by the same universal facts will not come to the same conclusion.
I believe that only through a complete simplification o religion to its
fundamental idea, to a world-wide realisation of God as the king of the
heart and of all mankind, setting aside monarchy and national egotism
altogether, can mankind come to any certain happiness and security. The
precedent of Islam helps my faith in the creative inspiration of such
a renascence of religion. The Sikh, the Moslem, the Puritan have shown
that men can fight better for a Divine Idea than for any flag or monarch
in the world. It seems to me that illusions fade and effigies lose
credit everywhere. It is a very wonderful thing to me that China is now
a republic.... I take myself to be very nearly an average man, abnormal
only b