which the
man who was blind permitted himself to show to the men who could
see. The truth is, that to Lord Palmerston it was still
incomprehensible and intolerable that a couple of manufacturers from
Lancashire should presume to teach him foreign policy. Still more
offensive to him was their introduction of morality into the
mysteries of the Foreign Office.[7]

What have peace theories to do with this war? asks the practical man,
who is the greatest mystic of all, contemptuously. Well, they have
everything to do with it. For if we had understood some peace theories a
little better a generation or two ago, if we had not allowed passion and
error and prejudice instead of reason to dominate our policy, the sum of
misery which these Balkan populations have known would have been
immeasurably less. It is quite true that we could not have prevented
this war by sending peace pamphlets to the Turk, or to the Balkanese,
for that matter, but we could have prevented it if we ourselves had read
them a generation or two since, just as our only means of preventing
future wars is by showing a little less prejudice and a little less
blindness.

And the practical question, despite Mr. Churchill, is whether we shall
allow a like passion and a like prejudice again to blind us; whether we
shall again back the wrong horse in the name of the same hollow theories
drifting to a similar but greater futility and catastrophe, or whether
we shall profit by our past to assure a better future.

[Footnote 6: 14/11/12]

[Footnote 7: _The Life of Richard Cobden._--UNWIN.]

CHAPTER VI.

PACIFISM, DEFENCE, AND "THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR."

Did the Crimean War prove Bright and Cobden wrong?--Our curious
reasoning--Mr. Churchill on "illusions"--The danger of war is not the
illusion but its benefits--We are all Pacifists now since we all desire
Peace--Will more armaments alone secure it?--The experience of
mankind--War "the failure of human wisdom"--Therefore more wisdom is the
remedy--But the Militarists only want more arms--The German Lord
Roberts--The military campaign against political Rationalism--How to
make war certain.

The question surely, which for practical men stands out from the mighty
historical episode touched on in the last chapter, is this: Was the fact
that these despised men were so entirely right and their triumphant
adversaries so entirely wrong a mere fluke, or was it due to the
soundness of on