226 The Intellectual Revolution 



of international law ; a lust for annexation and con- 

 quest began to dominate the militaristic press; 

 and the repudiation of the higher motives an- 

 nounced at the beginning of the war has gone on 

 increasingly. It seems even possible that a war 

 entered upon on the part of the Allies to destroy 

 Prussian militarism may result in enthroning mili- 

 tarism in all Europe for a decade or a generation. 

 The demonstration upon so large a scale that wars 

 entered upon with high ideals must fail to attain 

 those ideals because they fail to recognize the 

 nature of the instrument which they use and 

 the process by which moral progress is made, 

 may result in profound changes in the ideas and 

 actions of men, just as the demonstration on a 

 large scale of the failure of physical force to 

 suppress heresy led to the rise of tolerance and the 

 abandonment of physical force in the realm of 

 intellectual conviction. 



When the futility of force becomes widely recog- 

 nized and the true nature of social struggle is 

 known, we may expect an enormous increase of 

 activity in the intellectual realm — the most 

 fruitful field of struggle. We may expect the 

 creation of a new science of social engineering, 

 seeking to improve institutions by modifying 

 ideas, and using all the marvellous instruments 

 of the press and the telegraph, the church and 

 all educational institutions, the moving-picture 

 and the phonograph, now almost entirely imder 



