incident is one of the compensations of War--few enough though
they may be, Heaven knows! As it drags on, the War is becoming
more and more mechanical. It is now like one enormous engine,
with multitudinous cogwheels, each of which plays its part.

_July 4th, 1917._

Looking at the Casualty Lists recording the death of so many
brave men, and thinking of the grief in the homes, one feels that
this War lies heavy on the world like a black horror. And yet I
find myself ever more irresistibly (albeit wholly against my will
and wishes) forced to the conclusion that War is a part of the
order of things. Did you read the Russian Socialists' manifesto
on the War? While, on the one hand, they ascribed responsibility
for it to the capitalist classes in the warring countries, yet
they admitted that Russia's withdrawal from the War would put the
Boche section of capitalists in an advantageous position, and so
decided to continue it. In other words, they admit that Democracy
is powerless to avert War.

To my thinking, all History is made up of a series of movements
like the swinging of a pendulum, from democracy (often via
oligarchy) to imperialism, and from imperialism back to
democracy. It seems to me that there is only one effective method
of ensuring world-peace. It was the method of the Romans, by
which one nation having fought its way to a position of
undisputed and indisputable supremacy, imposed its will on the
other nations of the world, and established the "Pax Romana."
Similar efforts made by great men have proved a disastrous
failure in the long run, though after meeting with temporary
success. Rome's universal dominion did not endure long, and
Napoleon's domination of the Continent was very brief. England
seems to have almost succeeded up to date in her attempt to
establish a "Pax Romana," for she gave order and peace to a large
part of the world. England builded better than she knew, for many
of the wise things she did were done under protest and from her
devotion to the _laissez-faire_ system. But this stupendous
conflict shows that the "Pax Britannica" has not succeeded in
averting wars.

I have heard it maintained that Karl Marx's theory is the
solution of the question, namely, to igno