Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/76



We have lived to see Europe—that Europe which carried the fortunes and the hopes of all mankind—degraded to a foul something which no image can so much as shadow forth. To a detached intelligence it must resemble nothing so much as a sort of malign middle term between a lunatic asylum and a butcher's stall.

We have seen committed, under our own amazed eyes, the greatest crime against civilisation of which civilisation itself keeps any record. The Blood-and-Ironmongers have entered into possession of the soul of humanity. No one who remembers our social miseries will say that that was a house swept and garnished, but it did seem secure against such an invasion of diabolism: that was an illusion, and it has perished. The face of things is changed, and all the streams are flowing up the hills and not down them. If in the old world it was the task of men to build, develop, redeem, integrate, carnage and destruction are now imposed upon us as the first conditions of human society. We are gripped in the ancient bloodiness of that paradox which bids us kill life in order to save life.

Nations are at war on land and sea, and under