THE WORLD REVOLUTION 9 



of falling idols, of rending veils, of darkening skies 

 under which the gods of force huddle towards vast 

 Armageddons muttering, " We know not fear," 

 while the past moves from under them. 



If we could unly see the age which preceded the 

 universal war of nations which began in 1914 as the 

 historian of the future will see it, it would present 

 a surprising spectacle, for we should see this war of 

 the nations to be no more than an incident in a 

 universal movement, involving every leading form 

 of thought and activity in the West, gradually rising 

 to a climax throughout the world. 



There is a striking feature which we may perceive 

 to be characteristic of the half-century which 

 preceded the war which began in 1914. At the 

 centre of every movement of opinion in the West 

 the same fact is to be noticed. There is visible a 

 gradual falling back upon first principles, a retreat 

 all along the line to those conditions of elemental 

 force under which the civilization of the West first 

 came into being. 



The Darwinian thesis, presented to the Western 

 mind in the middle of the nineteenth century, had a 

 remarkable effect on civilization. It presented to 

 the masters of force in the West a conception of the 

 world which they rendered exclusively in terms of 

 force and struggle. It was not science which 



