But the story of man is a long story, and we cannot see its drift from any
episode, however vast and catastrophic. We are still only in the turbulent
childhood of our career, and frightful as our excesses are, there is a
motive behind them that makes them profoundly different from the wars of
old. That motive is the idea of human liberty, the sanctity of public law,
the right of every nation, small or great, to live its life free from the
terrorism of force. When, in the ancient or mediaeval world, was there
fought a war for a world idea like this? Despotism then had it all its own
way. Even the Peace of Rome was only the peace of universal subjugation,
not the peace of universal liberty based on law which the world is fighting
to establish to-day. Never before has embattled democracy challenged the
principle of tyranny for the possession of the world....

Ah, I know what you are thinking as you run your mind over the Allies.
Liberty! Does Russia stand for liberty? Yes, in the circumstances of
to-day, even Russia stands for liberty, for do not forget that this is not
a war of the Russian bureaucracy, but a war sustained by the passion of the
Russian people. And, Russia apart or Russia included, who can doubt that
the cause of human freedom is in our hands, and the cause of ancient
tyranny is in the hands of our enemy? May we not see in these baleful fires
the Twilight of the Gods--of those old gods of blood and iron that have
held the world in subjection through the long centuries of its travail? May
we not see even in the midst of this discord and carnage, this hell of
death and destruction, the new birth of humanity--the promise of a world
set free?

Perhaps in that distant time when the tragedy of to-day is only an old
chapter in the story of the human race it will be seen that Dryden, after
all, was not guilty of a grim jest, but that this mighty discord was the