ty-nine articles water-tight.
"You are a Pacifist, then suppose...," and then follows generally some
very remote hypothesis of what would happen if all the Orient composed
its differences and were to descend suddenly upon the Western world; or
some dogmatic (and very theoretical) proposition about the
unchangeability of human nature, and the foolishness of expecting the
millenium--an argument which would equally well have told against the
union of Scotland and England or would equally justify the political
parties in a South American republic in continuing to settle their
differences by militarist methods instead of the Pacifist methods of
England.

Human nature may be unchanging: it is no reason why we should fight a
futile war with Germany over nothing at all; the yellow peril may
threaten; that is a very good reason why we should compose our
differences in Europe. Men always will quarrel, perhaps, over religious
questions, bigotry and fanaticism always will exist--it did not prevent
our getting rid of the wars of religion, still less is it a reason for
re-starting them.

The men who made that immense advance--the achievement of religious
toleration--possible, were not completely right and had not a
water-tight theory amongst them; they did not bring the millenium, but
they achieved an immense step. They _were_ pioneers of religious
freedom, yet were themselves tyrants and oppressors; those who abolished
slavery _did_ a good work, though much of the world _was_ left in
industrial servitude; it _was_ a good thing to abolish judicial torture,
though much of our penal system did yet remain barbaric; it _was_ a real
advance to recognise the errors upon which these things rested, although
that recognition did not immediately achieve a complete, logical,
symmetrical and perfect change, because mankind does not advance that
way. And so with war. Pacifism does not even pretend to be a dogma: it
is an attempt to correct in men's minds some of the errors and false
theories out of which war grows.

The reply to this is generally that the inaptitude of men for clear
thinking and the difficulties of the issues involved will render any
decision save the sheer clash of physical force impossible; that the
field of foreign politics is such a tangle that the popular mind will
always fall back upon decision by force.

As a matter of fact the outstanding principles which serve to improve
human conduct, are quite simple and understan