The conditions were almost as favourable for such
a change in 1816 as they are to-day, or will be in 1916, and it is
another grave point in the indictment of Christianity that it had no
inspiration to demand that change. The bishops of England no less than
the bishops of Rome were deeply concerned about the rise of democracy
and the spread of unbelief, and they joined with the monarchs in
enforcing a system of violent repression. For the larger and more real
need of Europe they had no feeling whatever, and militarism entered upon
its last and most terrible phase: the stage of national armies and of
means of destruction prepared with all the fearful skill of modern
science.
As the nineteenth century proceeded, humanitarianism attained clearer
conceptions and more articulate speech. The scheme of substituting legal
procedure for military violence was definitely put before the world. It
is not necessary, and would be difficult, to trace the earliest
developments of this idea. On the one hand, I find no claim that it was
put forward by representatives of Christianity; on the other hand,
literary research among the records of the early Rationalist movements
in this country has shown me that the idea was familiar and welcome
amongst them.
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