Page:The League of Nations and the democratic idea.djvu/23

 states a goal by no means unattainable. It only needed the further spread of the 'cordial understanding' to include Germany and Austria, and so achieve that 'bringing together of the two great groups' which was the main purpose of Sir Edward Grey's policy.

Instead we have had the Great War. But in this, as so many departments of life, the War presents us not with a conclusion but with a tremendous interrogative. Shall we go infinitely back or decisively forward? Shall we become much better than we were or vastly worse? It must be the one or the other. We must either devote the whole of our national energies and resources, all our science, all our imagination, all our leisure, to preparation for a next war, not very distant, which must surpass in horror anything that the world has known and must leave European civilization poisoned if not dead: or we must by deliberate effort build up some permanent structure of international understanding which will make such a war impossible. To do the first we need only drift with the tide; to achieve the second we must rise up and conquer circumstances.

The problem is entirely one of self-control and self-guidance. Every thinking person knows that if the states of Europe continue to practise war their doom is sealed. The precipice is visible, straight before us; are we men, with the power to think and check ourselves and turn aside, or are we as the Gadarene swine, incapable of turning? The situation is in some ways