Page:The League of Nations and the democratic idea.djvu/14

 Such a man, like the Milesians in the Greek proverb, is not by any means a devil, but he may act as if he was.'

It is considerations like these which explain both 'the passionate protest against war and war-makers which rises from the democratic and socialist parties of Europe, and also the belief of many pacifists that the one antidote to the poison of war is Democracy pure and simple.

'The common people,' they argue, 'alike in almost every war, feel that they never made it. They were trapped into it. The war was prepared in secret by small numbers of rich and powerful men—not of course by all the rich and powerful, but by some small groups of them—and only sprung upon the peoples when it was too late to speak. And whoever may gain from the!war,the common man can only lose; he loses more no doubt if his country is beaten than if it wins, but he loses either way. His business is merely to bear the burden; to fight and be killed, and suffer and continue to surfer, sometimes to go mad from prolonged agony, while eminent persons in comparatively safe positions make touching speeches about his high animal spirits and careless heroism. The people who gain are a few scores of politicians, few hundred soldiers and adventurers, and a few hundred thousand profiteers from contractors to munition-worker.

Thinking along these lines, the remedy seems plain.