d to
seek these elsewhere, a task less easy than of old.

2

But now, to the amazement of all those who will one day consider them
in cold blood, events are suddenly ascending the irresistible current
and, for the first time since we have been in a position to observe
it, the adverse will is encountering an unexpected and insurmountable
resistance. If this resistance, as we can now no longer doubt,
maintains itself victoriously to the end, there will never perhaps
have been such a sudden change in the history of mankind; for man
will have gained, over the will of earth or nature or fatality, a
triumph infinitely more significant, more heavily fraught with
consequences and perhaps more decisive than all those which, in other
provinces, appear to have crowned his efforts more brilliantly.

Let us not then be surprised that this resistance should be
stupendous, or that it should be prolonged beyond anything that our
experience of wars has taught us to expect. It was our prompt and easy
defeat that was written in the annals of destiny. We had against us
all the force accumulated since the birth of Europe. We have to set
history revolving in the reverse direction. We are on the point of
succeeding; and, if it be true that intelligent beings watch us from
the vantage-point of other worlds, they will assuredly witness the
most curious spectacle that our planet has offered them since they
discovered it amid the dust of stars that glitters in space around
it. They must be telling themselves in amazement that the ancient and
fundamental laws of earth are suddenly being transgressed.

3

Suddenly? That is going too far. This transgression of a lower law,
which was no longer of the stature of mankind, had been preparing for
a very long time; but it was within an ace of being hideously
punished. It succeeded only by the aid of a part of those who formerly
swelled the great wave which they are to-day resisting by our side, as
though something in the history of the world or the plans of destiny
had altered, or rather as though we ourselves had at last succeeded in
altering that something and in modifying laws to which until this day
we were wholly subject.

But it must not be thought that the conflict will end with the
victory. The deep-seated forces of earth will not be at once disarmed;
for a long time to come the invisible war will be waged under the
reign of peace. If we are not careful, victory may even be more
disas