those to-day of Belgium, France, England, and Germany. Some day or other
they will return to their homes; but when they do it will be with a
tale that will give to the Western world an understanding of what war
means, such as it never had before.

All the same, if the word _is_ to be "Never Again!" it must come through
the masses themselves (from whom the fighters are mainly drawn); it must
be through them that this consummation must be realized. It must be
through the banding together and determined and combined effort of the
Unions, local, national, and international, and through the weight of
the workers' influence in all their associations and in all countries.
To put much reliance in this matter upon the "classes" is rash; for
though just now the latter are sentimentalizing freely over the
subject--having got into nearer touch with it than ever before--yet when
all is settled down, and the day arrives once more that _their_
interests point to war, it is only too likely that they (or the majority
of them) will not hesitate to sacrifice the masses--unless, indeed, the
power to do so has already departed from them.

And it is no good for _us_ to sentimentalize on the subject. We must not
blink facts. And the fact is that "it's a long way" to _Never Again_.
The _causes_ of War must be destroyed first; and, as I have more than
once tried to make clear, the causes ramify through our midst; they are
like the roots, pervading the body politic, of some fell disease whose
outbreak on the surface shocks and affrights us. To dislodge and
extirpate these roots is a long business. But there is this consolation
about it--that it is a business which we can all of us begin at once, in
our own lives!

Probably wars will still for many a century continue, though less