aim is the joint effort of the
stronger peoples to protect and assist the weaker and less advanced. The
case of Africa and the Brussels Conference of 1889. Analogy with the
treatment of the young at home.

I

THE GROUNDS OF UNITY

In face of the greatest tragedy in history, it is to history that we
make appeal. What does it teach us to expect as the issue of the
conflict? How far and in what form may we anticipate that the unity of
mankind, centring as it must round Europe, will emerge from the trial?

Only two occasions occur to the mind on which, since the break up of the
Roman Empire, a schism so serious as the present has threatened the
unity of the Western world. The first was the Reformation and the war
which it entailed down to the Peace of Westphalia. The second was the
struggle against Napoleon, terminated a hundred years ago. The latter
was in many respects a closer parallel. It was a struggle of the
independent nations of Europe against the overweening ambition and
aggression of one Power. It united them in an alliance which achieved
its purpose and survived the successful issue of the war for some years.
Some such course, with a comity of nations far wider and more enduring
than the Holy Alliance as its sequel, we hope and predict for the
present war.

The struggle at the Reformation was less like the present, either in its
causes or its course, but it has some features which make it a useful
point for a survey of the permanent unifying elements which hold and
will hold the West together in spite of occasional cataclysms and the
clash of rival interests and passion. A man like Erasmus, trembling
before the catastrophe, willing to make immense sacrifices to avoid an
open breach, uncertain of any final readjustment which might restore the
harmony of the world, was not unlike some among us who hoped against
hope that the enemy might be appeased, who thought that almost any peace
was better than any war, who still fear that the breach in unity is
vital or irreparable for generations.

And the issue three hundred years ago may also inspire us with a
cautious optimism, a strong though not unmeasured trust. The right cause
triumphed, fully in the end. Freedom was secured, both for churches and
for individuals, throughout the world. The evil features in the papal
system, against which the attack was really levelled, quietly but
completely disappeared, and the institution survived, itself reformed.
Be