outstanding fact of war itself, the survival of which democrats, especially
in Great Britain and the United States, have of recent years been so
greatly tempted to ignore.

People speak as if war were a new sudden and terrible phenomenon. There is
nothing new about the fact of war. What is new about this war is the scale
on which it is waged, the science and skill expended on it, and the fact
that it is being carried on by national armies, numbering millions, instead
of by professional bodies of soldiers. But war itself is as old as the
world: and if it surprises and shocks us this is due to our own blindness.
There are only two ways of settling disputes between nations, by law or
by war. As there is as yet no World-State, with the power to enforce
a World-law between the nations, the possibility of war, with all its
contingent horrors, should have been before our eyes all the time. The
_occasion_ of this war was no doubt a surprise. But that it could happen at
all should not be a surprise to us, still less a disillusionment. It does
not mark a backward step in human civilisation. It only registers the
fact that civilisation is still grievously incomplete and unconsolidated.
Terrible as this war is in its effect on individual lives and happiness, it
ought not to depress us--even if, in our blindness, we imagined the world
to be a far better organised place than it actually is. The fact that many
of the combatants regard war as an anachronism adds to the tragedy, but
also to the hope, of the struggle. It shows that civilised opinion is
gathering strength for that deepening and extension of the meaning and
range of citizenship which alone can make war between the nations of the
world as obsolete as it has become between the nations of the British
Empire or between the component parts of the United States.

It was perhaps inevitable that British citizens in particular, removed from
the storm centres of Continental Europe, and never very logical in their