But at Christmastide, if ever, we are bound to take the brightest view which circumstances allow.  Let us then assume the best.  Let us assume that before next Innocents’ Day the war will have ended in a glorious peace.  God grant it; but, even in that beatific event, what will become of the children?  They cannot be exactly what they would have been if their lot had been cast in normal times.  Unknown to themselves, their “subconscious intelligence” must have taken a colour and a tone from the circumstances in which they have been reared.  As to the colour, our task will be to wipe out the tinge of blood; as to the tone, to restore the note which is associated with the Angels’ Song.

This is my “Plea for the Innocents.”  What will the State offer them as they emerge from childhood into boyhood, and from boyhood into adolescence?

Perhaps it will offer Conscription; and, with no “perhaps” at all, some strident voices will pronounce that offer the finest boon ever conferred upon the youth of a nation.  Then, if there is any manliness or fibre left in the adherents of freedom, they will answer that we adopted Conscription for a definite object, and, when once that object is attained, we renounce it for ever.

What will the State offer?  Obviously it must offer education—­but what sort of education?  The curse of militarism may make itself felt even in the school-room.  It would be deplorable indeed if, as a result of our present experience, children were to be taught what J. R. Green called a “drum-and-trumpet history,” and were made to believe that the triumphs of war are the highest achievements of the human spirit.

As long as there is an Established Church, the State, in some sense, offers religion.  Is the religion of the next few years to be what Ruskin commends:  a “religion of pure mercy, which we must learn to defend by fulfilling”; or is it to be the sort of religion which Professor Cramb taught, and which Prussian Lutheranism has substituted for the Gospel?

And, finally, what of home?  After all said and done, it is the home that, in the vast majority of cases, influences the soul and shapes the life.  What will the homes of England be like when the war is over?  Will they be homes in which the moral law reigns supreme; where social virtue is recognized as the sole foundation of national prosperity; where the “strange valour of goodwill towards men”, is revered as the highest type of manly resolution?

It is easy enough to ask these questions:  it is impossible to answer them.  The Poet is the Prophet, and this is the Poet’s vision: 

          “The days are dark with storm;—­
  The coming revolutions have to face
  Of peace and music, but of blood and fire;
  The strife of Races scarce consolidate,
  Succeeded by the far more bitter strife
  Of Classes—­that which nineteen hundred years,
  Since Christ spake, have not yet availed to close,
  But rather brought to issue only now,
  When first the Peoples international
  Know their own strength, and know the world is theirs."[*]