th other wars; they are
at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found
the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for the soldiers living and
dead: Cheers for the living and tears for the dead.

FOOTNOTE:

[59] By permission of the publisher, C. P. Farrell.

WAR IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY[60]

EDWIN D. MEAD

It is a great mistake to think, as many are apt to do when some terrible
war overwhelms some part of the world, that war is on the increase among
men and that we are probably on the eve of a portentous new era of it.
The temptation to think so is strong when two or three such wars come at
the same time, waged by enlightened nations which we had fondly trusted
had got beyond such wickedness and folly. But there is no warrant for
the belief. There is seldom real warrant for any fear that the world
generally is going backward, although it would be stupid not to see that
there come many days which are far behind many yesterdays in insight, in
ideals, and in conduct. The long view is the encouraging view, the view
of progress.

We have entered a new century. As one looks back over the nineteenth
century, which has closed, as one reads perhaps some brief historical
survey of the century, it is worth while to ask oneself whether one
would rather live in 1800 or in 1900, in the world pictured in the first
pages of the book or that pictured in the last pages. The serious man
can give but one answer. The England and France and Germany and Italy
and Spain of the end of the century were, when every deduction has been
made on particular points, vastly more habitable, better places to live
in, than the same countries at the beginning of the century. The
brilliant historian of the administration of Jefferson paints a masterly
picture of the life of our own people in 1800. Every aspect of the
social and intellectual life of the time is treated with marvelous
fullness of detail and in the most graphic and impressive way; and there
is an element of hope and buoyancy, of prophecy and promise, pervading
the pages, which is at once inspiring and sobering. Yes, surely one
would rather live in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth
century than at the beginning of the nineteenth. The century has been on
the whole emphatically a period of progress. The same was true of the
century before, and of the century before that.

What has been true concerning progress in general during the last few