Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Holy War, Made in Germany (1915).djvu/17

4 political interests, wars of which the fanaticism is not to be outdone by that of the bitterest religious strife, and of which the destructiveness is continuously being increased by our immense technical progress? Under such circumstances a quiet enjoyment of the hard-won freedom of thought is out of the question."

This utterance ever again obtrudes itself on my memory in connexion with the events that are taking place at present. Large groups of men, kept apart by varying political and economic interests, have for years and years consumed an important part of their intellectual and material resources in devising means by which, in the fulness of time, they might destroy each other; and now, at last, the long-expected spark has fallen on the accumulated fuel. Every one of the belligerents is horrified by the idea of responsibility for the crimes against mankind which