Time presses. The reaction of foreign policy on the internal affairs of every State is becoming increasingly direct. Peace Treaties have been signed, but slaughter and terrorism continue. In Central Europe, great rivers, which are serene and splendid highways, are still defiled with human blood, still serve as barriers and are charged with sighs. The old discredited methods of “Secret Diplomacy” are being followed and the destinies of peoples are still at the mercy of officials who deal in bargains and transactions. In Great Britain and France, both in the Press and Parliament, reactionary forces have got the upper hand. As a consequence, trade is paralysed, and human misery exists on an unprecedented scale.
While these conditions last, peace will be precarious. But the next war will not be made by nations; it will be civil war, the misgoverned will rise against their rulers and the foundations of our social fabric will rock. The workers in all lands have realised, at last, that their interests are the same, and that the greatest war in history was, from their point of view, an internecine struggle. Only the purblind or the reckless ignore this fact.
But, portentous as it is, this fact is the one redeeming feature of the present situation, since it is the expression of a change of spirit, and the first step towards more rational relationships between the nations. Despair would be justified indeed if pride and prejudice and greed permeated the masses as they do the classes, if the doctrines preached by Jingo newspapers or the conversation in certain classes of society were correct indices of the thoughts and ideals of our generation.
Fortunately, this is not the case. Five years of war have been a purifying blood-bath, they have taught innumerable men and women, through suffering, to think.
A clamour of voices has arisen; their cry is “Forward” and is uttered by millions of exasperated people, become articulate since the war. From every quarter comes the tramp of hurrying feet, a mighty movement is in progress. It cannot, like “sleeping waters,” be pent up, but its purpose is not destructive. It seeks a useful outlet for a vast store of human energy, a freer, wider life for manual workers, too long the victims of exploitation, whose hearts and hands are needed to turn the new world’s mill.
All lovers of freedom are in this movement; they are of every race and creed and possess the true international spirit, whose aim is progress. Not progress towards some impossible Utopia, where human nature plays no part, but progress by ordered stages towards a more reasonable social system, wherein the few will not exploit the many and unscrupulous efficiency will be held in check; wherein idealism will count a little and mankind, taught by adversity, will no longer wish to be deceived; wherein “plain people,” however humble, will shake off the shackles of apathy and indifference to moral issues, and claim their birth-right.
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Egyptian monarchs built pyramids as tombs. Old Europe, during the process of its suicide, built up a pyramid of errors which may well serve, not only as the tomb of mediaeval systems, of false conceptions, but also as a monument to remind succeeding generations of the errors of the past.
A pyramid is a structure whose form is final, just bare, blank walls converging to a point, and there it ends, offering a symbol of that human pride which dares to set a limit to the progress of mankind.
Progress admits of no finality. Filled with the sentiment of progress and standing on the ground of fact, humanity can look forward and ever upward, and thus can rear a nobler edifice—a temple broad-based on liberty and justice, whose columns are poised on sure foundations, columns that soar and spring eternal, emblems of youth and hope.