24 
LAND & WATER 
August 10, iQib 
mindedness and neighbourly relations, disappears in the 
total combination of all the members, and a vast 
agglomeration comes into being of which the outstanding 
feature is that it lacks a soul. This portentous result is 
lost sight of bv j)hilosoj)liers who stud\- the State only in 
respect of its internal structure. But it appears instantly 
when its relations to other States are taken into account. 
In this respect the States of the civilised world are 
correctly described as stupid monsters, and as such they 
behave, dragging with them the intelligent millions, whom 
they have put under " a spell " and tied to their for- 
tunes, to such mad issues as we now behold — issues 
against which human nature everywhere is in revolt. 
Where Responsibility Lies 
There are many who regard the war as betokening the 
need for a radical change in the nature of man — in his 
ideals, hir. habits, his passions. And certainly this would 
be a soimd inference from the facts if human nature were 
really responsible for the war — only in that case I thin k 
we shoukl have to go furthe;- and demand the total ex- 
tinction of man as unfit to live on the planet, on the 
same principle that we demand the extermination of a 
mad dog. But believing, as I do, that responsibility 
for the war rests elsewhere, I see no need for any radical 
change in human nature, nor do I think that it is 
goin : to take place. What human nature needs 
is not a radical change but a fair opportunity, an 
opportunity for expressing itself not only in the 
relations between man and man, where it has already 
established some kind of rational order, but in the 
relations between States which, as things now are, con- 
stitute a mere Bedlam world. Moreover, I see no signs of 
any such change in human nature either in process or in 
prospect. We sliall find ourselves at the end of the war 
much the same kind of people we were at the beginning, 
poorer by the diminution of our incomes, sadder by the 
loss of om- friends and dear ones, but essentially un- 
changed. The general bent and direction of the human 
mind will remain as they were. There will be no sudden 
revolution in our habits and modes of thought — such 
things are from the nature of the case impossible and all 
dreams founded on their coming are doomed to dis- 
appointment. Nor is there any reason why we should 
desire them. Human nature is good enough for the work 
it has to do and the life it has to live — if only it gets a 
fair chance. 
What does need changing is State-nature, for 
state-nature is the cause of all these woes. We 
have been under a monstrous delusion about the 
State— almost hypnotised by the word — and it is 
the mission of the war, among other things, to bri ng this 
home to our intelligence. For two generations and more 
the pundits of the Western world have been grovelling 
on their bellies before this abstraction, this monster, 
this idol. It is a worship made, so far as modern times 
are concesrned, in Germany, and it is worthy of its origin. 
We have been taught that the evohition of the State is 
the culminating achievement of man's rationality and of 
his goodness. And so no doubt it might be if a different 
kind of State from any that is now in existence had been 
evolved. But of the actual States now in being nine- 
tenths of what the philosophers teach about the ration- 
ality of " the State," of its quasi-divinity, are not only 
untrue but the flat opposite of the truth. 
Whatever the State may be, these States are not some- 
thing higher than the individual but something vastly 
lower than any individual. There is not one of them 
in which the humanjnterests of its constituent members 
is not at thie mercy of that brute, inhuman, Bedlam 
world which is constituted by the relations of the various 
States with one another. There is not one of them which, 
when standing in the presence of its neighbour States, 
can be said to represent human nature in its intelligence, 
in its affections, or even in its passions. For, as wc have 
seen, they do not even understand one another. The 
lions roaring to each other in the forests, the starlings 
chattering on the tree tops are at a higher level of mutual 
comprehension than arc " the States " of civilised 
Europe. .\nd the proof is that when a quarrel arises 
which half a dozen sensible men could settle in ten minutes 
over M pipe of tobacco, these " Great Powers" have no 
rcfourc ; but to tear one another to pieces in a manner of 
which the lowest of the brute beasts are quite incapable 
Are they not stupid monsters ? The very monkeys 
must despise them. 
A proposal has been made to ensure perpetual peace 
by a new piece of machinery — a Federation of All the 
States controlled by a World Parliament. It is a pro- 
posal which leaves me cold. It reminds me of the reason 
once given by an Irishman as the crowning argument 
in favour of Home Rule. " When wc gi't a United 
Ireland and a Parliament of oin- own, faith we'll have 
some fine quarrels." Were such a Federation constituted 
out of such States as at present exist in the world it would 
split into two parties over every question submitted to 
its decision, and would quarrel at once, and quarrel 
always. The picture so often presented of all the States 
combining automatically to keep in order any member of 
the group which might threaten to break the peace is a 
fiction, which would be replaced in reality by powerful 
and balanced parties, plotting each other's overthrow 
and ready to attempt it, if need be, by force of arms. The 
Federation of the ^\'orld would be a cockpit of Civil Wiir. 
Before any such form of internationalism can be success- 
fully attempted a preliminary step must be a complete 
change of nature in each of the combining States. With 
the nature they now have they would be at loggerheads 
from the outset. 
What precisely are the needed changes of State-nature 
indicated by the insanity of the present war, is a question 
much too large for me to attempt its present discussion. 
1 must content myself w'ith pointing out the sphere in 
which, as it seems to me, our reconstructions should be 
exercised. Human nature needs no revolutions. It 
needs onlj' — a chance. 
The Worn Grass 
By Eden Phillpotts 
Where is the summer grass, so green. 
That made the Park a resting-place 
For eyes street -weary ? Now its face 
Is worn, attrite and dim. I ween 
We know what those broad patches m^an. 
How many brave, whose tireless feet 
Marched here and turned in daily drill. 
And wore the grass away, now still, 
Their tramplings ended, in the sweet. 
Cool earth are resting, crowned, complete ? 
The grass shall hide its wounds again 
And shine once more for London's play — 
A green lake in a cincture gray. 
Our hearts the abraded dust retain 
And cherish its most sacred stain. 
" The justice of the cause whicli endeavours to achieve 
its object by the murdering and maiming of mankind is apt 
to be doubted by a man who has come through a bayonet 
charge." In this first sentence of his introduction to Tin' 
Great Push (Herbert Jenkins, 2S. 6d. net.) Mr. Patrick MacGill 
outhnes the thought that inspires throughout those vivid 
and terrible scenes of war. Practically the book was written 
on the scene of action ; much in the trenches, and the last 
chapter in the hospital at Versailles. It is mainly a personal ex- 
perience of the battle of Loos. There is humour and patlios 
in these pages, in fact Mr. MacGill makes the reader realise 
what a human thing war is, for all its inhumanity. 
Here is story of a wounded Havarian wlio wandered 
into a dressing station where MacGill w.is working. " My 
stock of bandages had run short, and Ginger Turley, wlio 
had recei\-ed a parcel of underclothing a few days before, 
brought out a new shiit from his haversack, and tearing it 
into strips, he handed me sufficient cloth for a bandage. 
* Poor bloke ! ' muttta-ed Turley, blushing a httle as if 
ashamed of the kind action. ' t suppose it was my shot, 
too ! 'E must be the feller that went crawlin' into the 
buildin' ! " This storv of Ginger Turlev is a new %'ersion of 
the Good Samaritan." But throughout the book we come 
across these wonderful flashes of sympathy which relieve tiie 
gloom of the main narrative. " What is to be the end of 
this destruction and de:ay," is the question the author asks 
on almost tiie last pa;/e." Every chanter sets this question 
burring through the brain. 
