We maintain
in Europe a machinery for settling international quarrels which costs us
more than a thousand millions sterling annually, while we could erect at
a cost of a few thousands annually an efficient machinery for dealing
with those quarrels, and for a few millions we could add the machinery
for carrying out its decisions. We boast that our civilisation is
founded on justice; yet, of the two types of machinery for adjusting
quarrels, we retain the one that is the least possible adapted for
securing the triumph of justice and discard the one that is
pre-eminently fitted to secure it. We flatter ourselves that we rise
above the savage in enjoying security of life and property, and we
retain this system though we know that, periodically, it will invade
life and property on a scale that surpasses the experience of the savage
as much as a Dreadnought surpasses a canoe.
It is just as easy to state our situation in terms of reason as in terms
of sentiment: it would not be easy to say in which guise it is ugliest.
Let us talk no more nonsense about needing religion to help us to get
rid of this atrocious nightmare. It drives both reason and sentiment to
the brink of insanity.
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