to work towards the initiation and the organisation of this immense
effort. In so far as the Great War of to-day acts as a spur to such
effort it will not have been an unmixed calamity.


[1] In so far as it may have been so, that seems merely due to its
great length, to the fact that the absence of commissariat arrangements
involved a more thorough method of pillage, and to epidemics.

[2] Treitschke, _History of Germany_ (English translation by E. and C.
Paul), Vol. I., p. 87.

[3] Von der Goltz, _The Nation in Arms_, pp. 14 _et seq._ This attitude
was a final echo of the ancient Truce of God. That institution, which
was first definitely formulated in the early eleventh century in
Roussillon and was soon confirmed by the Pope in agreement with nobles
and barons, was extended to the whole of Christendom before the end of
the century. It ordained peace for several days a week and on many
festivals, and it guaranteed the rights and liberties of all those
following peaceful avocations, at the same time protecting crops,
live-stock, and farm implements.

[4] It is interesting to observe how St. Augustine, who was as familiar
with classic as with Christian life and thought, perpetually dwells on
the boundless misery of war and the supreme desirability of peace as a
point at which pagan and Christian are at one; "Nihil gratius soleat
audiri, nihil desiderabilius concupisci, nihil postremo possit melius
inveniri ... Sicut nemo est qui gaudere nolit, ita nemo est qui pacem
habere nolit" (_City of God_, Bk. XIX., Chs. 11-12).