Oct. 17.
Leaving out of account for the moment the immediate issues fausing from Germany's withdrawal from the League and the Disarmament Conference, it is [well to consider the basic conclusion reached by most observers on the event. Until Ssturday the possibility of so ordering the conduct of nations that a world war could be averted was held to be within the compass of man's achievement, although the probability was admittedly waning. German Tecusancy has now produced the jeonvietion that the world must resign itself to the inevitable. It must be prepared to live appear to believe that manhood finds its only expression in an inebriated blood-lust will no doubt throw up their caps, bells jand all, at this announcement. Better-informed thinkers will sigh over the incapacity of man, will steel themselves sadly to the resolution required and will pray for some miracle of revelation to show the way out of what seems to be certain chaos. Living dangerously is, indeed, a jemism. If the latest worldrisis really involves a complete breakdown in the peace organi tion of the nations, then the whole of civilisation is under sentence of death. It is note. Worthy, however, that even Herr Hitler disclaims'a desire to rely on violence for international action. In spite of the sedulous cult of mob-pressure and mob-dictatorship, even he has. felt moved to consider the blunt facts of modern warfare. In manhood there is every proper desire to toss life into the se against the thrill of adventaré There was much to be said for the gospel of the knight errant:
ae. He fears not Death But tightly mocks at him as at some friend To whom one day he will most gladly turn Or soon or late, when finally he wakes From Life's fair dream and asses on to win Fresh glory ju the kingdom of the But can anyone with knowledge of the grim inferno of 1918, with weapon of that year buttoned foil to the deadly machine of to-day, begin assert that that gospel can be invoked for the encouragement of the young soldier in the next Tt would be a sad day when men or women ave so careful of their lives that heroism, endur-lance, adventure are eliminated from the scheme of mankind. Yet can the thoughtful champion lof virility. really believe that organised murder on the mass-production principle is essential fo the preservation of that quality? To such a pitch may inventions bring the technique of death-dealing that a trained company of apes, armed with machine-guns belted with poison bullets, might be able to wipe out a whole division of picked humanity, From the air, destruetion can be so. mobilised that whole cities can be blotted out. The mathematical certainty imagined in the laboratory will, of course, not be attained in \etual conditions of warfare but every day the margin between the mathematician and the practical death-dealer is reduced. jCan it really be contended that, a struggle between men armed with poison-gas ig an inspiration to heroic virtues? Te: not there much horse sense, in more ways than one, in Mr. Jorrocks's famous eulogy of hunting—"tho image of war without its guilt and" only five-and-twenty per ent, of its danger." In turning the material side of the proswer is hardly less To-day, the physical suffering caused "the last World War is les There are, cerning eye, still tragic evid-fences of horrors in the trenches. Tt is not-provided only by the Jdwindling band of maimed and blinded ex-servicemen. It is to lbc even more markedly perceived in many a human failure who, broken nerves and an infirm will, is now showing the effects lof the relentless hell of his heroic sacrifice. The saddest part of it is that the passage of time makes it humanly impossible to recog-nisse the full force of the reason for his disability. But the material results of the havoc of a world-war need no such probing {or the enlightenment of this age. They stand starkly clear in the grey, lowering sky of nearly every country to-day. Victor jand vanquished alike are under their blighting. influence. In the Hface of such a picture is it not criminal imbecility for men to mock at the notion that a world, fritt with the security of peace. Jean be fashioned for the future?
Nor is it just to think so jincanly of man by sugges! that this very aversion from wat
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.