POSITION IN THE WEST 177 



not interfere with more important matters. Yet 

 Mr. Chesterton's description was a description of 

 the conditions prevailing in the press in one of the 

 foremost countries in the world with regard to 

 its social, political, and industrial affairs in a time 

 of peace and under normal conditions. No more 

 searching indictment of our civilization was ever 

 written. It brings out the meaning of our Western 

 life in these normal conditions as with a flash of 

 universal illumination. It is a state of permanent 

 war relentless, remorseless, truth-extinguishing, 

 primitive war throughout all our institutions, 

 national and political, social and economic. 



And the tragic irony of it in this case also is that 

 Tolstoy would again have equal cause for saying 

 that " men, Christians, liberals, cultured men of 

 our time, all of them " can listen to these and 

 similar descriptions of our current institutions and 

 remain unconscious of their significance and of the 

 sett-stultification of our civilization which they 

 imply. " They are not only not provoked by the 

 insult ; they do not even notice it ! " 



This is the condition to which the long intensive 

 heredity of the fight inborn in the man of the West 

 has carried civilization. It is the culminating phase 

 of the epoch of the individual integration ; the 

 epoch, that is to say, of the ascendancy in the world 



12 



