Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/48

 had found a new method, with enormous possibilities, for killing men. This weapon was powerful enough to win the war, if the Allies refused to reply in kind. They did reply in kind. From that moment, to use the language of the streets, the lid was off. Nations, instead of merely armies, were by now mobilized for war. Those great and little scientific minds, engaged hitherto in searching for abstract truth or in multiplying the richness of life and the wealth of nations, could be turned toward the invention of means of destruction whether they wished or no. A new area of human consciousness was brought to fruition. A new power in men was unloosed and this one most sinister. Its established past performances, its probable future results, I shall consider elsewhere.

This release and stimulation of the human imagination for the business of killing was perhaps the main social event of the Great War. But I hinted at another almost equally important when I said above that nations instead of armies were now mobilized for war.

The Germans had entered Armageddon with an unprecedented equipment of munitions. The electric-minded French perceived at once, the slower-minded British only a little later, that this was to be a war of factories as well as of men and bent all their resources toward organizing the national life for this purpose. Every woman enlisted in