his little band, now grown epic,
amid the cheers of Byzantium, on which he and his officers had never
set foot before--always in the clear blue and sunlight of this
war-heavy Whitsuntide day.

But nothing stirred me more deeply on the whole journey than that cold
official report of the man who was being celebrated, before his
Admiral, and I saw in that lowered swordpoint the symbol of the old
and incorruptible Prussian spirit.

[Illustration]

Civilization at the Breaking Point

By H.G. Wells.

[Copyright, 1915, by THE NEW YORK TIMES Company.]

The submarine and aircraft have put a new proposition before the
world. It is a proposition that will be stated here as plainly and
simply as possible. These two inventions present mankind with a choice
of two alternatives, or, to vary the phrase, they mark quite
definitely that we are at the parting of two ways; either mankind must
succeed within quite a brief period of years now in establishing a
world State, a world Government of some sort able to prevent war, or
civilization as we know it must break up into a system of warring
communities, perpetually on the warpath, perpetually insecure and
engaged in undying national vendettas. These consequences have been
latent in all the development of scientific warfare that has been
going on during the last century; they are inherent in the
characteristics of the aircraft and of the submarine for any one to
see.

They are so manifestly inherent that even before this war speculative
minds had pointed out the direction to which these inventions pointed,
but now, after more than three-quarters of a year of war, it is
possible to approach this question, no longer as something as yet
fantastically outside the experience of mankind, but as something
supported by countless witnesses, something which the dullest, least
imaginative minds can receive and ponder.

What the submarine and aircraft make manifest and convincing is this
point, which argument alone has never been able to hammer into the
mass of inattentive minds, that if the human intelligence is applied
continuously to the mechanism of war it will steadily develop
destructive powers, but that it will fail to develop any corresponding
power of decision and settlement, because the development of the
former is easy and obvious in comparison with the development of the
latter; it will therefore progressively make war more catastrophic and
less definitive. It will not m