by Mr. Angell as to their chances of commercial profit
from the war. It is that if Mr. Angell had succeeded to the fullest
extent in convincing them that there was not a quarter per cent. to
be made out of the war, nay, that--horrible thought!--they would
actually be poorer at the end of the war than at the beginning,
they would have gone to war all the same.

Since Mr. Angell's argument clearly applies as much or more to
civil as to international conflicts, I may perhaps be allowed to
turn to civil conflicts to make clear my meaning. In this country
during the last three centuries one solid thing has been done. The
power of Parliament was pitted in battle against the power of the
Crown, and won. As a result, for good or evil, Parliament really is
stronger than the Crown to-day. The power of the mass of the
people to control Parliament has been given as far as mere
legislation could give it. We all know that it is a sham. And if
you ask what it is that makes the difference of reality between the
two cases, it is this: that men killed and were killed for the one
thing and not for the other.

I have no space to develop all that I should like to say about the
indirect effects of war. All I will say is this, that men do judge,
and always will judge, things by the ultimate test of how they
fight. The German victory of forty years ago has produced not only
an astonishing expansion, industrial as well as political of
Germany, but has (most disastrously, as I think) infected Europe
with German ideas, especially with the idea that you make a nation
strong by making its people behave like cattle. God send that I may
live to see the day when victorious armies from Gaul shall shatter
this illusion, burn up Prussianism with all its Police Regulations,
Insurance Acts, Poll Taxes, and insults to the poor, and reassert
the Republic. It will never be done in any other way.

If arbitration is ever to take the place of war, it must be backed
by a corresponding array of physical force. Now the question
immediately arises: Are we prepared to arm any International
Tribunal with any such powers? Personally, I am not.... Turn back
some fifty years to the great struggle for the emancipation of
Italy. Suppose that a Hague Tribunal had then been in existence,
armed w