espect. They are the symbols
of an innocence that once was ours, the tokens of a contact with the
unseen world for which we in our blindness grope longingly in vain.
VIII. Lierre
When, years hence, some historian looks back upon the present war,
and from the confusion of its battles tries to frame before his mind a
picture of the whole, one grim conclusion will be forced upon his
mind. He will note, perhaps, vast alterations in the map of Europe; he
will lament a loss of life such as only the hand of Heaven has dealt
before; he will point to the folly of the wealth destroyed. But beneath
all these he will hear one insistent note from which he cannot escape,
the deep keynote of the whole, the note on which the war was based,
the secret of its ghastly chords, and the foundation of its dark
conclusion. And he will write that in the year 1914 one of the great
nations of civilized Europe relapsed into barbarism.
In the large sense a nation becomes civilized as its members
recognize the advantages of sinking their personal desires and gain
in the general good of the State. The fact that an individual can read
and write and play the piano has nothing at all to do with the degree
of his civilization, an elementary axiom of which some of our rulers
seem strangely ignorant. To be of use to the State, and to train others
to be of use to the State (and not only of use to themselves), should
be, and indeed is, the aim of every truly civilized man. Unless it be so,
his civilization is a mere veneer, ready to wear off at the first rub, and
he himself a parasite upon the civilized world.
As time has gone on, the State has laid down certain rules by means
of which the men who formed it could serve it better, and these are
our laws which we obey not for our own good directly, but for the
good of the State. From the point of view of the plain man in the
street, it is all utterly illogical, for it would be logical to go and take
from your neighbour whatever you wished, so long as you were
strong enough to hold it. But, let us thank Heaven, no sane man is
logical, and only a Professor would dare to make the claim. It is one
of the prerogatives of his office, and should be treated with tolerance.
And as our views of life are small and limited by our surroundings,
when States grew large they took from the shoulders of the individual
his responsibilities in the great State which the world has now
become; and the States of w
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