“And, as I note how nobly natures form
    Under the war’s red rain, I deem it true
  That He who made the earthquake and the storm
    Perhaps makes battles too.

  Thus as the heaven’s many-coloured flames
    At sunset are but dust in rich disguise,
  The ascending earthquake-dust of battle frames
    God’s picture in the skies."[19]

We are no longer compelled to regard the dogmas of Christianity or the opinions of eminent Christians as authoritative.  The appeal to Christianity, which used to be regarded as decisive in favour of peace, is no longer decisive one way or other.  Christ’s own teaching is submitted to critical examination like any other teacher’s, and I should be the last to decry the representatives of the Prince of Peace for acclaiming the virtues of war, if they think their Master was mistaken.  When bishops and deans and leading Nonconformists thirst for war’s red rain, we must take account of their craving as part of man’s nature.  We must remember also that war has popular elements sometimes overlooked in its general horror.  It is believed that in the American Civil War nearly a million men lost their lives; but against this loss we must set the peculiar longevity with which the survivors have been endowed, and the increasing number of heroes who enjoyed the State’s reward for their services of fifty years before.  Even during the South African War certain compensations were found.  A charitable lady went on a visit of condolence to a poor woman whose husband’s name had just appeared in the list of the killed at Spion Kop.  “Ah, Mum,” exclaimed the widow with feeling, “you don’t know how many happy homes this war has made!”

Before we absolutely condemn war we must take account of these religious, medicinal, and domestic considerations.  On the side of peace I think it is of little avail to plead the horrors and unreason of war.  We all know how horrible and silly it is for two countries to pretend to settle a dispute by ordering large numbers of innocent men to kill each other.  If horrors would stop it, anyone who has known war could a tale unfold surpassing all that the ghost of Hamlet’s father had seen in hell.  There are sights on a battlefield under shell-fire, and in a country devastated by troops, so horrible that even war correspondents have silently agreed to leave them undescribed.  But the truth is that people who are not present in war enjoy the horror.  That is what they like reading about in their back-gardens, clubs, and city offices.  The more you talk of the horrors of war the more warlike they become, and I have met no one quite so bloodthirsty as the warrior of peace.  Nor is it any good pleading for reason when about ninety-nine per cent. of every man’s motives are not reasonable, but spring from passion, taste, or interest.  The appeal even to expense falls flat in a country like ours, where about 200,000 horses, valued at L12,000,000, and maintained at a charge of L8,000,000 a year, are kept entirely for the pursuit of foxes, which are preserved alive at great cost in order that they may be pursued to death.[20] Protests against the horrors, the unreason, and even the expense of war have hitherto had very small effect.