THE FUTURE RECONCILIATION 67 



to every student as a knowledge of technical French, 

 German or Italian is to the student of to-day. 



Most of those who otherwise would be attempting 

 here to reconcile to their digestions the varied menu 

 of the feast of learning are away attempting a more 

 practical reconciliation on the battlefields of Europe. 

 There all the discoveries and inventions of modern 

 times, capable of being twisted by human ingenuity 

 to the purpose of destruction, are being pitted against 

 one another in the defence of those primal instincts 

 of national honour and safety which we inherit from 

 ancient man, and to the strength of which, it has 

 been remarked with universal satisfaction, education 

 has added if possible a more terrible pertinacity and 

 devotion. 



What will be the nature of the reconciliation? 

 I am not thinking even vaguely of the terms of 

 peace, the new map of Europe or future forms of 

 government. We have reached a stage in the 

 evolution of the world when something has to give. 



That something has already given is fairly 

 obvious. Every enthusiast deems his hour has now 

 come. The war, we hear, is to produce a great 

 spiritual revival, and the thoughts of men are to be 

 turned from their practical and material concerns to 

 higher things. Or, if we listen again, science is 

 coming to its own to regulate all the affairs of a 

 nation chastened by catastrophe to a fitting sense of 

 its colossal folly. One cries that the go-as-you-please 

 existence of the British Empire is at an end, and 

 every citizen is to be trained to bear arms to defend 

 his country and to carry into the avocations of peace 

 the spirit of co-ordination and subordination to a 

 common purpose learned in the barrack - room. 

 While another cries, and the cry seems to lose its 

 ring of confidence as the struggle lengthens, that this 

 war is a war to end war for ever. 



