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be in a like plight, and England also would fall to an approximately similar condition.

Now, when there are transports capable of accommodating several thousand persons, when submarines, aeroplanes, and dirigible airships are become part of armaments, England's immunity to German invasion is no more. Experts concede the possibility of such an invasion now, and should the Prussian helmet dominate the northern coast of France, an invasion of England would merely become a question of the convenient moment. The entire order of life and the further development of the country would have to adapt themselves to such a possibility, as was the case in France.

As to the consequences of Germany's triumph over us in Russia, one does not even like to think, so terrible would they be. What would become of the internal development of our country if on the Nieman, at Riga, and possibly in Revel, German fortifications on the order of Metz were erected-not for the defense of the captured territory, but for further offensive purposes? Fortifications from which armies fully equipped could be moved on Petrograd the first day after a war declaration?

On the whole, the triumph of Germany in this war would mean the enslavement of the entire European civilization by military ideals. Her triumph of 1870 had already given us forty years of such slavery with the arrest of universal progress. Her victory over France, Belgium, England, and Russia would give us now half a century or more of a similar retardation of progress throughout Western Europe and all the Slavonic world. * * *

To all who will not shut their eyes at the events transpiring around us, it is sufficiently clear why no one to whom the progressive development of humanity is dear, and whose mind is not clouded by personal attachments or by sophisms of official patriotism, should be in doubt as to the side one ought to take. One should not remain neutral, as neutrality in the present case means support of the iron fist.

The vast majority of the people understand this, and on all sides we hear the words: The Allies will win, and this struggle will be the last European war. The rights of all nationalities to free development will be recognized, the federation idea will be applied in remaking the map of Europe. The ugliness of war and the failure of armed peace to prevent war have clearly demonstrated that a period of general disarmament is approaching. The union among the advanced nations, which is being enhanced since the arrival of a common danger by the extraordinary united efforts of all concerned, will inevitably leave its traces on every nation. The foundations of a new life in all the strata composing the modern State are already being laid.

In all the activities of the anti-militarists, the opponents of war, there was a fundamental error. They thought that by their propaganda against war they could prevent it in spite of the fact that all the causes that make war inevitable were still in full force.

They wrote that the cause of modern war is European capitalism and its accompanying phenomena. They believed that a general strike in all the countries about to enter into a war would render the expected conflict impossible.

But by some kind of miracle all the tremendous powers of capitalism and its dependent forces vanished, crumbled. away and became paralyzed at the outbreak of the war. And they vanished not only in France but also in that other country-Germany-the country which saw in the conquest of part of France, in the weakening of her, and in the annexation of her colonies, a necessary step" toward the development of Germany's own capitalism!

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A patent incongruity was, then, the result. And I now ask myself if the majority of the anti-militarists ever realized fully the organic bond seen by them between war and European capitalism. Did they not attach too much importance to the evil will of individuals? * * * So long as there are States the peoples of which are ready, in expectation of personal benefits, to

support a movement for conquest, war cannot be averted by preaching. Those anti-militarists who, in the name of opposition to all war, refuse to support either of the warring sides, are, in my opinion, making a serious mistake. They have omitted from their view one thingthe present war is creating new history. It introduces to all the peoples new conditions of social reconstruction. And when this reconstruction shall have begun, it will pass by those men who had refused to act at a time when the fortunes of the century were being decided on the fields of battle.

The end of German hegemony, the disintegration of the Austrian Empire, the dawn of a new life for the Slavonic peoples, a united Poland again contributing her own national creations to the treasury of science and art-all this and much more may be expected from this

war.

When old Garibaldi called together in 1870 his old and new comrades and went

to fight for the French Republic against Germany, he did not seek world aims to justify his action. He did not overestimate the import of the war. But he saw in France liberty struggling against autocracy, and considered it his duty to come, as he had always done, to the defense of the former against the latter. ** * * Right and progress were on the side of France. To you and many others all this is not enough. You doubt. You want to know definitely if this war will be a war of liberation. But this question cannot be answered in advance. All depends on its conclusion and the circumstances incident to it. Only one thing is certain. If Germany i victorious, then the war will not have been a war of liberation. It will bring on Europe a new slavery. It is necessary that the whole German Nation shall see in reality into what an abyss of destruction and moral degradation its Kultur, wholly devoted to conquest, has hurled it.

