to the assistance of Russian or German working-men against the forces of despotism or capital.  But a social war on that scale, however desirable, is like the Spanish fleet in the Critic—­it is not yet in sight.  The growing perfection of modern arms gives too enormous an advantage to established forces.  The movement is much more likely to take the Barcelona form of refusal to fight; and if the peoples of Europe could combine in that determination, the effect would be irresistible.  This international movement is, in fact, very slowly, growing.  The telegraph, the railway, cheap tickets, Cook’s tours, the power of reading, and even the peculiar language taught as French in our schools, combine to wear away the hostility of peoples.  The “beastly foreigner” is almost extinct.  The man who has been for a week in Germany, or for a trip to lovely Lucerne, feels a reflected glory in saying those foreigners are not so bad.  There was a fine old song with a refrain, “He’s a good ’un when you know him, but you’ve got to know him first.”  Well, we are getting to know the foreigner whom we once called “beastly.”

Ultimately the best, the only hope for peace lies in the determination of the peoples not to do anything so silly as to settle the quarrels of their rulers by killing each other.  But then come the deeper questions:  Do people love peace?  Do they hate war?  Would the total abolition of war be a good thing for the world?  After a lengthy period of peace there usually arises a craving for battle.  Nearly fifty years of peace followed the defeat of the Persians in Greece, and at the end of that time, just before the Peloponnesian War, which was to bring ruin on the country, Thucydides tells us that all Greece, being ignorant of the realities of war, stood a-tiptoe with excitement.  It was the same in England just before our disastrous South African War, when readers of Kipling glutted themselves with imaginary slaughter, and Henley cried to our country that her whelps wanted blooding.  In England this martial spirit was more violent than in Greece, because, when war actually came, the Greeks were themselves exposed to all its horrors and sufferings, but in England the bloodthirsty mind could enjoy the conflict in a suburban train with a half-penny paper.  As in bull-fights or gladiatorial shows, the spectators watched the expensive but entertaining scene of blood and death from a safe and comfortable distance.  They gave the cash and let the credit go; they thoroughly appreciated the rumble of a distant drum.  “Blood! blood!” they cried.  “Give us more blood to make our own blood circulate more agreeably under our unbroken skins!” Christianity joined in the cry through the mouths of its best accredited representatives.  As at the Crucifixion it is written, “On that day Herod and Pilate were friends,” so on the outbreak of a singularly unjust, avaricious, and cruel war, the Christian Churches of England displayed for the first and last time some signs of unity.  Canterbury and Armagh kissed each other, and the City Temple applauded the embraces of unrighteousness and war.  Dean Farrar of Canterbury, concluding his glorification of the hell which I then saw enacted in South Africa, quoted with heartfelt approval the Archbishop of Armagh’s poem:—­