Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/51

 Blind to this ghastly tragedy of history, we have maintained and cherished militarism until it has brought on us in turn the greatest catastrophe that a single year ever embraced. Probably our grandchildren, probably many a child that gazes now with wide eyes on our troops and banners, will look back on our civilisation with amazement. They may smile at a drill-sergeant like Count von Moltke telling illiterate rustics of the glorious moral qualities which war develops in—the men who traversed Belgium! But we civilians will honestly puzzle them. We had the history of the world unfolded before us, and we saw this institution plainly emerging from barbarism and leaving its bloody and defacing splashes on every page of the chronicle. We traced the evolution of justice, and we saw that, as it was a mighty gain to men when tribunals were set up to adjudicate on the quarrels of individuals or clans, it would be a far mightier gain to erect a tribunal for settling the quarrels of nations. Yet we took this stupid burden from the shoulders of our fathers, and we made it incalculably heavier for ourselves and our children.

I need not set out the weight of the burden in figures. When I first wrote this page I dilated on the seventy million sterling per year which we English were compelled to spend on defence: I imagined it expended on social betterment and human help—on a magnificent scheme of education, for children and adults, and so on. Then I observed—two years ago—with a shudder that at