WAR AND CIVILIZATION. 765 



tary mind, and to a people intoxicated with, military glory, it was 

 justification enough that their defeated enemy was showing great 

 powers of recuperation. The moral sense of Europe was shocked 

 by this cynicism ; but if war is such a beautiful thing as some pre- 

 tend, and so useful an instrument of Divine Providence, how can 

 we be sure that any war is to be condemned ? 



If we look at France, can we say that she has profited greatly 

 by the ordeal passed through ? An indirect result of the war was 

 a change in her form of government, and considering the funda- 

 mental instability of the Napoleonic regime this must be counted 

 a permanent advantage. The change had to come, and it was well 

 that it was hastened. If, however, we look for signs of moral or 

 intellectual improvement in the nation at large it is doubtful 

 whether we shall find them. The politics of the country has 

 been honeycombed by corruption ; so that more than once it has 

 seemed as if the people, sick of the misdeeds of their legislators 

 and full of contempt for the whole parliamentary system, were 

 on the point of sending the Third Republic packing after the first 

 two, and making another desperate experiment with some " sav- 

 ior of society." If we consult the literature of the day, we cer- 

 tainly see no signs of moral advance. If such up-to-date writers 

 as Paul Hervieu and " Gyp " may be trusted, the higher walks of 

 society could hardly be more abandoned than they are to greed, 

 luxury, and lust. Education has been making rapid progress, and 

 so has crime ; while the financial burdens of the state go on in- 

 creasing at a portentous rate. The nation has doubtless learned 

 from its calamities some lessons of self-restraint ; and, as we have 

 said, it has escaped from an essentially bad form of government, 

 but it is difficult to assign any other beneficial results to the ter- 

 rible scourging it received in the war with Germany. Comparing 

 it, however, with the latter country, it seems to have suffered 

 almost less from its defeats than the latter from its victories. 



Crossing the Channel, we see a country which, though not un- 

 affected by the increase of the military spirit which has marked 

 the last quarter of a century, illustrates in a broad way the ad- 

 vantages as regards individual liberty and civilization in general 

 which flow from at least a relative aversion to war. For forty 

 years the British nation has waged no war in Europe, nor any war 

 abroad that has at all seriously taxed its strength ; and the meth- 

 ods of the government and the habits of the people are conse- 

 quently more in harmony with a regime of peace and industry 

 than is the case in any of the continental nations. Interferences 

 with individual liberty which on the Continent would be taken as 

 a matter of course would in England be resented as acts of tyr- 

 anny. One of the chief marks of the industrial, as opposed to the 

 military, regime, according to Herbert Spencer, is that under it 



