In answer to the amazement of this imaginary critic, we
could reply only that Europe has grown to regard the military system as
so permanent and unquestioned an institution of our civilisation that it
simply cannot imagine the abolition of that system.
For this incapacity, this widespread inertia, this blundering idea that
there is some serious intrinsic difficulty in the matter, the Churches
are responsible. If they had directed to war the smallest particle of
the ardent rhetoric they have poured on disbelief in dogmas which they
are to-day abandoning, the public mind would have awakened long ago.
There is no intrinsic difficulty in substituting arbitration for war.
There are technical difficulties which the great lawyers and statesmen
of the peace-movement have given ample promise of surmounting, but the
overwhelming obstacle is merely this--the peoples of Europe do not
insist on the reform. Of all the large problems which confront the
modern mind this is incomparably the simplest. We are hopelessly divided
as to the nature of the remedy for most of our social ills. Here the
remedy is acknowledged: the plan has been elaborated almost in entirety:
the international tribunal already exists, and awaits only its
executive, which the nations of Europe could supply to-morrow.
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