d the foreigner as a member of our own moral system. The
moral sphere has already extended or is at least in course of extension
to its ultimate limits: and war is a survival from the penultimate stage
of morality. War, to put it mildly, is a moral anachronism. War between
European nations is civil war. Logically all war should be recognised at
once, at any rate by enlightened opinion, as the crime, the disaster,
the ultimate disgrace that it obviously is. Why then do we cling to the
implications of a system that we have grown out of? Why do we affect the
limitation of boundaries that have been already extended? Or is our
prison so lovely that though the walls fall down we refuse to walk out
into the air?

CHAPTER II

A sociologist wrote to the Vali of Aleppo, asking: What are the
imports of Aleppo? What is the nature of the water-supply? What is
the birth-rate, and the death-rate?

The Vali replied: It is impossible for anyone to number the camels
that kneel in the markets of Aleppo. The water is sufficient; no
one ever dies of thirst in Aleppo. How many children shall be born
in this great city is known only to Allah the compassionate, the
merciful. And who would venture to inquire the tale of the dead?
For it is revealed only to the Angels of death who shall be taken
and who shall be left. O idle Frank, cease from your presumptuous
questioning, and know that these things are not revealed to the
children of men.

The _Bustan of Mahmud Aga el-Arnauty_.

Sec. 1

The Armament Ring

What, in short, are the forces that make for the anachronistic survival
of war--apart of course from the defect that it is always with us, the
habit of inertia, sometimes called Conservatism?

The obvious answer is not, I think, the correct one. At least it is
correct as far as it goes, but leaves us very far from a complete
explanation of this unpleasant survival. So scandalous is the
interrelation of the armament firms[11] which has developed the world's
trade in munitions and explosives into one obscene cartel; so cynical is
the avidity with which their agents exchange their trade secrets, sell
ships and guns, often by means of diplomatic blackmail, to friend or foe
alike, and follow those pioneers of civilisation the missionary, the gin
merchant and the procurer,[12] into the wildest part of the earth; so
absurd on the face of it is the practice of allowing the