The Machinery Of Destruction
They are, after all, details. The spirit matters more than the letter. I think that in the spirit of the world, almost everywhere, there is a growing consciousness that the perils of new conflict are so frightful that civilisation might actually go down in chaos if the forces of evil are not subdued. At the back of many minds is the awful thought that machinery threatens to become the master of men and that science threatens to destroy humanity unless it is controlled. What were human valour, spiritual courage, superb physique, in that last war, up against long-range guns, aerial torpedoes, high explosives in concentrated fire, poison gas? At a distance of forty miles a platoon of men might be wiped out by a casual shell loosed from a fifteen-inch howitzer. What was the value of discipline, ardour, human strength, centuries of character building to produce the fine flower of civilisation, in the face of that explosive force which tore men’s bodies to bits far from the sight of their enemy, without means of resistance on their part, with no more defence than if a thunderbolt had struck them? That is not war between human forces. It is war with engines constructed by men but overpowering. Or, of what use were fair physique, athletic youth, soldierly qualities, heroic human stuff, when suddenly they were enveloped in a vapour which choked them, burnt their lungs, blinded them, stupefied them? All the discoveries of science which made men proud of the knowledge they had wrested from nature’s most hidden secrets, like gods, were used for this devilish purpose of increasing the efficiency of human slaughter. Even the victory of flight which had baffled humanity since men first walked on earth and envied the birds for their liberty of the sky was achieved in time to increase the terrors and range of war.
Yet we know that if there is a next war it will be worse than the last because the poison gases are more deadly, the guns have longer range, the aeroplanes will be more crowded in the sky, the cities will be more at the mercy of falling bombs. In many laboratories scientists are searching for new forms of destruction which may even make those weapons obsolete because so limited in their power of slaughter. It is not only possible but likely that some “death ray” projecting wireless force may sweep a countryside with a heat that would turn everything to flame and then to dust and ashes. Is mankind going to risk such an infernal ending to all its dreams of beauty and order and more perfect life? Is it going to allow its stupid brawls, its national ambitions, its little points of honour and argument, to be settled by this latest type of warfare which does not spare women or children, but, indeed, makes them the victims of its worst cruelties? With all its passionate follies, humanity can hardly be as mad as that.