can we
hope, when the war is over, and when the disasters to which it will have
led will have become unmistakable, that the intellectuals will curb
their pride and will constrain themselves to say, "We were wrong"?--To
ask this would be to ask too much. The older generation, I fear, will
have to endure to the last its sickness of mind and its obstinacy. On
this side there is little hope. We can only wait until the older
generation has died out.

Those who wish to reknit the relations among the peoples, must turn
their hopes towards the other generation, that of those who bleed in the
armies. May they be preserved! They have been ruthlessly thinned out by
the sickle of war. They might even be annihilated if the war should be
prolonged and extended, as may happen, for all things are possible.
Mankind stands, like Hercules, at the parting of the ways. One of these
ways leads (if Asia takes a hand in the game, and accentuates yet
further the characteristics of hideous destruction in which Germany has
set an example inevitably followed by the other combatants) to the
suicide of Europe.--But at the present hour we have still the right to
hope that the young men of Europe, now enrolled in the armies, will
survive in sufficient numbers to fulfil the mission that will devolve on
them after the war, the mission of reconciling the thoughts of the enemy
nations. In either camp, I know a number of independent spirits, who
look forward, when peace is signed, to realising this intellectual
communion. They propose to except from this communion none but those
who, be it in their own or be it in the other camp, have prostituted
thought to the work of hatred. When I reflect on these young men, I am
firmly convinced (and herein I differ from Gerhard Gran) that after the
war the minds of all lands will inter-penetrate one another far more
effectively than they have ever done before. The nations which knew
nothing of one another, or which saw one another only in the form of
contemptuous caricatures, have learned during the last four years, in
the mud of the trenches, and at grips with death, that they are the same
suffering flesh. All are enduring the same ordeal, and in it they become
brothers. This sentiment continues to grow. For when we attempt to
foresee the changes which, after the war, will occur in the
relationships between the nations, we do not sufficiently realise the
extent to which the war will lead to other upheavals, which may