sinister—­that of the Empress Eugenie, whose capricious ambition and interference in military matters directly led to the ruinous disaster of Sedan.  The French people, who had to suffer, discovered it too late.  “Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi.”  Or take another more recent instance.  Who was responsible for the Russo-Japanese war?  Not Kuropatkin, assuredly, nor yet the Russian Prime Minister, but certain of the Grand Dukes and probably the Tsar himself, who were interested in the forests of the Yalu district and had no mind to lose the money they had invested in a purely financial operation.  The truth is that modern Europe has no room for “prancing Pro-consuls,” and no longer takes stock in autocrats.  They are, or ought to be, superannuated, out of date.  To use an expressive colloquialism they are “a back number.”  The progress of the world demands the development of peoples; it has no use for mediaeval monarchies like that of Potsdam.  One of the things we ought to banish for ever is the horrible idea that whole nations can be massacred and civilisation indefinitely postponed to suit the individual caprice of a bragging and self-opinionated despot who calls himself God’s elect.  Now that we know the ruin he can cause, let us fight shy of the Superman, and the whole range of ideas which he connotes.

THE MILITARY CASTE

Militarism is another of our maladies.  Here we must distinguish with some care.  A military spirit is one thing:  militarism is another.  It is probable that no nation is worthy to survive which does not possess a military spirit, or, in other words, the instinct to defend itself and its liberties against an aggressor.  It is a virtue which is closely interfused with high moral qualities—­self-respect, a proper pride, self-reliance—­and is compatible with real modesty and sobriety of mind.  But militarism has nothing ethical about it.  It is not courage, but sheer pugnacity and quarrelsomeness, and as exemplified in our modern history it means the dominion of a clique, the reign of a few self-opinionated officials.  That these individuals should possess only a limited intelligence is almost inevitable.  Existing for the purposes of war, they naturally look at everything from an oblique and perverted point of view.  They regard nations, not as peaceful communities of citizens, but as material to be worked up into armies.  Their assumption is that war, being an indelible feature in the history of our common humanity, must be ceaselessly prepared for by the piling up of huge armaments and weapons of destruction.  Their invariable motto is that if you wish for peace you must prepare for war—­“si vis pacem, para bellum”—­a notoriously false apophthegm, because armaments are provocative, not soothing, and the man who is a swash-buckler invites attack.  It is needless to say that thousands of military men do not belong to this category:  no one dreads war so much as the man who knows what