telegram, and otherwise, during the course of the same war, before a dumb
and shamefaced continent. These were merely the expressions of the
simplicity of a nation which more than any other has a tendency to run
into the grotesque. There is worse to come.

To-day, in the fierce grapple of two nations of different race, the short
era of national wars seems about to close. No war will be waged for an
idea. The "noxious idle aristocracies" of yesterday fought without
malice for an occupation, for the honour, for the fun of the thing. The
virtuous, industrious democratic States of to-morrow may yet be reduced
to fighting for a crust of dry bread, with all the hate, ferocity, and
fury that must attach to the vital importance of such an issue. The
dreams sanguine humanitarians raised almost to ecstasy about the year
fifty of the last century by the moving sight of the Crystal
Palace--crammed full with that variegated rubbish which it seems to be
the bizarre fate of humanity to produce for the benefit of a few
employers of labour--have vanished as quickly as they had arisen. The
golden hopes of peace have in a single night turned to dead leaves in
every drawer of every benevolent theorist's writing table. A swift
disenchantment overtook the incredible infatuation which could put its
trust in the peaceful nature of industrial and commercial competition.

Industrialism and commercialism--wearing high-sounding names in many
languages (_Welt-politik_ may serve for one instance) picking up coins
behind the severe and disdainful figure of science whose giant strides
have widened for us the horizon of the universe by some few inches--stand
ready, almost eager, to appeal to the sword as soon as the globe of the
earth has shrunk beneath our growing numbers by another ell or so. And
democracy, which has elected to pin its faith to the supremacy of
material interests, will have to fight their battles to the bitter end,