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reciated the sound element of it. There is no comparison between the behaviour of the two nations. Whether England deserves quite all the compliments which Mr. Guttery showers upon it may be a matter of opinion. We have as yet little cause for "mafficking," but there is very little doubt that it will occur on a grandiose scale before the war is over. We do not sing hymns of hate; but it might be hazardous to speculate what we would do if some nation drew an iron ring round our country and reduced us almost to a condition of starvation. We have no lust for territory--I am not sure about the lust for gold--because we have in our Empire territory enough for our population; and we may wait to see if England does not annex any part of Germany's African or Pacific possessions. Mr. Guttery's contrast is crude and superficial. He ignores the economic and geographical conditions which give us a feeling of content and Germany a profound feeling of discontent and a dangerous ambition. The German character is not in itself inferior to ours, and it were well for us to fancy ourselves in Germany's position and wonder if we would have acted otherwise. On the other hand, I have freely acknowledged, or claimed, that there has been a great improvement in the moral temper of Europe, and that this is especially seen in the odium that is now cast on aggressive or offensive war. But to claim this improvement for the credit of religion is, to say the least, audacious. The more simple-minded of Mr. Guttery's hearers would imagine that the change set in with the fall of Paganism. "The Pagan glory of war for its own sake is gone." When clerical writers speak of Paganism they think that any evil deed ever done by a Pagan is characteristic of the whole body; they ask us to apply a different standard to their own body. Plato and Socrates were Pagans; Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius--to speak of warriors and statesmen--were Pagans. The truth is that a glory in war for its own sake was no more generally characteristic of Paganism than it was of Christian Europe until a century ago: it was probably less. Most of the German Emperors and of the Kings of England, France, and Spain would fairly come under the description which Mr. Guttery calls Pagan. One hardly needs to know much of history to perceive that this moral improvement in the conception of war belongs to the last century and a half, and it is somewhat bold to claim that a change which made
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