m
the tough hides that ever more closely constrict them, and finally save
their souls alive?

(7) _The Dominance of Social Reform._ The final factor in the situation
is the growing dominance of the process of social reform. On the one
hand, the increasing complexity of social organisation renders necessary
a correspondingly increasing expenditure of money in diminishing its
friction and aiding its elaboration; on the other hand, the still more
rapidly increasing demands of armament render it ever more difficult to
devote money to such social purposes. Everywhere even the most
elementary provision for the finer breeding and higher well-being of a
country's citizens is postponed to the clamour for ever new armaments.
The situation thus created is rapidly becoming intolerable.

It is not alone the future of civilization which is for ever menaced by
the possibility of war; the past of civilization, with all the precious
embodiments of its traditions, is even more fatally imperilled. As the
world grows older and the ages recede, the richer, the more precious,
the more fragile, become the ancient heirlooms of humanity. They
constitute the final symbols of human glory; they cannot be too
carefully guarded, too highly valued. But all the other dangers that
threaten their integrity and safety, if put together, do not equal war.
No land that has ever been a cradle of civilization but bears witness to
this sad truth. All the sacred citadels, the glories of
humanity,--Jerusalem and Athens, Rome and Constantinople,--have been
ravaged by war, and, in every case, their ruin has been a disaster that
can never be repaired. If we turn to the minor glories of more modern
ages, the special treasure of England has been its parish churches, a
treasure of unique charm in the world and the embodiment of the
people's spirit: to-day in their battered and irreparable condition they
are the monuments of a Civil War waged all over the country with
ruthless religious ferocity. Spain, again, was a land which had stored
up, during long centuries, nearly the whole of its accumulated
possessions in every art, sacred and secular, of fabulous value, within
the walls of its great fortress-like cathedrals; Napoleon's soldiers
over-ran the land, and brought with them rapine and destruction; so that
in many a shrine, as at Montserrat, we still can see how in a few days
they turned a Paradise into a desert. It is not only the West that has
suffered. In China