Carpenter should write
books on 'Civilisation, its Cause and Cure.'

This Puritan ideal is not so much unchristian as narrow and
unintelligent; but the money-making life has of late become more and
more frankly predatory and anti-social. The great trusts, and the arts
of the company-promoter, can hardly be said to perform any social
service; they exist to levy tribute on the public. We may say therefore
that, though war between the leading nations of the world had become a
strange idea and a far-off memory, we had by no means risen above the
principles and practices of war in our internal life. The immunity from
militarism hitherto enjoyed by Britain and the United States was a
fortunate accident, not a proof of higher morality. Our fleet protected
both ourselves and the Americans from the necessity of maintaining a
conscript army; but we had drifted into a condition in which civil war
seemed not to be far off, and in which violence and lawlessness were
increasing. By a strange inconsistency, many who on moral or religious
grounds condemned wars between nations were found to condone or justify
acts of war against the State, organised by discontented factions of its
citizens. Revolutionary strikes, prepared long in advance by forced
levies of money which were candidly called war-funds, had as their
avowed aim the paralysis of the industries of the country and the
reduction of the population to distress by withholding the necessaries
of life. These acts of civil war, and disgraceful outbreaks of criminal
anarchism, were justified by persons who professed a conscientious
objection to defending their homes and families against a foreign
invader. This state of mind proves how little essential connexion there
is between democracy and peace. It discloses a confusion of ideas even
greater than the antithesis between industrialism and militarism in the
writings of Herbert Spencer. On this latter fallacy it is enough to
quote the words of Admiral Mahan; 'As far as the advocacy of peace rests
on material motives like economy and prosperity, it is the service of
Mammon; and the bottom of the platform will drop out when Mammon thinks
that war will pay better.' This is notoriously what has happened in
Germany. A short war, with huge indemnities, seemed to German financiers
a promising speculation. If such were the rotten foundations upon which
anti-militarism in this country was based, the Churches cannot be blamed
for giving the pe