Sense sublime
    Of something far more deeply interfused,
    Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
    And the round ocean and the living air,
    And the blue sky and in the mind of man;

Botticelli weaving the magic lines of the Madonna of the Magnificat into a harmony that, once deeply felt, seems to dwell in the heart for ever.  And you and I, though we are not captains in the adventure, all have our glimpses—­glorious moments when the mind sings in tune with circumstance, when the beauty of the world, or the sense of fellowship with men or the anthem of incommunicable things seems to open out the vision of something that we would fain possess and are meant to possess.

“A mirage,” you say, being a cynical person—­“a mirage just to keep us going through the desert—­a sort of carrot held before the nose of that donkey, man.”  Well, looking at the world to-day, it does rather seem that, if harmony is the main concern of the adventure, humanity had better give up the enterprise.  In the light of the events in which we live, man is not merely the most discordant creature on earth:  he is also the most ferocious animal that exists.  Dryden’s famous lines read like a satire:—­

    From harmony, from heavenly harmony. 
    This universal frame began;
    From harmony to harmony, through all the compass of the
        notes it ran,
    The diapason closing full in man.

If Dryden could see Europe to-day he might at least find one flaw in that ode of which he had so exalted an opinion.

But the story of man is a long story, and we cannot see its drift from any episode, however vast and catastrophic.  We are still only in the turbulent childhood of our career, and frightful as our excesses are, there is a motive behind them that makes them profoundly different from the wars of old.  That motive is the idea of human liberty, the sanctity of public law, the right of every nation, small or great, to live its life free from the terrorism of force.  When, in the ancient or mediaeval world, was there fought a war for a world idea like this?  Despotism then had it all its own way.  Even the Peace of Rome was only the peace of universal subjugation, not the peace of universal liberty based on law which the world is fighting to establish to-day.  Never before has embattled democracy challenged the principle of tyranny for the possession of the world....

Ah, I know what you are thinking as you run your mind over the Allies.  Liberty!  Does Russia stand for liberty?  Yes, in the circumstances of to-day, even Russia stands for liberty, for do not forget that this is not a war of the Russian bureaucracy, but a war sustained by the passion of the Russian people.  And, Russia apart or Russia included, who can doubt that the cause of human freedom is in our hands, and the cause of ancient tyranny is in the hands of our enemy?  May we not see in these baleful fires the Twilight of the Gods—­of those old gods of blood and iron that have held the world in subjection through the long centuries of its travail?  May we not see even in the midst of this discord and carnage, this hell of death and destruction, the new birth of humanity—­the promise of a world set free?