amity, the permanent
results of which include a holocaust of European wealth and credit,
accumulated during a century of unprecedented industry and ingenuity,
the loss of innumerable lives, and the destruction of all the old and
honourable conventions which have hitherto regulated the intercourse of
civilised nations with each other, in war as well as in peace, should
have been possible, is justly felt to be a reproach to the whole
continent, and especially to the nations which have taken the lead in
its civilisation and culture. The ancient races of Asia, which have
never admitted the moral superiority of the West, are keenly interested
spectators of our suicidal frenzy. A Japanese is reported to have said,
'We have only to wait a little longer, till Europe has completed her
_hara kiri_.' This is, indeed, what any intelligent observer must think
about the present struggle. Just as the feudal barons of England
destroyed each other and brought the feudal system to an end in the
Wars of the Roses, so the great industrial nations are rending to pieces
the whole fabric of modern industrialism, which can never be
reconstructed. Mr. Norman Angell was perfectly right in his argument
that a European war would be ruinous to both sides. The material objects
at stake, such as the control of the Turkish Empire and the African
continent, are not worth more than an insignificant fraction of the
war-bill. We are witnessing the suicide of a social order, and our
descendants will marvel at our madness, as we marvel at the senseless
wars of the past.

There has, it is plain, been something fundamentally wrong with European
civilisation, and the disease appears to be a moral one. With this
conviction it is natural that men should turn upon the official
custodians of religion and morality, and ask them whether they have been
unfaithful to their trust, or whether it is not rather proved that the
faith which they profess is itself bankrupt and incapable of exerting
any salutary influence upon human character and action. Christianity
stands arraigned at the bar of public opinion. But it is not without
significance that the indictment should now be urged with a vehemence
which we do not find in the records of former convulsions. It was not
generally felt to be a scandal to Christianity that England was at war
for 69 years out of the 120 which preceded the battle of Waterloo.
Either our generation expected more from Christianity, or it was far