THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 41 



fought over by soldiers for such a nation to have 

 adopted militarism as the national soul and con- 

 science, and to take its orders and ideas from 

 soldiers, appears to us to-day, however it may be 

 viewed by the historian, to have brought the world 

 to a parting- of the ways. Whether it is because of 

 our more fortunate geographical position, or whether 

 it is because we are an older nation than Germany, 

 whatever fate the future holds for us individually 

 and as a nation, we cannot accept that as the end. 

 It means, simply, that man has risen in intellectual 

 stature to the point at which he is in league rather 

 than at war with mighty Nature, in order that 

 nations may never be able to live mutually at 

 peace again. It is not a war between irreconcilable 

 principles. It is a war between the fundamental 

 principle of all national co-existence and its con- 

 temptuous negation. 



If we concern ourselves, when the time comes, 

 merely with the relatively small task of making wars 

 of this sort more difficult or impossible to recur, we 

 can leave with a good conscience to our successors 

 the wider and more complex task of dealing with the 

 racial causes of internecine strife, wherein peoples of 

 different colours and civilisations strive for mastery. 

 No doctor talks at large about the termination of 

 disease. He knows too well the almost infinite 

 variety of disease. But where would you find a 

 doctor who, knowing leprosy, let us say, to be 

 incurable, not only discountenanced any attempt to 

 cure it, but also would not hear of any attempt to 

 cure, let us say, consumption. So it is with war. 

 Its causes are as manifold and as ineradicated as 

 the causes of disease. But there are many kinds of 

 war, each requiring totally different consideration. 

 If we are either unduly discouraged on the one 

 hand, or unduly sanguine on the other, as the result 



