naval construction spoke with contempt of the submarine as a factor in war at sea. No one then had solved the old world problem of aerial flight. Some of the most distinguished men of science regarded the attempts which were then being made as hopeless. It then seemed still to be a mere dream of poets. Wireless telegraphy was only a matter of speculation, a thing which a few only thought of as a possibility of the future. Man has indeed plucked the fruit of the tree of knowledge for his own destruction. What may be the result of another quarter of a century of like advancement of the knowledge of the means of spreading "death throughout the world and bitter woe"? It may not be, as Dr. Murray Butler says, that the strongest man will remain alone in a depopulated world. The strongest may succumb to the inventions for destruction and the survivors may be a few of those maimed or weakened by disease whom the storm has passed over as too obscure, of too little importance even for the messengers of Death to remember and to relieve from their misery. This is not rhetorical exaggeration. The weapons of offence regularly win in their race with the weapons of defence. Fortresses that took years to construct are shattered in a day. The ironclad is sunk by the torpedo. How very little margin lay between this country and starvation through action of submarines! Suppose the enemy had possessed five times as many submarines from the first, would our defensive measures have prevailed? How small an extension in the enemy's power in the air would have enabled him in a single night to leave London a mass of ruins, its whole population which had not fled dying in torment from poisonous gases! Another five-and-twenty years of advance in scientific knowledge equal to that of the last five-and-twenty years may easily make such a result possible.
But some man—one of those who never look beyond the next year and their own street, and expects always to carry on business as usual—will say that the nations will be exhausted and tired of war, and this War will be
the last. Dare any country trust to that unless a new spirit is infused into the nations and definite steps are taken to prevent war? Did those who had the best means of knowledge—the Government of the day—imagine that such a war as this would break out suddenly? If they did, they would be guilty of a crime almost unparalleled in leaving us so unprepared and fiddling with such questions—"Welsh Disestablishment" and the like—as occupied their time and attention and excited the political controversies of the months and years immediately preceding the War.
Assume even that no new war does break out again actually, dare any nation neglect to keep up its naval and military armaments on a scale far greater than before? How is the burden to be met when every penny that can be raised as revenue will be needed to meet the charge on our gigantic debt and the necessary claims for carrying on Government, to say nothing of improving the conditions of life? We cannot, nor can other nations, go on using up capital and borrowing indefinitely. The choice is between assured peace and certain ruin, even if no war actually occurs. How can peace be assured? It would be well for some of those with the requisite historical knowledge and insight to trace carefully the causes which have led to war in the past, to attempt a diagnosis of the disease which has again and again devastated the world. A vain classification might perhaps be made into religious wars, dynastic wars, trade wars; but is there not one element common almost to all, namely, the will to power, the desire and intention of some man or set of men to impose their will on others, regardless of justice, which forbids the exercise of force to prevent each thinking, speaking, acting as he will, provided he does not injure the rights of others? It was the assertion of a claim to dominate which led to the eighty years' war when Spain tried to impose her yoke on the Netherlands, and blended with desire for gain a crusade against the faiths which rejected the supremacy of Rome. Was the Thirty years War a religious war or a struggle between
rulers to assert and extend their powers? Take any one of the series of long wars, such as those of Louis XIV. or of Napoleon, under what head of such a classification do they fall? Does not the common element above mentioned apply to all of them?
The urgency of taking definite steps to secure peace has been recognised already, much thought has been devoted to it, and schemes even in some detail have been suggested for dealing with it. The idea of a League of Nations to secure peace is occupying the attention of many of the wisest minds and of the statesmen who hold the most responsible positions. It is meeting with strong popular support, at all events in Britain and in the United States. France and Italy are examining the proposal. It is well, however, where attractive phrases are used and schemes proposed, to subject them carefully to the double test: how far they cover the ground and meet the real difficulties; and, secondly, how they would work out in practice in the circumstances which are likely to arise. We want to look at the question as a whole, to see exactly what we have to aim at, sometimes to reiterate what seem almost useless truisms. The obvious is too often overlooked. First we need to recognise the actual facts, then let the right spirit grow up and become general, and after that attempt to plan the best machinery and test its probable effect and efficiency by seeing how it would be expected to work in various special cases.
There are now in the world two fundamentally different ways of looking at international relations. On the one hand, we have the assertions expressed definitely in words by many Germans and acted upon consistently without qualification by the German Government, that justice is the interest of the stronger; that power and force may be, and indeed ought to be, exerted by a State without any check on moral grounds; that a strong nation must realise itself, develop and use its strength without regard to the so-called rights of the weaker; that "those should take who have
the power, and those should keep who can." To them Reason, Common Sense, even the Divine Law seem to say: "Assert thyself; have the will to power." Where such a spirit exists there can be no binding force in agreements, rules of international law are a farce, but convenient perhaps at times for embarrassing the action of opponents who wish to treat them with respect. The dictates of humanity may be set aside at discretion. With that spirit argument is useless. With those who are inspired by it there can be no compromise, no truce. It must be met by force inspired by moral earnestness. In that struggle the alternative for the world is victory or death. Every man who falls fighting against such a foe dies a martyr, witnessing by his death that so far as in him lies the embodied powers of evil shall not prevail. Unless the Power which thus claims to dominate is defeated it is useless to talk of peace. On the other hand, it is essential to recognise, and keep ever before us, the spirit which is opposed to this claim for domination, this denial of the existence of justice, and to renew in the whole nation the spirit in which it entered into the War.