muddy, weedy, bloodstained silliness. It is the plain duty of every man
to give his life and all that he has if by so doing he may help to end
it. I hate Germany, which has thrust this experience upon mankind, as
I hate some horrible infectious disease. The new war, the war on the
modern level, is her invention and her crime. I perceive that on our
side and in its broad outlines, this war is nothing more than a gigantic
and heroic effort in sanitary engineering; an effort to remove German
militarism from the life and regions it has invaded, and to bank it
in and discredit and enfeeble it so that never more will it repeat its
present preposterous and horrible efforts. All human affairs and all
great affairs have their reservations and their complications, but that
is the broad outline of the business as it has impressed itself on my
mind and as I find it conceived in the mind of the average man of the
reading class among the allied peoples, and as I find it understood in
the judgement of honest and intelligent neutral observers.

It is my unshakeable belief that essentially the Allies fight for a
permanent world peace, that primarily they do not make war but resist
war, that has reconciled me to this not very congenial experience of
touring as a spectator all agog to see, through the war zones. At any
rate there was never any risk of my playing Balaam and blessing the
enemy. This war is tragedy and sacrifice for most of the world, for
the Germans it is simply the catastrophic outcome of fifty years of
elaborate intellectual foolery. Militarism, Welt Politik, and here we
are! What else _could_ have happened, with Michael and his infernal War
Machine in the very centre of Europe, but this tremendous disaster?

It is a disaster. It may be a necessary disaster; it may teach a lesson
that could be learnt in no other way; but for all that, I insist, it
remains waste, disorder, disaster.