144 The Lesson of History 



endeavour to resuscitate the patriotism of the masses 

 and direct their thoughts into other channels, and for 

 the time being, at any rate, break the strong socialistic 

 wave which is flooding the country from one end to 

 the other. There can be no doubt that such a policy 

 would effect its purpose for a time, but ultimately it 

 would be disastrous, and recoil with ten-fold force upon 

 its authors whenever the people once again began to 

 feel the still greater burdens of excessive taxation and 

 military exaction. If the Emperor is wisely guided, he 

 will forthwith concede true representative govern- 

 ment to the toiling millions over whom he holds sway ; 

 otherwise the consequences must be of a very disastrous 

 kind. 



One word must be said in regard to Mr, Norman 

 Angell's theory of war. Every day he is gaining adherents 

 to the idea that military conquest is a " great illusion." 

 In the early phases of human existence the supremacy 

 of the purely physical was not to be wondered at, and 

 as men combined fortuitously into tribes and nations 

 through the accident of geographical conditions such 

 as mountain ranges, wide rivers, or ocean barriers, this 

 spirit continued to prevail. The " sensus gregis," 

 however, differed in this way : that while the peoples 

 fought as a whole against one another, they were often 

 possessed of hatred and division among themselves, 

 and thus, as Mr. J. M. Robertson shows in a work of pro- 

 found learning and deep insight, " war is precisely the 

 blindest, the least rational, the least human of all the 

 forms of human conflict." * And he has little difficulty 

 in proving that without fail it brings its own Nemesis, 

 and most assuredly accomplishes the ruin and decay 

 of the state. The history of every past great civilisa- 

 tion shows it. In ancient and mediaeval Rome we 

 have the same result as obtains in Turkey to-day as a 

 * " The Evolution of States," 



