and capitalists
is inculcated as heroism, patriotism, glory and all the rest of it. It
is all very well to fire cannons at the Kaiser for doing this; but we do
it ourselves. It is therefore undeniably possible that a diabolical
rhythm may be set up in which civilization will rise periodically to the
point at which explosives powerful enough to destroy it are discovered,
and will then be shattered and thrown back to a fresh start with a few
starving and ruined survivors. H.G. Wells and Anatole France have
pre-figured that result in fiction; and I cannot deny the strength of
its probability; for if England and Germany can find no better way of
celebrating their arrival at the highest point of civilization yet
attained than setting out to blow one another to fragments with
fulminates, it would seem that the peace of the neutral States is the
result, not of their being more civilized, but less heavily armed. And
when we see that the effect of the enterprise is not to redouble civil
vigilance and stimulate the most alert and jealous political criticism,
but on the contrary to produce an assumption that every constitutional
safeguard must be suspended until the war is over, and that every silly
tyrannical expedient such as censorship of the press, martial law, and
the like, will begin to work good instead of evil the moment men take to
murdering one another, it must be admitted that the prospect is not too
hopeful. Our only consolation is that civilization has survived very
destructive wars before, mostly because they have produced effects not
only unintended but violently objected to by the people who made them.
In 1870, for instance, Napoleon III. can hardly have intended his own
overthrow and return to exile in England; nor did Bismarck aim at the
restoration of French Republicanism and the formation of an
Anglo-Franco-Russian alliance against Prussia. Several good things may
come out of the present war if it leaves anybody alive to enjoy them.

*The Church and the War.*

And now, where in our society is the organ whose function it should be
to keep us constantly in mind that, as Lassalle said, "the sword is
never right," and to shudder with him at the fact that "the Lie is a
European Power"? In no previous war have we struck that top note of keen
irony, the closing of the Stock Exchange and not of the Church. The
pagans were more logical: they closed the Temple of Peace when they drew
the sword. We turn our Temples of