136 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



experience to be efficacious, must be adopted by man if international or civil wars 

 are to be terminated. That is, a ruling- authority with power to make laws and 

 inflict punishment must be established, with its whole paraphernalia of law, judges 

 to interpret it, and a police force of overwhelming power to maintain it. And, as 

 we have already seen, this ruling authority must also possess the power to lay 

 down the system and curriculum of education and, if necessary, enforce it. 



It is evident that if a termination is to be put to war nations must abdicate 

 their sovereignty and rest content to be governed by an international parliament. 



It is a noteworthy and undoubted fact that, with the introduction of party 

 government to South Africa, the idea of revenge against Great Britain quickly 

 died out. The party system is certainly calculated to withdraw public attention 

 from national problems and concentrate it on purely social problems. 



Is an internatioual parliament, conducted on the party system, a feasible 

 proposition ? 



War, Civilisation, and Progress 



It has been commonly asserted that another such war as the last will " destroy 

 civilisation." 



Certainly, it might seriously damage the Christian ideal, the moral aspect of 

 civilisation, in that it may prove might to be right and unscrupulous methods to be 

 the surest road to success. It should be noted, however, that this last war has 

 considerably strengthened the Christian ideal ; and, for the first time in history, 

 all the great nations have set themselves seriously to consider how bickering and 

 treachery are to be suspended and war averted. 



On the other hand — and this self-evident fact can no longer be disregarded — 

 war gives a tremendous impulse to material progress, not only in invention and 

 scientific research, but also in the arts. It awakens the best in humanity as well 

 as the worst, and it certainly destroys lethargy. It is probably the case that a 

 greater stride forward is taken by civilisation in four years of war than in fifty 

 years of peace. And such progress by no means terminates with the conclusion 

 of the war — as is proved throughout history. The " Golden Age " of a nation 

 usually follows victory. 



If, therefore, the great object of a Higher Power is progress, can a better 

 means be found than a great war? Is war a drastic pruning at the hands of the 

 Great Gardener ? 



The type of war which is calculated to destroy civilisation is the violent 

 upheaval of the " masses," of the uneducated labour classes, or the irruption of 

 hordes of barbarians over the whole civilised world. 



Thoroughly disciplined and organised military forces are the surest safeguards 

 against such forms of war. It is to be noted, for instance, that Bolshevism— which 

 is certainly calculated to destroy civilisation — finds better soil on which to feed in 

 the unorganised British nation than in the thoroughly organised French, Italian, 

 and German nations — and that in spite of the fact that the Germans have been 

 defeated, while the British have been victorious. Yet, throughout history, revolu- 

 tion has usually followed on defeat and seldom, if ever, on victory. 



There is another catch-phrase to the effect that armaments are " unproductive 

 services." No system which lends itself to education can by any possibility be 

 termed unproductive. As well might one term universities and schools unproduc- 

 tive services and suppress them because the curriculum of education is faulty. The 

 value of armaments as educational systems has long since been proved by the 

 Germans and the French, and is now being proved by the British. 



