third or a fourth part of the fabulous sums expended on extermination
and destruction had been devoted to works of peace, all the iniquities
that poison the air we breathe would have been triumphantly redressed
and that the social question, the one great question, that matter of
life and death which justice demands that posterity should face,
would have found its definite solution, once and for all, in a
happiness which now perhaps even our sons and grandsons will not
realize. We know that the disappearance of two or three million young
existences, cut down when they were on the point of bearing fruit,
will leave in history a void that will not be easily filled, even as
we know that among those dead were mighty intellects, treasures of
genius which will not come back again and which contained inventions
and discoveries that will now perhaps be lost to us for centuries. We
know that we shall never grasp the consequences of this thrusting back
of progress and of this unprecedented devastation. But, granting all
this, it is a good thing to recover our balance and stand upon our
feet. There is no irreparable loss. Everything is transformed, nothing
perishes and that which seems to be hurled into destruction is not
destroyed at all. Our moral world, even as our physical world, is a
vast but hermetically sealed sphere, whence naught can issue, whence
naught can fall, to be dissolved in space. All that exists, all that
comes into being upon this earth remains there and bears fruit; and
the most appalling wastage is but material or spiritual riches flung
away for an instant, to fall to the ground again in a new form. There
is no escape or leakage, no filtering through cracks, no missing the
mark, not even waste or neglect. All this heroism poured out on every
side does not leave our planet; and the reason why the courage of our
fighters seems so general and yet so extraordinary is that all the
might of the dead has passed into the survivors. All those forces of
wisdom, patience, honour and self-sacrifice which increase day by day