the war may be a vast protest of the nations, which have the spirit
of the future in their hearts, against a theory of life that
represents the spirit of the past. And I thus, with some seeming
inconsistency, believe that the war may represent the hope of peace
at bay. If the nations can keep this clearly before them, and not
be tempted either into reprisals, or into rewarding themselves by
the spoils of victory, if victory comes; if it ends in the Germans
being sincerely convinced that they have been misled and poisoned
by a conception of right which is both uncivilised and unchristian,
then I believe that all our sufferings may not be too great a price
to pay for the future well-being of the world. That is the largest
and brightest hope I dare to frame; and there are many hours and
days when it seems all clouded and dim.


6


We cannot at this time disengage our thoughts from the war; we
cannot, and we ought not. Still less can we take refuge from it in
idle dreams of peace and security; but at a time when every paper
and book that we see is full of the war and its sufferings, there
must be men and women who would do well to turn their hearts and
minds for a little away from it. If we brood over it, if we feed
our minds upon it, especially if we are by necessity non-
combatants, it is all apt to turn to a festering horror which makes
us useless and miserable. Whatever happens, we must try not to be
simply the worse for the war--morbid, hysterical, beggared of faith
and hope, horrified with life. That is the worst of evils; and I
believe that it is wholesome to put as far as we can our cramped