* * *

The Faculty of Wonder Dulled

By Winston Spencer Churchill

Former First Lord of the British Admiralty

Following is an excerpt from a recent article in the Sunday Pictorial of London: HE limitations of man's intellect do

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not govern the scale of his affairs.

He does what he can; he comprehends what he can, and the rest happens. When Armageddon burst over Europe probably no single brain achieved a complete and rightly porportioned view of the cataract of events. The first weeks and months of the general war escaped to a large extent from human control. The forces liberated were unmeasured; the consequences of their exercise unforeseeable. * * *

The chaos of the first explosions has given place to the slow fire of trench warfare; the wild turbulence of the incalculable, the sense of terrible adventure have passed. For nearly two years the armies of Europe have dwelt close together in opposing ditches, fed by lavish

floods of human life and broadening streams of shot and shell, tormenting each other by ever-growing and improving agencies of death; and behind them their countries have transformed the infinitely varied activities of modern civilization into the three comprehensive institutions of the barracks, the arsenal, and the hospital.

The progress of the war is no longer to be measured by the battles or the positions of the contending fronts, but mainly by the economic and political reactions which the long and ever more tightly drawn strain is producing in the various nations.

Every man, every woman, every workable child is gradually being fitted into the war machine.

A sombre mood prevails in Britain. The faculty of wonder has been dulled; emotion and enthusiasm; excitemnet is

bankrupt, death is familiar, and sorrow numb.

The world is in twilight; and from beyond dim flickering horizons comes tirelessly the thudding of guns. A hard, frost-like surface of gayety sparkles in the cities; and anxiety turns to thoughtlessness or to apathy for relief.

The beloved figure of son, father, brother, friend descend from trains on flying visits, recreating around them for a little precarious space the happiness of far-off days before the war. A few hours of safety and comfort, a vivid interlude of home and pleasure, and then back, as a matter of course, as a com

monplace experience, to the slow fire which with intensifying fierceness consumes the flesh and sears the hearts of peoples.

Now one understands how men lived through the periods that seem so terrible in the history books, and went about their business, and joked and ate their dinners, and filled their theatres. Now, too, one understands how our forefathers, with shoulder bended to the burden, with searching eye fixed upon the enemy, preserved through the perils, the difficulties, and the blunders of a thousand years the life and honor of Dritannia's isle.

The Changed Ideals of the Belligerents

By V. Kershentseff

Russian Author and Journalist

[Translated for CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE from the Severnia Zapisski, Petrograd.]

HE further into the past the first

Tdays of the war retreat, the dim

mer grow the idealistic watchwords which originally lent a spiritual glory and lustre to the patriotism of the warring nations. From under the sumptuous cover of words there emerges sharply the dry skeleton of materialistic and selfish ambitions.

The long war has become to the world an every-day affair, and this is depriving it of the epithets with which it was formerly described, such as "liberating,"

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civilizing," ," "altruistic," &c. The problems of the war have grown complicated, and changed its face. After two years we look at events with different eyes.

Who will now undertake to prove that this is a war against militarism? It is this war that has helped the development of militarism in a maximum degree. It is this war that has communicated the militaristic disease even to such a country as the United States. Can there be any doubt that victory will be achieved by that group of nations which shall have its military organization developed to the highest perfection? By a perfect military organization we mean not only the purely technical militarism, but the total

of the economic, political, and technical factors comprising the military organization of a State. Not only the skeptical historian of the world war, but the ordinary citizen as well, will arrive at the conclusion that a certain group of nations was victorious because it had demonstrated its ability to solve international problems through armed force. Who will assert that such a conclusion will be a blow to militarism? Will it not be just the other way?

The war, it was said, was being waged in the name of freedom, equality, and even fraternity.

Looking back at the past months, who can confirm this thesis with facts? Who will deny the evident truth that in all the warring countries the tide of conservatism is rising? The best example is furnished by the freest country in Europe-England. Step by step the Liberal Party is giving way before the encroachments of a strengthened conservatism. The principle of voluntary military service is abandoned. The press is muzzled. The theory of free trade is found antiquated. The rôle of the House of Commons is growing secondary. Even the habeas corpus principle has to be

defended by special leagues and funds, just as in the period of dark reaction at the end of the eighteenth century.

In what country is similar retrogression not to be noticed? The war started in the name of defending the rights of small countries and nationalities. Therein lies the great irony of it. Particularly to the small countries and nationalities has it been disastrous. It has proved that the time for small nations is past, that world history has entered a stage where units will consist of coalitions of nations, bound politically and economically. Not only small nations, but even individual large nations, cannot longer exist outside of the coming powerful political combinations.

