Page:The League of Nations and the democratic idea.djvu/8

 very extremity of possible human suffering, while those at -whose will they fight for the most part contemplate the battles from a distance or else sit at home in glory. To say this is not necessarily to condemn the belligerent Governments. In my opinion some of them were grossly to blame and others quite innocent; but even if all were equally to blame, or if no one was to blame at all, it would make no difference. The fact is unchanged that, under the present conditions of state organization and national sovereignty, the life and liberty and property and happiness of the common man throughout the world are at the absolute mercy of a few persons whom he has never seen, involved in complicated quarrels that he has never heard oh No artisan, no peasant, no remote wood-cutter or shepherd in the whole of Europe, however law-abiding and God-fearing, can be sure henceforth that he will not suddenly by due process of law be haled away to a punishment more cruel than that normally reserved for the worst criminals. If not killed, he may be wounded, blinded, maimed for life, his business ruined, his family reduced to want and his home broken up. And not only that. He must lose not only his happiness but his innocence also. He must do things which his whole soul abominates. He must give himself up to the work of killing other men like himself and previously as innocent as himself. And all of it owing to no fault and no will of his own!