altered far more rapidly than at the time of the
Renaissance. It turns from the Churches, not because it is tired of
the spiritual life, or of other-worldliness, but because, just as it
demands of literature and art that they should appeal to the modern
mind and heart, so it can be content with nothing less from religion.
And it is just because the Churches have been too conservative,
because they tend to tradition, formulae, conventions, and manners
which, retained beyond their time, assume the garb of unreality, that
they are abandoned or slighted by the people--as they must continue to
be slighted--until new prophets arise to present universal truths in a
new and practical form; to endeavour to preach religion as the great
man of letters endeavours to represent beauty and truth.

IV

SPECIALISM IN WAR

England is very near to the Continent of Europe, and we are accustomed
to thinking of Western civilisation as one. Yet every time we cross
the Channel we are reminded in some fresh way of the foreignness of
foreign countries. The dwelling-houses of France, for instance, are
different from the dwelling-houses of England in respect of the
important fact that they are all to some extent fortified houses.
Great and small houses alike are evidently built with a view to
defence from within. If you take a country walk anywhere in Normandy
you find that the gardens of the country houses have massive gates and
high walls, the front door is like a portcullis, and the window
shutters are barricades. The smallest cottages have great doors and
window shutters, and if there is a garden, it is two to one that the
wall is a real wall. And not only in the country districts, but in the
towns, pre-eminently in Paris itself, each house or block of flats is
so constructed as to defy the violent intruder.

It strikes us strangely, as we walk through the cities of France and
reflect upon the reasons for these square doors and these guarded
windows. We have suffered no recent invasion, we have had no bloody
revolution. During the whole of the nineteenth century our island has
known nothing more violent than the Peterloo massacre or the Chartist
riots. We have constantly had wars, but they have been distant wars, a
matter for the hireling soldier, and not often dragging in the
volunteer civilian. If we were disgusted when we heard the true story
of the Crimea, we soon forgot the story. We were shocked again by the
facts of the Bo