Where Christianity had delivered no clear
message, the expanding of her sympathy was barred. War was part of the
established order of things. She could even cheat her maternal sentiment
with thin fallacies, because they reconciled her to what the Church had
not condemned. She had never seen the vision of peace, never grasped the
comparatively easy alternative to war.
This, in general terms, is what one means by the expectation that a
surrender of Christian doctrines will certainly not check the growth of
sympathy, and is more likely to promote it. It will direct itself
spontaneously to departments of suffering to which the Church had not
directed it. But we should be foolish to rely on this free growth and
spontaneous application of sympathy. It must be cultivated: our
generation must be educated to a sense of its value. As far as the child
is concerned, the need is plain. Children do not merely have veins of
cruelty; they have, as comparative psychology knows, the blood and
impulses of primitive man. The general impulse of a healthy boy is to
exact an eye for an eye: the impulse which it is the supreme care of a
modern State to curb in its citizens. To educate such children in
military history, whether of ancient Jews or medieval Englishmen or
modern Germans, is, as William II knows, the best means of maintaining
war.
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