The last war!  It took us all by surprise.  We had believed so utterly in peace; now we had to prove our faith by being prepared to die for it.  If we did not die, this war would not be the last; it would be only the preface to the next.  To paraphrase the words of Mr. Wells, “We had been prepared to take life in a certain way and life had taken us, as it takes every generation, in an entirely different way.  We had been prepared to be altruistic pacifists, and ...”

And here we are, in this year of 1918, engaged upon the bloodiest war of all time, harnessing the muscle and brain-power of the universe to one end—­that we may contrive new and yet more deadly methods of butchering our fellow men.  The men whom we kill, we do not hate individually.  The men whom we kill, we do not see when they are dead.  We scald them with liquid fire; we stifle them with gas; we drop volcanoes on them from the clouds; we pull firing-levers three, ten, even fifteen miles away and hurl them into eternity unconfessed.  And this we do with pity in our hearts, both for them and for ourselves.  And why?  Because they have given us no choice.  They have promised, unless we defend ourselves, to snatch our souls from us and fashion them afresh into souls which shall bear the stamp of their own image.  Of their souls we have seen samples; they date back to the dark ages—­the souls of Cain, Judas and Caesar Borgia were not unlike them.  Of what such souls are capable they have given us examples in Belgium, captured France and in the living dead whom they return by way of Evian.  We would rather forego our bodies than so exchange our souls.  A Germanised world is like a glimpse of madness; the very thought strikes terror to the heart.  Yet it is to Germanise the world that Germany is waging war to-day—­that she may confer upon us the benefits of her own proved swinishness.  There is nothing left for us but to fight for our souls like men.

The last war!  We believed that at first, but as the years dragged on the certainty became an optimism, the optimism a dream which we well-nigh knew to be impossible.  We have always known that we would beat Germany—­we have never doubted that.  But could we beat her so thoroughly that she would never dare to reperpetrate this horror?  Could we prove to her that war is not and never was a paying way of conducting business?  Men began to smile when we spoke of this war as the last.  “There have always been wars,” they said; “this one is not the last—­there will be others.”

If it is not to be the last, we have cheated ourselves.  We have cheated the men who have died for us.  Our chief ideal in fighting is taken away.  Many a lad who moulders in a stagnant trench, laid down his life for this sole purpose, that no children of the future ages should have to pass through his Gethsemane.  He consciously gave himself up as a scapegoat, that the security of human sanity should be safeguarded against a recurrence of this enormity.  The spirit-man, framed in the dusky window above the applauding crowds in Quebec, was typical of all these men who have made the supreme sacrifice.  His words utter the purpose that was in all their hearts, “I am setting out to fight the last war—­the war of humanity which will bring universal peace and freedom to the world.”