fear that its whole
economic arrangements would be upset by war. We now know that the world
was not civilized to this point, and is a very long way from being so,
that the ultimate appeal is still to "arms and the man," and that we
have still to be careful to see that our trade and industry are carried
on in such a way as to be least likely to be hurt if ploughshares have
suddenly to be beaten into swords. At first sight, this is a somewhat
tragical discovery, but it carries with it certain consolations. If the
apparent civilization evolved by the nineteenth century had been good
and wholesome, it might have been really sad to find that it was only a
thin veneer laid over a structure that man's primitive passions might at
any moment overturn. In fact, the apparently achieved civilization was
so grossly material in its successes, so forcibly feeble in its
failures, so beset with vulgarity at its summit and undermined by
destitution at its base, that even the horrors of the present war, with
its appalling loss of the best lives of the chief nations of the earth,
may be a blessing to mankind in the long run if they purge its notions
about the things that are worth trying for.

At least the war is teaching us that the wealth of a nation is not a
pile of commodities to be frittered away in vulgar ostentation and
stupid self-indulgence, but the number of its citizens who are able and
ready to play the man as workers or fighters when a time of trial comes.
"National prosperity," says Cobbett, "shows itself ... in the plentiful
meal, the comfortable dwelling, the decent furniture and dress, the
healthy and happy countenances, and the good morals of the labouring
classes of the people." So he wrote, in Newgate gaol, in 1810.[8] Since
then many reformers have preached the same sound doctrine, but its
application has made poor progress, in relation to the growth of our
riches in the same period. If we now decide to put it into practice, we
shall not long tolerate the existence in our midst of disease and
destitution, and a system of distribution of the world's goods which
gives millions of our population no chance of full development.

We need not, then, stay to shed tears over the civilization, such as it
was, which we thought we had and had not. Its good points will endure,
for evil has a comfortable habit of killing itself and those who work
it. All that we are concerned with at this moment is the fact that its
downfall has s