still
alive begin to understand that they were mistaken.

There is no definite answer to any historical problem.

Every generation must fight the good fight anew or perish as those
sluggish animals of the prehistoric world have perished.

If you once get hold of this great truth you will get a new and much
broader view of life. Then, go one step further and try to imagine
yourself in the position of your own great-great-grandchildren who will
take your place in the year 10,000. They too will learn history. But
what will they think of those short four thousand years during which we
have kept a written record of our actions and of our thoughts? They will
think of Napoleon as a contemporary of Tiglath Pileser, the Assyrian
conqueror. Perhaps they will confuse him with Jenghiz Khan or Alexander
the Macedonian. The great war which has just come to an end will
appear in the light of that long commercial conflict which settled the
supremacy of the Mediterranean when Rome and Carthage fought during one
hundred and twenty-eight years for the mastery of the sea. The Balkan
troubles of the 19th century (the struggle for freedom of Serbia and
Greece and Bulgaria and Montenegro) to them will seem a continuation of
the disordered conditions caused by the Great Migrations. They will look
at pictures of the Rheims cathedral which only yesterday was destroyed
by German guns as we look upon a photograph of the Acropolis ruined
two hundred and fifty years ago during a war between the Turks and the
Venetians. They will regard the fear of death, which is still common
among many people, as a childish superstition which was perhaps natural
in a race of men who had burned witches as late as the year 1692. Even
our hospitals and our laboratories and our operating rooms of which we
are so proud will look like slightly improved workshops of alchemists
and mediaeval surgeons.

And the reason for all this is simple. We modern men and women are not
"modern" at all. On the contrary we still belong to the last generations
of the cave-dwellers. The foundation for a new era was laid but
yesterday. The human race was given its first chance to become
truly civilised when it took courage to question all things and made
"knowledge and understanding" the foundation upon which to create a more
reasonable and sensible society of human beings. The Great War was the
"growing-pain" of this new world.

For a long time to come people will write mighty books to