won the War together and suffered together the least amount
of diffidence possible. As it is, the United States, Great Britain,
France, Italy, Japan, all go their own way. France has obtained her
maximum of concessions, including those of least use to her, but never
before has the world seen her so alone in her attitude as after the
treaties of Paris.

What is most urgently required at the moment is to change the
prevalent war-mentality which still infects us and overcomes all
generous sentiments, all hopes of unity. The statement that war makes
men better or worse is, perhaps, an exaggerated one. War, which
creates a state of exaltation, hypertrophies all the qualities, all
the tendencies, be they for good or for evil. Ascetic souls, spirits
naturally noble, being disposed toward sacrifice, develop a state
of exaltation and true fervour. How many examples of nobility, of
abnegation, of voluntary martyrdom has not the War given us? But in
persons disposed to evil actions, in rude and violent spirits (and
these are always in the majority), the spirit of violence increases.
This spirit, which among the intellectuals takes the form of arrogance
and concupiscence, and in politics expresses itself in a policy of
conquest, assumes in the crowd the most violent forms of class war,
continuous assaults upon the power of the State, and an unbalanced
desire to gain as much as possible with the least possible work.

Before the War the number of men ready to take the law into their own
hands was relatively small; now there are many such individuals.
The various nations, even those most advanced, cannot boast a moral
progress comparable with their intellectual development. The explosion
of sentiments of violence has created in the period after the War in
most countries an atmosphere which one may call unbreathable. Peoples
accustomed to be dominated and to serve have come to believe that,
having become dominators in their turn, they have the right to use
every kind of violence against their overlords of yesterday. Are not
the injustices of the Poles against the Germans, and those of the
Rumanians against the Magyars, a proof of this state of mind? Even in
the most civilized countries many rules of order and discipline have
gone by the board.

After all the great wars a condition of torpor, of unwillingness to
work, together with a certain rudeness in social relations, has always
been noticed.

The war of 1870 was a little war in