FINAL CHAPTER 259 



vent exorbitant and unmitigated sacrifice of human lives and 

 livelihoods in the future. Modern wisdom clamours on 

 all sides that the racial and religious hatred of the past should 

 be replaced by brotherly love and tolerance, and that 

 we cannot, and must not, try to abolish the distinctions of 

 good and bad, rich and poor, high and low, which are mea- 

 sured by the energy, ability, judgment, thrift and persever- 

 ance of a nation. As long as there is crime and folly of 

 any sort, and even through all eternity there must be rich 

 and poor and good and bad, just so long will there be weak and 

 strong, wise and foolish, sickness and folly before we can 

 abolish poverty or crime. The most we can do is to 

 relieve poverty, and as we grant extra freedom of thought and 

 of tolerance and of knowledge to the masses, we must in 

 the same proportion reduce the liberties of the idle. 



This is the great task that the coming century 

 has to face. It will also have to destroy the internal com- 

 mercial disturbances that are destroying the heart, lungs and 

 bowels of the energy of modern nations. This present war is 

 but the surface simmer of the terrific boil of civil wars that 

 are to tear and rupture modern civilisation to atoms ere it can 

 embark on its next strife, viz. : replace religious slavery by 

 state restrictions of individual actions opposed to freedom, to 

 evolve peace and usefulness and prevention of crime. This 

 war will produce poverty as a result of the foolish ex- 

 cess of uncontrolled liberty and loss of freedom that has 

 arose through nations giving away the levers of ignorance and 

 superstitions fostered by our religious beliefs, by which they 

 have governed in the past and will necessitate the building up of 

 a new industrial military system of government capable of 

 converting commerce into a disciplined army of productive 

 regiments and battalions to fight the commercial battle of the 

 future. Although it is "desirable to abolish international 

 warfare, this can only be done by creating a stronger form 

 of industrial discipline, goverened by a cosmopolitan army, 

 under the most perfect military organisation, to enforce 

 greater reductions of liberty. I have already stated 

 that in this treatise it is . my aim and object to 

 only touch upon the subjects under discussion lest they 

 should outweigh the importance of my hypothesis. So I 

 must leave these subjects to other tractates ; also at the pre- 



