. Thus the Editor of _The Spectator_
tells us that mankind cannot yet dispense with the discipline of war;
and Lord Roberts, that to make war when you are really ready for it (or
that in any case for Germany to do it) is "an excellent policy and one
to be pursued by every nation prepared to play a great part in history."

The truth is, of course, that we are not likely to get peace from those
who believe it to be an evil thing and war and aggression a good thing,
or, at least, are very mixed in their views as to this. Before men can
secure peace they must at least make up their minds whether it is peace
or war they want. If you do not know what you want, you are not likely
to get it--or you are likely to get it, whichever way you prefer to put
it.

And that is another thing which divides us from the military Pacifists:
we really do want peace. As between war and peace we have made our
choice, and having made it, stick to it. There may be something to be
said for war--for settling a thing by fighting about it instead of by
understanding it,--just as there may be something to be said for the
ordeal, or the duel, as against trial by evidence, for the rack as a
corrective of religious error, for judicial torture as a substitute for
cross-examination, for religious wars, for all these things--but the
balance of advantage is against them and we have discarded them.

But there is a still further difference which divides us: We have
realised that we discarded those things only when we really understood
their imperfections and that we arrived at that understanding by
studying them, by discussing them,--because one man in London or another
in Paris raised plainly and boldly the whole question of their wisdom
and because the intellectual ferment created by those interrogations,
either in the juridical or religious field, re-acted on the minds of men
in Geneva or Wurtenburg or Rome or Madrid. It was by this means, not by
improving the rapiers or improving the instruments of the inquisition,
that we got rid of the duel and that Catholics ceased to torture
Protestants or _vice versa_. We gave these things up because we realised
the futility of physical force in these conflicts. We shall give up war
for the same reason.

But the Bellicist says that discussions of this sort, these attempts to
find out the truth, are but the encouragement of pernicious theories:
there is, according to him, but one way--better rapiers, more and better