Page:Justice in war time by Russell, Bertrand.djvu/62

 custom still survives. It is now recognised, at any rate in the Anglo-Saxon world, that the so-called “honour” which made duelling appear inevitable was a folly and a delusion. It is perhaps not too much to hope that the day may come when the honour of nations, like that of individuals, will be no longer measured by their willingness to inflict slaughter. It can hardly be hoped, however, that such a change will be brought about while the affairs of nations are left in the keeping of diplomats whose status is bound up with the diplomatic or military triumph of the countries from which they come, and whose manner of life renders them unusually ignorant of all political and economic facts of real importance and of all the changes of opinion and organisation which make the present world different from that of the eighteenth century. If any real progress is to be made in introducing sanity into international relations, these relations must henceforth be in the hands of men less aloof and less aristocratic, more in touch with common life, and more emancipated from the prejudices of a by-gone age. And popular education, instead of inflaming the hatred of foreigners and representing even the tiniest triumph as worthy of even the greatest sacrifices, must learn to aim rather at producing some sense of the solidarity of mankind and of the paltryness of those objects to which diplomatists, often secretly, think fit to pledge the manhood and heroism of nations. The objects for which men have fought in the past, whether just or unjust, are no longer to be achieved by wars amongst civilised nations. A great weight of tradition, of financial interests, of political insincerity, is bound up with the anachronism of war. But it is