ring states, it will
have advanced sufficiently to surrender the use of force against
unwilling provinces, as in some measure British statesmanship has
already done. To raise the difficulty that Mr. Chesterton does is
much the same as assuming that a court of law in San Domingo or
Turkey will give the same results as a court of law in Great
Britain, because the form of the mechanism is the same. And does
Mr. Chesterton suggest that the war system settles these matters to
perfection? That it has worked satisfactorily in Ireland and
Finland, or, for the matter of that, in Albania or Macedonia?

For if Mr. Chesterton urges that killing and being killed is the
way to determine the best means of governing a country, it is his
business to defend the Turk, who has adopted that principle during
four hundred years, not the Christians, who want to bring that
method to an end and adopt another. And I would ask no better
example of the utter failure of the principles that I combat and
Mr. Chesterton defends than their failure in the Balkan Peninsula.

This war is due to the vile character of Turkish rule, and the
Turk's rule is vile because it is based on the sword. Like Mr.
Chesterton (and our pirate), the Turk believes in the right of
conquest, "the ultimate test of how they fight." "The history of
the Turks," says Sir Charles Elliott, "is almost exclusively a
catalogue of battles." He has lived (for the most gloriously
uneconomic person has to live, to follow a trade of some sort, even
if it be that of theft) on tribute exacted from the Christian
populations, and extorted, not in return for any work of
administration, but simply because he was the stronger. And that
has made his rule intolerable, and is the cause of this war.

Now, my whole thesis is that understanding, work, co-operation,
adjustment, must be the basis of human society; that conquest as a
means of achieving national advantage must fail; that to base your
prosperity or means of livelihood, your economic system, in short,
upon having more force than someone else, and exercising it against
him, is an impossible form of human relationship that is bound to
break down. And Mr. Chesterton says that the war in the Balkans
demolishes this thesis. I do not agree with him.

The present war in