Page:The Myth of a Guilty Nation.djvu/19

 THE MYTH OF A GUILTY NATION

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present course of events in Europe is impressing on us once more the truth that military victory, if it is to stand, must also be demonstrably a victory for justice. In the long run, victory must appeal to the sense of justice in the conquered no less than in the conquerors, if it is to be effective. There is no way of getting around this. Mr. Gilbert K. Chesterton is right when he says that if the South had not finally accepted the outcome of the Civil War as being on the whole just, Lincoln would have been wrong in trying to preserve the Union; which is only another way of expressing Lincoln's own homely saying that nothing is ever really settled until it is settled right. The present condition of Europe is largely due to the fact that the official peacemakers have not taken into their reckoning the [13]