racks, more and better inquisitions.

Mr. Bonar Law, in one of the very wisest phrases ever pronounced by a
statesman, has declared that "war is the failure of human wisdom."

That is the whole case of Pacifism: we shall not improve except at the
price of using our reason in these matters; of understanding them
better. Surely it is a truism that that is the price of all progress;
saner conceptions--man's recognition of his mistakes, whether those
mistakes take the form of cannibalism, slavery, torture, superstition,
tyranny, false laws, or what you will. The veriest savage, or for that
matter the ape, can blindly fight, but whether the animal develops into
a man, or the savage into civilized man, depends upon whether the
element of reason enters in an increasing degree into the solution of
his problems.

The Militarist argues otherwise. He admits the difficulty comes from
man's small disposition to think; therefore don't think--fight. We
fight, he says, because we have insufficient wisdom in these matters;
therefore do not let us trouble to get more wisdom or understanding; all
we need do is to get better weapons. I am not misrepresenting him; that
is quite fairly the popular line: it is no use talking about these
things or trying to explain them, all that is logic and theories; what
you want to do is to get a bigger army or more battleships. And, of
course, the Bellicist on the other side of the frontier says exactly the
same thing, and I am still waiting to have explained to me how,
therefore, if this matter depends upon understanding, we can ever solve
it by neglecting understanding, which the Militarist urges us to do. Not
only does he admit, but pleads, that these things are complex, and
supposes that that is an argument why they should not be studied.

And a third distinction will, I think, make the difference between us
still clearer. Like the Bellicist, I am in favour of defence. If in a
duelling society a duellist attacked me, or, as a Huguenot in the Paris
of the sixteenth century a Catholic had attacked me, I should certainly
have defended myself, and if needs be have killed my aggressor. But that
attitude would not have prevented my doing my small part in the creation
of a public opinion which should make duelling or such things as the
massacre of St. Bartholomew impossible by showing how unsatisfactory and
futile they were; and I should know perfectly well that neither would
stop until public opinion h