“No one contends that war is the ideal method for settling human difficulties,” I admitted; “but as long as human society stands on certain planks in its platform there’ll be no other way.”
“Then isn’t this the time to take another way?”
“No; because you’ve got to change your bases of existence first. You can’t change your effects without first changing your causes, any more than you can graft an apple on an oak.”
“But even without removing the cause you can still sometimes nip the effect.”
“Which is what in the present instance we tried to do, and didn’t succeed in. All the trend of education during thirty years has been in the direction of eliminating war, while still keeping the principle that makes for war as part of the foundation of our life. We created a system of international law; we set up a Hague Tribunal; many of us had come to the conclusion that no great war could ever again take place; but the law by which human beings prefer as yet to live outwitted us and brought war upon us whether we would or not. So long as you keep the causes you must have the effects.”
“Then let us do away with the causes.”
“Yes! Let us. Only, to do that in time for the present situation we should have begun five hundred years ago. You can’t put out the fire the ages have kindled as you’d blow out a candle. When you’ve spent centuries in preparing your mine, and fixed a time fuse to make it explode, you’ve nothing to do but to let it go off. This war wasn’t made overnight. The world has been getting ready for it as long as there have been human beings to look askance at one another. Now we’ve got it—with all its horrors, but also with all its compensations.”
“Compensations for the lives it has ruined?”
“In the lives it has saved—yes. You’ll never get its meaning unless you see it as a great regenerative process.”
“Do you mean to tell me that we can only be regenerated by fire and sword and rapine?”