the cowards, the men who get behind stones and stick there, will probably survive.  And as to the dangers of effeminate peace, it is only the very small circle of the rich, the overfed, the over-educated, and the over-sensitive who are exposed to them.  There is no present fear of the working classes becoming too soft.  The molten iron, the flaming mine, the whirling machine, the engulfing sea, and hunger always at the door take care of that.  Every working man lives in perpetual danger.  Compared to him, and compared to any woman in childbirth, a soldier is secure, even under fire.  The daily peril, the daily toil, the fear for the daily bread harden most working men and women enough, and for that very reason we should welcome the fine suggestion of Professor William James—­his last great service—­that the rich and highly educated should pass through a conscription of labour side by side with the working classes, who would heartily enjoy the sight of young dukes, capitalists, barristers, and curates toiling in the stokeholes, coal-mines, factories, and fishing-fleets, to the incalculable advantage of their souls and bodies.

So the balance swings this way and that, and neither scale will definitely settle down.  It is very likely that the bias of temperament makes us incapable of decision.  What is called the personal equation holds the two scales of our minds painfully equal, and while we meditate perpetual peace we suddenly hear the trumpet blowing.  In many of us a primitive instinct survives which blinds and warps the reason, and calls us like a bugle to the silly and atrocious field.  For the immediate future, I can only hope, as I confidently believe, that the present age of capitalist war will pass, as the age of dynastic war has passed, for ever into the inferno where slavery and religious persecution now lie burning, though they seemed so natural and strong.  I think it will not much longer be possible to fool the working classes into wars for concessions or the extension of empires.  I believe that already the peoples of the greatest countries are awakening to the folly of entrusting their foreign politics, involving questions of peace and war, to the guidance of rulers, Ministers, and diplomatists who serve the interests of their own class, and have no knowledge or care for the desires or interests of the vast populations beneath them.  I look forward to the time when the extreme arbitrament of war will be resorted to mainly in the form of civil or class contentions, involving one or other of the noblest and most profound principles of human existence.  Or if war is to be international, we may hope that the finest peoples of the world will resolve only to declare it in defence of the threatened independence of some small but gallant race, or for the assistance of rebel peoples in revolt for freedom against an intolerable tyranny.