"This war will be the last. After it will come eternal peace." This theory, popular a year and a half ago, seems at present, more than at any previous time, but a subtle or naïve irony. Of course, in Europe a temporary weariness of war is possible, especially because of the financial disorganization and economic chaos, but even in the case of such a calm there will be military problems on hand. The beginning of the peaceful period that is to come after the war will also mark the beginning of a new war, a commercial, tariff war. In itself not bloody, it may cause another bloody conflict; and it will fall most heavily on the shoulders of those who bear the chief burden of the present catastrophe.

Human Nature and the War

By Principal L. P. Jacks

Dean of Manchester College, Oxford, and Editor of the Hibbert Journal

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rogative of man. The war-not the word, not the idea, but the thing in its concrete horror-is a strange comment on the prerogative.

Suppose we were to cut the war out as a single chapter in the history of man's doings on this planet and set ourselves to deduce from this chapter a theory as to the nature of the beings who did these things. Or suppose we were suddenly endowed with a power of vision to see the war, not through the medium of statistics or newspaper reports but as a living fact in all the length and breadth and detail of its dreadful truth-and then, with that vision fresh before us, set ourselves to write out a testimonial to the character of man, to be delivered to the angels or to the inhabitants of some other planet on which the human race had applied for a situation. Should we not come to the conclusion that man is thoroughly and hopelessly insane? Should we not warn the angels against having anything to do with a race of lunatics so dangerous?

We have come to this-that about

three hundred million human beings on this side and two hundred million on that are now engaged in trying to inflict upon each other the greatest possible amount of death, mutilation, and material loss, and have so far succeeded as to kill or wound forty millions and to destroy $75,000,000,000 worth of wealth at the very least. As a test case of what man is, and what he is capable of, we shall look in vain for any single episode or revealing action that will tell a more eloquent tale about man-that is, if we are to judge him by what he does rather than by what he says, as surely we ought to do. We could not hesitate as to the conclusion to be drawn from such premises. To conclude that human nature is brutal, or wicked, or selfish, or cruel would not be enough. Human nature, we should have to say, is plainly mad. Insanity and not reason is the prerogative of man.

A friend of mine who has reflected deeply on the war, and written about it more wisely than any other Englishman, remarked the other day: "During the early months of the war I often had the feeling that I was in hell already in fact, that we were all in hell together without knowing it. But that feeling has passed away. I now believe that I am in Bedlam-which perhaps is only a particular province of hell." That feeling is widespread, though vague and undefined. Even our soldiers at the front, keen as they are to do their duty, often speak in their letters of the “mad busion which they are engaged. From these conclusions there would seem to be no escape-if we accept the view that human nature is really responsible for what is going on. But, I hasten to say, human nature is not responsible for it-and venture to think that until this is realized the profoundest political lesson of the war will be missed. Human nature has been dragged into this business against its will, its intelligence, its instincts. A "spell " has been put upon it.

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To charge the horrors of the present time to the brute passions of man's nature, to his want of right-mindedness or of self-control, is to commit a libel

on man and to let the real sinner go free. In human nature there is nothing whatever which could lead, under any conceivable circumstances, to such orgies of bloodshed and mutilation as the slopes of Verdun and many other places have recently witnessed. Human nature is from first to last in revolt against the whole proceeding. It is not human nature which does these things, but State nature -a very different thing. To love one's native land and be willing to die for it is one thing, perhaps the noblest in man; to love a soulless machine called "the State" is another, and I for one have never met a human being in England or anywhere else who was capable of so unnatural a passion.

They

Modern States are not human. are stupid monsters without conscience, without soul, without feeling. As to intelligence, they lack even that modest amount of it which would enable them to understand one another. Not understanding one another, and unable to do so, their mutual relations are like those of a number of icebergs floating on the same sea, which may at any moment be flung into collision by the drift of invisible currents. It is the paradox of the world's history that the great States formed by the combined intelligence of their members have so little intelligence in their relations with one another. The human nature which is in each member of the State, and stands on the whole for right-mindedness and neighborly 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.

There are many who regard the war as betokening the need for a radical change in the nature of man-in his ideals, his habits, his passions. And certainly this would be a sound inference from the facts if human nature were really responsible for the war-only in that case I think we should have to go further and demand the total extinction 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

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